You do what with what?! (A cleaning how-to)

If you just look at the above picture, you will gather that this post is going to be a little random 😉

I decided to put together a couple of random tips for cleaning that I’ve gathered over the years.  The general theme of these tips is laziness.  I really don’t like spending extra time doing things like cleaning and ironing, when I could be doing much more fun things, like not cleaning and ironing.

TIP 1:

Fake iron a piece of clothing with a wet rag.

This tip is as easy and beautiful as it sounds.  I really dislike ironing AND steaming (cuz it tends to take me about the same amount of time to do both), so I used to spend a lot of money on dry cleaning to avoid it. OR, I’d just not wear an item of clothing if it was wrinkled, until I ran out of all other clothing options and had no other choice but TO iron.

Now, I just take my wrinkled item of clothing and a wet rag and throw it in the dryer on medium for 20 minutes and out comes a non-wrinkled item of clothing. (Hint: use a white cloth if you are using white clothes, and a darker one if you are using dark clothes).  The wet cloth acts as almost a steamer for your clothing.  This works best when you only have around 1-4 items in the dryer… after that, it’s not as effective.

You see?! Is your mind blown?  I did not touch that thing with an iron or a steamer!  And yes, it took 20 minutes, but it was 20 minutes that I was curling my hair and doing my makeup instead of ironing.

TIP 2:

Clean your garbage disposal with citrus and ice.

That’s it.  That’s the tip.  I know, it’s pretty high level and hard to explain.  But you take wedges of any kind of citrus (lemons, limes, oranges), and throw them down your sink.  Keep them in there for a bit and it helps freshen it up even more.  Run some water over them and start the garbage disposal.  Keep it running until it sounds like they’ve made their way through… Then add the ice cubes.  It’s going to sound like your garbage disposal is getting torn up a bit, but it’s actually sharpening the blades of the disposal.  So now you have a freshened and sharpened garbage disposal/sink.

TIP 3:

Clean stains out of almost anything with dish soap.

This is SUCH a savior.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed this trick.

• When my dogs have had an accident at someone else’s house who didn’t have carpet cleaner (only when they were puppies, this would never happen now… they’re perfect angels. ;))
• When I get a random stain on my white pants (like mud, or marinara sauce… I get myself into some pretty interesting situations)
• When I have oil spatter up on my new favorite shirt while I’m cooking (Dish soap is oil’s worst enemy)…
• When I spill a little red wine on the couch (the perfect angel dogs jumping up on the couch would have nothing to do with this)

You get the idea.  All you do is take a dish cloth (use the same color idea as above – light with light, dark with dark), wet it, add a little dish soap to it, and start scrubbing whatever needs cleaning. Keep going until the stain is gone.  DO NOT use dish soap that has bleach in it. This will not bode well for whatever surface you are cleaning.  If you look at the pic at the top of this post, a free and clear dish soap is the safest bet.  But regular Dawn dish soap will work just fine. I’m telling you, the next time you find you’ve run out of carpet cleaner or Shout, you’ll remember this and see it almost works better!

TIP 4:

Clean your make-up brushes in the dish washer with powder dish soap.

(You can also use this tip for kid’s plastic toys or dog’s plastic toys.)

So for this one, you don’t want to run your make-up brushes in the dishwasher when you have other dishes in there.  I don’t prefer food in my brushes, or make-up in my food…so I like to just keep them separate just in case.  And just keep it basic; buy some inexpensive powder dish soap, without jet dry jazz or anything like that.  But cleaning them this way makes your brushes sanitized and is least labor intensive way of cleaning them.  You put them in the dishwasher, put them in places that they won’t slip through, and run them on a regular cycle.  

 

When the dishwasher is finished, separate the brushes on a towel, then rub them on the towel to get any excess make-up off of them.  I like to do this at night so that they can just dry overnight and are good to go the next morning.  You should clean your make-up brushes once a month or so…

 

Well, there ya have it!  There are my random cleaning tips of the day 🙂  Hope this helps you spend a little less time cleaning and a lot more time doing things you enjoy.*

*Unless you enjoy cleaning a lot.  Then disregard this entire post. 🙂