7 Bizarre Cleaning Hacks That Actually Work

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The vast majority of people hate cleaning. Cleaning chemicals reek to high heaven, and the odor seems to linger for longer than should be physically possible. Harsh scrubbing, hot water and various products based on bleach leave your hands rough, red and irritated. Your knees and back hurt from bending, crouching or kneeling on the floor when you are trying to clean up the unholy combination of ancient crumbs and dog hair. Your skin crawls when you wrap a wet rag around your hand and reach under the refrigerator or dishwasher and find not so much dust bunnies as a small civilization of filth. Cleaning itself is terrible, but things are even worse when you have stubborn stains on your counter, old sauce baked on your stove burners and difficult to reach crevices where the counters and oven do not quite meet perfectly. Thankfully, there are some ways to make cleaning those tricky spots and items easier without buying special equipment or new, harsher chemicals. Here are seven bizarre cleaning hacks that actually work and involve things you probably already have in the house.

Magic Vinegar

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Vinegar is one of those foods that seem to be good for just about everything but eating. There are plenty of recipes that involve a dash of vinegar, but most people cannot think of any besides salad dressings off the top of their head. That said, most houses still have a bottle of white vinegar tucked away somewhere. If you do, you are in luck when it comes to cleaning. White vinegar is excellent for a variety of cleaning purposes including descaling appliances that deal with hot water. Run vinegar through a coffeemaker or boil it in an electric teakettle in order to descale the appliance and restore it to its former functioning perfection or just get rid of the nasty bits of white stuff that have started showing up in your tea.

You can also use vinegar outside of the kitchen. Fill a plastic bag with vinegar and tie it over the showerhead to clean it or put it in a spray bottle to form a safe, chemical free pesticide. In addition to killing insects, many bugs loathe vinegar, so washing the countertops or cabinets in vinegar might prevent them from coming back.

Flexible Drier Sheets

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Most people do not think twice about how to use drier sheets. You toss them in with your laundry before you turn the drier on in order to limit lint and soften the fabrics you are washing. What else is there to think about?

Rather like vinegar, drier sheets are good for a variety of tasks besides their intended purpose. They can act as make-shift lint rollers and are said to repel mosquitoes if unused sheets are pinned to a person’s clothing. Drier sheets are also excellent when it comes to cleaning difficult to reach places. They are meant to attract lint and other little bits and pieces of things. As such, they can get dust and hair out of the little cracks where appliances do not quite meet countertops or cabinets rather easily. For the same reason, you can use drier sheets to clean hair and dust off your baseboard without either needing to scrub them and get water all over the floor or potentially bang them up with your vacuum cleaner.

Walnut Repairs

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Everyone has had a piece of furniture that has ended up getting scratched. You may have turned your back on the cat for a few minutes too long and come back to find it had decided to sharpen its claws on the couch’s leg. You might have pulled something closer to you on the table only to find out later that there was a tiny piece of something sharp trapped underneath the object that was then raked across the table. If you have small scratches in your furniture that you want to fill in but that are not bad enough to require professional repairs, crack a couple of walnuts and rub the meat of the nut against the scratches. The meat of the walnut will mix with the scratch to fill it in. Then, rub the scratch with your finger to help the furniture absorb the oil from the walnut. This method may not get rid of serious scrapes, but it should handle minor issues perfectly well. You can also use a pecan if your furniture matches the color of a pecan better than that of a walnut.

All Purpose Dish Soap

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Dish soap is made to cut through grease. Think about it. The soap you wash your hands with needs to be gentle enough that it does not irritate your skin. The soap you dump on your plates needs to be able to eat through ancient pizza grease, burned cheese and dried tomato sauce. As such, it is made for breaking up nastiness and returning a shine to something rather delicate. This means that dish soap can be used for a lot more than just cleaning dishes. Mix a little dish soap in a spray bottle with water, and you can use it to clean glass just as easily as Windex. Dish soap might even work better if you need to clean your car windows since the dish soap will do a better job of cutting through the bug guts, pollen, pollution and general nastiness that builds up on your windshield.

Shampooed Brushes

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How often do you wash your hair? If you are like most people, you probably wash it between two and three times a week. There are those who wash it every day, and those who wash their hair once a fortnight. Even those who normally shampoo everyday have the occasional day when they do not have time to wash their hair. As such, most people use brushes and combs on their dirty hair from time to time. Even if the brush or comb is just used to help style the hair, it is still running through oil, dust and dirt. It holds onto those as well as dead skin cells and any products you had on your hair. Now, imagine letting that build up for months and then dumping it all back on your head. Nasty as it sounds, that is exactly what you are doing when you never clean your brushes or combs. Help keep your hair healthy and clean by cleaning your brushes.

If you do not care much about your combs, you can remove the hair from them and then dump them in a pot of boiling water with some dish soap or even run certain brushes through the dishwasher. If you want to be more careful with your supplies, however, you can use the same shampoo you use on your hair to clean your brushes. Simply mix some shampoo with some hot water and rest the bristles or teeth of your brush or comb in the water for about 10 minutes. Then, swish the comb or brush through the water and rinse with hot water. The leftover product, oil and dust that naturally accumulates on your brushes should be all gone.

Whitening Headlights

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If your car is older or simply drives through polluted areas on a regular basis, you have probably noticed that the headlights seem to be getting dimmer. This is because gunk is beginning to build up on the outside of your headlights. You have a couple of options when it comes to dealing with dimming headlights. You can take your car into the shop where they will dismantle your headlights and replace various parts. You can pay for a mysterious substance that the TV salesman swears will solve all your problems for a super low price that is only available if you call the number on TV. Do it right away, and they will lead you to a pot of leprechaun gold as well. If you are skeptical of the TV claims and do not want to spend a fortune at the shop, you can also fix the headlights yourself with a tube of whitening toothpaste. The baking soda in whitening toothpaste will help eat through the crud on your headlights and restore them.

The Power of Baking Soda

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Perhaps the most powerful and flexible item in your entire cleaning arsenal is baking soda. Baking soda can be used for a wide variety of tasks. If you mix it with vinegar and dump it down the sink, it can deodorize and clean your sink and garbage disposal. If you leave an open container of it in the refrigerator or cabinets, it will help you prevent unpleasant or musty odors. It can be mixed with hydrogen peroxide to create a paste that will whiten old shoes and denim. You can also use it to deal with one of the most frustrating cleaning tasks of all, getting baked on crud off of pans and cookie sheets. To use baking soda to get gunk off a plate, pan or burner, you can mix a baking soda and water paste and apply it to the burned on crud, sprinkle dry baking soda on the area and leave it sitting there for a while or soak the pan in water mixed with baking soda. Then, take a sponge or brush and scrub at the burned on gunk. It should come off much easier. If it does not, sprinkle some baking soda directly on either the crud or the sponge. It will still take some scrubbing, but the black gunk that resisted the dishwasher will eventually come off.