Quick Tips to Save Time and Money
Use a soft bristled inexpensive paint brush for cleaning. It is stiffer then a feather duster and can get into tighter corners where dust rags or feather dusters can’t easily reach.
Examples of places where paint brushes work well for cleaning and dusting:
Keyboards
Hard to reach corners
Knick Knacks
Baseboards
Window sills
Lamp shades
Picture frame
Anything with carvings
Use a paint brush (a different one from the cleaning one) to clean in your kitchen.
Here are some examples when a paint brush or mini-broom makes cleaning in the kitchen easier:
Spilled flour or leftover flour from kneading. Use as a mini broom instead of a wet rag to clean up most of the big stuff so you don’t have as much of a gummy mess on the rag. Just sweep it onto your hand and toss.
Crumbs from toast and other things on the counter. Sweep the crumbs into your hand and toss. Once again , this avoids using a messy rag that needs to be rinsed over and over again to get clean, which also saves on water.
If your table has a crack down the center that fills with crumbs, use a paintbrush to remove the crumbs.
Use a paint brush to brush out crumbs in the vegetable or fruit bin or other places in your refrigerator.
Bar Soap
Soap really does last longer if you take it out of the package and let it “dry” out before using it. Take it one step farther and place the unwrapped bar of soap in places like where you keep your shoes, kids sports bags or by the cat box. It helps reduce bad smells in these areas while it is drying out and then after a few weeks you can use it as soap.
I like to put the really nice scented bars of soap in my underwear drawers or linen closet.
Don’t forget the old stand by use for bars of soap: Use a bar of soap on drawers that stick to make them glide smoothly.
Vegetable Peels
Some people use bowls to put their vegetable and fruit peels in as they are making a meal. Instead, I open up and lay a plastic grocery sack flat on the counter and toss everything in it. Then I can just close it up and put in the trash or carry it all out and dump it in the compost pile. No dirty bowl to clean or water, soap and time wasted to clean it.
Photo By: Anne Hornyak
All great tips! Thanks a bunch!
Plus, if you put the grubby stuff in the plastic bag, you can tie it up and it will not leak or smell up the kitchen. My house is not air-conditioned and if I don’t get the trash out after I empty meat containers it can really reek by the next morning. So, using the plastic bags works really well. Also, melons can smell awful pretty quickly in the summer so putting the rinds in the the plastic bags keeps your kitchen from smelling bad.
This is a great tip! It’s so hard to clean computer keyboards, and this is the perfect solution.
I was looking for a brush with which to clean my coffee grinder. Then it occurred to me to buy a small, natural bristle paint brush, and it does the job just fine at a fraction of the cost (I bought mine at WalMart.
Jeanne
Lots of good ideas at your web site, so thank you!
An idea to keep toss-out items from smelling up the garbage:
If you have a freezer, have a small section or box to toss
in scraps of meat/poultry, anything that rots or smells. I
wrap them first in plastic bags, and toss into garbage just
before pick-up day.
I freeze plastic bottles of water–good to have on hand to
throw into a lunchbox, or shopping bag to keep items cold on
the way home, or if electricity goes off. The more plastic
bottles you have in the freezer and electricity goes out, it
keeps freezer cold longer. If water goes off or temporarily
becomes undrinkable, you don’t have to run to store to get
drinking water. Be sure to not fill bottles brim-full, as
they expand. I also freeze milk, bought when on sale.