By Holly Sosa
As a self-proclaimed clean freak, I find house keeping one of my strong points. However, even I forget to clean certain areas or items in my home only to discover them later. Today, I’m sharing a helpful list I put together of 10 of the most common places I forget to clean. Add these items to your cleaning schedule or print out this post and stick it in your planner as a reminder to be sure to create a plan of attack for these often left behind places in your home.
1. Above and underneath your fridge: You don’t even want to see the storage unit that is the top of my fridge. I have pitchers, cake stands, and even a bag of flour up there. Recently, I took down one of the cake stands to discover a thick layer of crud. Not dust, not dirt, but crud. There is so much flying around in the air in our kitchens that you tend to forget how gross the layer of dirt can get. I’ll definitely be adding this to my monthly list of cleaning to dos.
2. Inside your washing machine: Yes, a machine that washes things needs to be washed itself. Ever worn your clothes and then had to change because they smelled a little musty? That’s a sign your washing machine needs to be washed. This helpful article from WikiHow gives directions on three different ways you can do this. You should do this every six months or when you notice that musty smell on your clothing.
3. Your ceiling fans: I live in the desert, which means our ceiling fans are running 24 hours a day for roughly eight months of the year. Living in a desert climate also unfortunately means that we also have a lot of dust in the air. You wouldn’t think the dust would accumulate on a moving ceiling fan, but oh boy, by the end of the summer our fans have a thick coat of dust that needs to be removed. I would recommend cleaning your ceiling fans once every two to three months.
4. Inside your oven: I’ll admit it. I never clean the inside of my oven. In fact, I don’t even know how. But we recently had a pizza spill some cheese onto the floor of our oven and I needed to clean it. I didn’t realize just how bad our oven was until it was clean. I followed this video on YouTube to learn how. This is something you should definitely add to your list to do every six months or so.
5. Your appliances: My kids are forever touching and grabbing our kitchen appliances. From the fridge to the dishwasher to the oven, streaks are our thang ’round here. This is an easily forgotten place to clean, but is important because this is a prime place to spread germs. I clean our appliances weekly to help avoid the passing of germs and for streak free surfaces that last for approximately 0.25 seconds of bliss.
6. The curtains: I know, right? You read this and were thinking I don’t even remember the last time I washed my curtains. They are a prime place for dust to collect. I was mine in my washing machine and then lay then out to dry to avoid shortening or shrinking them. I do this once every six months.
7. Above the kitchen cabinets: These are usually coated with the same crud I described on the fridge. Guh-ross. These should be done every six months to avoid build up and the horror when you finally realize what’s up there.
8. Your couches: I dare you to go lift up one of your couch cushions right now. Leave a comment with the weirdest thing you discovered in there. Mine was an Origami Owl locket mixed in with a matchbox car and loads of crumbs. If yo have kids, you should probably vacuum out the couch cushions once monthly. If not, you can get away with doing this every 3-6 months.
9. Behind the toilets: I’m great at making sure our toilets are clean from top to bottom, inside and out, all the way around. But many people don’t remember or even think to wipe the base of and behind the toilet. Trust me, there is so much build up (especially if you have boys!) back there you would never even guess. You should do this at least once a month.
10. Your window tracks: This is a big one I see in almost everyone’s home; mine included. This is a prime place for dust build up and we never really see it, so it’s easy to forget. Too much build up can compromise the window’s functionality and in extreme cases, even the proper insulation the window is supposed to give. You should check these and vacuum them out once every 2-4 months.
Can you think of any other commonly neglected areas or items? Share with me in the comments below.
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