10 Tough Cleaning Solutions

It's that time of year when many of you are starting to work on your spring cleaning lists. I recently took an unscientific poll of my friends to gather up some of their most dreaded chores around the house. Boy did they have some tough ones! Lucky for you and for them, I've rounded up all the solutions here in one place.

Budget DIY: Cleaning Foggy Headlights

For awhile now I have been very frustrated with the look of my car's headlights. Not to mention the fact that it makes it very difficult to see at night. They were completely yellow and fogged over. I was about at the point where I thought I needed new ones.

I can't take all the credit or in fact any of the credit on finding this incredible trick. My good friend Carol posted on Facebook about this neat trick and as soon as I read it, I went running to the garage to give it a try. I figured that it couldn't make them any worse and I had everything on hand.

Supplies Needed:
Clean rag or two
Toothpaste (the original post recommended Colgate but I used what I had on hand)
Not pictured - bowl of water

Cleaning the Dryer Vent

I'm sure you've all seen those commercials for things like the Lint Lizard or wands that promise to clean out all that lint trapped deep within the dryer vent. Well being the frugal cheap person that I am, I figured I could come up with some way to clean all that out without having to purchase yet another thing from an infomercial. Side note - I have just about been banned from watching infomercials because I will buy almost any cool thing I see on TV!

This project started because we found out that we have an electric dryer in this new place. If you don't have one, don't get one! They are ridiculously expensive to run compare to gas dryers. I've been searching for tips and tricks to help it operate more efficiently and found that if I cleaned the lint trap (which apparently is also a big cause of dryer fires) it might help it run better.

The wheels in my head got spinning!

You will need a wire hanger, Swiffer dry cloths, and painters tape (or another good and sticky tape).

Straighten out the wire hanger. Then lay the cloth lengthwise along the bottom of the hanger. Secure both ends really well with the tape.

Remove the lint trap and use the wand to clean down inside the lint duct. It will get out all kinds of crud that you had no idea was in there!

Nice and dirty Swiffer cloth that I just took off and threw away. Let's hope this helps the dryer run a bit better now!

Pantry Organizing {52 Week Organized Home Challenge}

This week's challenge from Home Storage Solutions is decluttering and organizing the pantry, spices and food storage spaces. A few weeks ago, I organized my spices because they were an out of control mess! The rest of the pantry really needed some help though so I was excited to start this challenge.

Join the 52 Week Challenge with me and follow along on here as I get organized!

This is the top of my pantry. Stuff was just shoved everywhere before I started cleaning! There were random tupperware containers at the top, even though we have a tupperware cupboard. The baskets were overflowing to the point that if you tried to take them down to find something, everything fell on you or the floor.

After: The appliances are neatly arranged on the right side and easy to get to. The baskets are cleaned out and labeled. So much better!

The middle section of the pantry was probably the hardest! I realized as I was cleaning it out that we had so much stuff in there that I had no clue we even had. A lot of stale chips for one thing. I headed straight to the Dollar Tree to look for some things to help organize this mess.

After: I bought some stacking shelves for the canned goods. It seems to really help us see what we have and organize things better by category. I got out my Silhouette and labeled a lot of things. More for the sake of others. It wouldn't be good to mistake salt for sugar. The medicine area is so much neater too. Everything is in baskets and easy to get to. 

The bottom section was kind of chaotic before I tackled it. We had baking racks in the back that were a pain to get to. The mixing bowls were hidden in that weird back corner and with most of the stuff down here, we always seemed to knock something over when we tried to get something else out.

After: I stacked all the linens on the side - seemed to make more sense for them all to be together. The mixing bowls went into a different cupboard in the kitchen. I made another appliance shelf for the miscellaneous things down here including our waffle iron that was lost in the back. I reorganized all the ziplock bags and plastic wrap type stuff where they wouldn't be in the way of other things. Then I found a great place for the baking racks and our cutting boards (those were in another cupboard and impossible to get to). I also swept out the bottom and found a home for our lunch bags.

Looking at it now, I can't believe we could find anything in the mess before! It's no wonder we would open the door and decide we had nothing to eat. All we could see was peanut butter, tuna and chips. Not a great combination!

How to Clean Stove Burners

I was cleaning the kitchen the other day as I work toward my 52 Weeks of Organization. It's something I'm trying to do this year so that my house doesn't stay in a constant state of chaos. I realized that my stove was DISGUSTING! I mean capital D - Disgusting! It's no wonder that at the last place we lived, we got charged for cleaning the stove when we moved out. Unfortunately, just a simple wipe down was not going to do this time and I did not want to spend hours cleaning this mess.

This is my stove before I cleaned it. Gross, right?! I could not believe the mess when I actually got to looking at it up close.

A light bulb went off! I always use Easy Off Heavy Duty to clean my oven - it saves tons of time cleaning the burnt on gook in the oven. It was worth a shot right?! So, following the directions on my can, I put on my rubber kitchen gloves and gave the stove burners a thorough coat of the Easy Off. I took everything apart to be sure that the Easy Off would get to all the dirty parts.

The directions said to let it sit for 20 minutes.
I turned on the kitchen fan to make sure there was good ventilation from all the fumes - I didn't want to pass out on the floor or anything. After the 20 minute timer when off, I came back and surprisingly most of the grease and burnt on mess just wiped right off!!! There were a few of the really dirty spots I had to scrub a bit but it cleaned up soooo easily. I followed it up with a good rinse too.

The end result was so wonderful! My stove top looks as good as new. This is also a great thing since we rent. I know that whenever the time comes to move again, I can get the stove into tip-top shape and not ever get charged again for a silly cleaning fee. And even better than that, I don't have an embarrassingly dirty stove when company comes to visit!

 

The Dirty, Dirty Couch

I knew my couch was dirty before I started this project, but I really had no idea how dirty. I have loathed it lately and had started shopping for slipcovers. Well back-up. First, I started looking for tutorials on how to make slipcovers. That looked like an absolute nightmare, really, I think you must be very brave or absolutely crazy to make them yourself. So then I started shopping around. The prices were killing me! I couldn't imagine spending what some of the places were asking and I wasn't even finding anything I was the least bit in love with. It just so happened on the same day, I found two AMAZING things to share with you.

First, for those in the market for a slipcover, check out www.uglysofa.com. They have beautiful and affordable slipcovers. They carry brand name slipcovers at unbeatable prices. Believe me, I've looked at the other places. And I was not paid to say this, just found them and saw how awesome they were.

The second thing I came across was on Pinterest. I found a tutorial on how to clean a microfiber couch. (Update 8/13/15: the link to the original tutorial is gone.) It was really my lucky day because that's exactly the type of couch I have. So I figured I would give the cleaning a shot and if that didn't work, I could always buy one of the great slipcovers I found.

I made a list of all the supplies I would need and headed out to Walmart to get them. I couldn't find white scrubby sponges like she recommended but I found brown, which match our couch so I grabbed them. I had no trouble with the rest of the supplies.

Supplies needed:
A spray bottle, rubbing alcohol, soft scrubbing brush like pictured, scrubbing sponges (ideally white to prevent color transfer).

Pour the rubbing alcohol into the spray bottle and spray the affected area of the couch. Use the scrubbing side of the sponge to scrub the dirt off of the couch. Then use the soft bristled brush to rub the nap of the fabric back up after it has started to dry. It will help restore the original softness of the fabric. Try not to over saturate the fabric because it can leave "water ring" like spots and only clean in small sections at a time.

I didn't notice until I posted it but I had a nice glass of wine in my supplies picture. It wasn't mentioned in the supply list but it is a nice thing to have if your couch is as dirty as mine.  You are going to be doing a lot of scrubbing and you will sure need it for your breaks. Warning though, open a window or two if you can, the smell of rubbing alcohol is VERY strong!

So this is my dirty, ugly couch cushion before:
 

And this is my lovely, almost perfect couch cushion now:

I think I can live with it awhile longer.