Kitchen Hacks to Make the Job Easier

In most homes in Locust Grove the kitchen sees a lot of use, so it also needs a lot of cleaning.  Cleaning a kitchen can be time consuming too. When you are ready to tackle this space, try out some of these time saving hacks to make your job a little easier.

Cleaning a microwave

There are always little bits of food that get splattered when reheating in the microwave.  Let the microwave do most of the cleaning work for you by filling a large microwave safe bowl with two cups of water and two tablespoons of vinegar.  Drop a toothpick in the bowl to keep the water from boiling over.  Turn on the microwave for five minutes and then leave the bowl in the microwave for three more minutes to steam.  Then, carefully remove the bowl (because it is hot) from the microwave and use a sponge, microfiber towel, or whatever you prefer to wipe it out.  The steam and vinegar have helped to loosen all the food and make it so easy to clean. If there are a few tough spots left on the inside, just use the water from the bowl to scrub those out.

Cleaning under the stove

Who wants to move the stove into the middle of the kitchen to get all the crumbs that have been pushed under it over the years?  Answer: no one.  Simply pull out the bottom drawer of your stove to vacuum up all the dirt.

Hard Water

We’ve got hard water in our homes in Locust Grove.  For shower heads and kitchen faucets the build up of the minerals from the hard water can restrict water flow.  To clean your kitchen faucet, grab a sandwich bag, rubber band, and some vinegar.  Fill the bag with vinegar, secure onto your faucet, and let the vinegar work magic.  Go on with spring cleaning your home and then return to the faucet, give it a gentle scrub with a toothbrush or sponge, and rinse clean.

Hold up the trash bag in your homes in Locust Grove

The trash bags are always falling into the can.  Then the littlest Jones comes along and dumps her trash into the can spattering cookie crumbs everywhere.  To keep those bags from falling, put two adhesive hooks on either side of the can and wrap the plastic drawstring around them. Life changing!

Degreasing the Oven

Many ovens have self cleaning settings, but I’ve heard so many horror stories about the oven breaking after using the self cleaning mode that I wouldn’t recommend doing this to anyone with homes in Locust Grove or elsewhere for that matter.  Instead use a pumice stone! These will lift all of those baked on spatters off of the inside of your oven. You simply put on a pair of gloves, wet the stone, and start scrubbing.  While it did not scratch our oven, I would recommend trying it out on a small area first to make sure it doesn’t scratch your oven’s finish. 

To scrap grease off of the glass, we’ve used a plastic putty knife with a baking soda paste.  

Tops of cabinets

While we don’t really see what the top of the kitchen cabinets or refrigerator looks like everyday, they are popular places for dirt to collect.  To save yourself time in the future, once you have given these spots a good scrub, like the surface with newspapers, wax paper, or wrapping paper. No one will know they are there and when you are ready to spring clean next year, all you will have to do is switch out the paper.

Looking for other spring cleaning tips for homes in Locust Grove. Find some here: