The GHI’s best-ever cleaning hacks
For almost 100 years, the GHI has written about how to spend less time and effort doing the cleaning (to leave more time for fun stuff). Check out this brilliant advice before you tackle your spring clean…
1 Prevention is better than the cure!
Stay on top of spills in your oven by lining the bottom shelf with a Magic Non-Stick Oven Liner (£10.99, lakeland.co.uk) or a clean baking tray. Whichever you use, clean it after each use to prevent your oven smoking next time you cook (the liner can even go in the dishwasher!). Bakewell Oven Bags (£1.49, lakeland.co.uk) can help keep splatters from roasting meat, fish or veg at bay.
2 Ditch liquid floor cleaners
Invest in an E-cloth Deep Clean Mop (£20, e-cloth.com) and say goodbye to your hoard of floor-cleaning liquids. The mop makes short work of cleaning and buffing large expanses of hard flooring using only water, and the cleaning head is washable.
6 Wage war on limescale
Make up a spray bottle with half water, half distilled white vinegar and use it to spritz tiles, basins and taps, rinsing them with water afterwards. For a build-up of limescale on taps, wrap a cloth soaked in the vinegar solution around the tap and leave overnight. Use an old toothbrush soaked in the solution to work away any remaining residue. Don’t use vinegar on plated taps, because the acid can damage the finish. For showerheads, pour the vinegar solution into a plastic bag and fasten it over the showerhead using an elastic band. After an hour, remove the bag and run the shower on hot to flush the showerhead through.
3 Tackle grimy grout
Use a whitening toothpaste (which is mildly abrasive) with an old toothbrush to clean grout.
7 Spruce up chopping boards
Lemon juice is a natural bleaching agent, and will take on even tough, tomato-based stains. Rub a stained chopping board with half a lemon or a cloth soaked in juice, leave it overnight, then wash as normal.
8 No more dusty blinds!
Put a slightly damp sock over your hand and run it between the slats of your blinds, then pop the sock straight into the washing machine.
4 Tricky stains alert!
Superfood turmeric isn’t just used in curries these days, you’ll find it in drinks, soups and even your latte! Act quickly to remove its tell-tale bright yellow stains by dabbing them with methylated spirit. Leave for 10 minutes, then blot, before machine washing with a biological detergent. GHI tip: Run your machine on an empty rinse cycle afterwards to get rid of lingering methylated spirit odours.
9 The shortcut to crystalclear windows
Add a dash of dishwasher rinse aid to water when you wash your windows, for a streakfree finish. A window vacuum, such as the Karcher WV5 (£66.88, amazon.co.uk) will also make quick work of cleaning your panes.
5 Reach for the bicarb
Bicarbonate of soda is a cleaning superstar, thanks to its gentle abrasive nature and the fact it’s a great natural deodoriser. Use it to:
l Absorb food odours in the fridge. Fill a ramekin with bicarb, then leave it to do its magic.
l Clean countertops, stainless steel sinks, microwaves, and cooking utensils. Simply mix into a paste with a little water and scrub.
l Freshen stale-smelling sponges. Mix with water and leave the sponge to soak.
l Deodorise carpets, upholstered furniture and even pet beds. Sprinkle it on, leave for 15 minutes and then vacuum it up.
l Remove tarnish from sterling silver. Make a paste using three parts bicarb to onepart water and apply it with a lintfree cloth or paper towel, then rinse.
11 Soda crystals – what’s not to love?
Soda crystals cost as little as £1.39 for 1kg and are great for cleaning and deodorising the washing machine, removing burnt-on residue from pans, keeping sinks and drains fresh and blockage-free and removing moss and algae from patios. And that’s not an exhaustive list! To keep plugholes and drains running freely, pour in half a cup of soda crystals followed by boiling water. Remember to wear gloves, as soda crystals can cause skin irritation.
10 If you’re using bleach, chill out!
Are you making this common error when you use bleach? ‘Always use cold water with bleach; hot water can render the active ingredients in bleach ineffective, making it totally useless,’ explains Verity Mann, head of testing for
GHI.