Winters are here and so are infections and dust. Cleaning the home especially bathrooms is one of the most important tasks in winters to prevent infections but at the same time, we don’t really want to get our hands wet in the chilly winters. Here are a few easy cleaning hacks that will make your bathrooms and home sparkle and clean your home in true sense.
1. Don’t put the toilet brush aside immediately after cleaning: In the misty winters, the brush takes longer to dry in the holder and as a result, the holder is always a quarter full of water. It also adds a stinky smell in the bathroom. When you put aside the toilet brush after cleaning the seat and pot, it drips water all the way to the holder. This is the dirty water from the pot, full of germs that again sits on the seat and floor of the bathroom. Instead, use this easy trick as shown below. It will drip water in the pot and once it is dry, you can hang it back on the holder in corner of your bathroom.
Suspend the toilet brush till it is dry and then put it back
2. Don’t force dry the mopped floor quickly: In most homes, I have seen mothers screaming at the kids and men of the house – “Sit at one place till the mopped floor gets dry. I don’t want to see slipper marks on the floor!” At the same time, they ask the servant to mop the floor with a properly squeezed cloth so that floor doesn’t stay wet for long. And, switch on the fan to further fasten the process of drying. Most of the times, the room is dry by the time servant mops the last tile of the room. Sounds familiar? Well, most of the households use a disinfectant like Dettol to mop the floor. When floors are dried up quickly, the disinfectants aren’t effective. They need at least 8-10 minutes to sit on a wet surface and do its job of killing germs. So next time you are using a floor cleaner and disinfectant in the mopping bucket of water, make sure the mop is not over squeezed and also don’t switch on the fans. Let the floor air dry. This needs to be followed especially in winters when kids are prone to infections.
3. Don’t spray a lot of cleaning liquid directly on the surface: Most people and servants believe that spraying more cleaning liquid on the surface will make it clean better. However, the fact is that more the liquid on the surface, more the efforts you have to put in to wipe and scrub it off. Also, liquid should be sprayed only on tough stains. For mirrors, glass tops and metallic surfaces, you should spray the liquid on a duster and then wipe the surface clean. Also, you can use a microfiber hand glove as shown in the picture, as it easily dusts through the small edges and loops and very convenient to machine wash too.
Microfiber Glove for cleaning
4. Follow S pattern instead of circular or spiral pattern for easy cleaning of a surface: When you clean in circular or spiral pattern, taking the cloth round and round around the surface to be cleaned (kitchen top, refrigerator, bathroom mirror or any other), you make many overlapping strokes and end up making the surface messier and leaving few streaks behind. As shown below, you start with a clean cloth from step 1 and as you go down to step 3, your cloth is already dirty and you wipe it through 3, smearing the dirt on an already clean area. Hence, you have to wipe that area again.
Wrong way of cleaning
An easy cleaning hack to save time and efforts is to follow the S – pattern, as shown. It is much more symmetric and easily cleans and disinfects the surface in first go without making overlapping strokes.
Right way of cleaning
5. Keep a cleaning brush with a soap dispenser in bathroom and kitchen: Whenever there is a toothpaste spill or some tough stains from dirty cleaning, we tend to postpone cleaning it especially in chilly winters. Allowing the stain to sit makes it tougher, which means more scrubbing and efforts in the next wash. So here is an easy cleaning trick that will not only clean your sink but disinfect it too, that too in just 10 seconds! Fill up the brush shown below with a mixture of Dettol kitchen gel + little water + little Harpic (Optional for tough stains). In case of a spill just press the button on the top to dispense soap and gently rub over. Voila! It cuts down on the clean-up time tremendously, avoids getting your hands dirty and wet and keeps your fingernails safe too.
I hope you will use these easy hacks at home and make your life simpler this winter. Leave your feedback in the comments and also let me know your unique cleaning hacks.
This post is sponsored by Dettol and was first published here
