Strangest Cleaning Tricks That Will Change Your Life

Using coffee to make the fridge less stinky

When you think about it, we shouldn’t really be surprised when our refrigerators are a bit stinky. After all, it only takes a single spill or a container left slightly cracked to make the whole thing smell funkier than we’d like. However, it’s difficult to use traditional methods to clean your fridge, and pretty much all of them rely on you having to take food out where it is likely to go bad.

However, what if you didn’t have to do all of that? As it turns out, all you have to do is keep a small bowl of used coffee grounds in your refrigerator. It effectively soaks up the smells and deodorizes your fridge, all without you having to take everything out ahead of time.

Fixing glass with toothpaste

We don’t actually believe in the whole “seven years of bad luck for breaking a mirror” thing, but we understand the idea. If you’ve ever tried to put together a mirror or other kinds of broken glass, you probably also felt a bit like you were living under a curse.

When the glass is outright broken, there is little to do but throw it out and replace it. But if the glass is merely scratched, you can actually get it looking good as new using toothpaste. With a little paste on a soft cloth, you just have to apply a bit of elbow grease to fix those scratches. For this to really work, though, your toothpaste needs to say that it has “gentle abrasive qualities.”

Cleaning silver with ketchup

Buying silver is something that always seems like a good idea until you have to clean it. For example, a silver plate is a very fancy way of serving snacks up to your guests. But cleaning can be really difficult, especially because you might accidentally rub some dust in and damage the silver.

Interestingly, the most effective way to clean silver probably sounds crazy, but it’s highly effective. All you have to do is pour ketchup into a container and then submerge the silver entirely in the ketchup. After 10 minutes or so, you can remove and rinse the silver. Take a close look: it likely looks better now than it has in years!

Steam cleaning your microwave with lemon juice

We don’t know about you, but we particularly hate cleaning our microwaves. That’s because microwaves only contain two kinds of messes: the ones that you can clean up with a single swipe and the ones that seem like they are going to stay in there until the day you die.

One of the most effective ways to clean the microwave is to put a small bowl of lemon juice in there and then heat it up for about two minutes. This effectively “steam cleans” the microwave, making even the crustiest parts into things you can clean with a single swipe. As an added bonus, the citrus smell of the lemon juice will leave your microwave smelling better than ever.

Remove pet hair with rubber gloves

If you have a dog or cat that sheds, then you know cleaning the hair is a constant uphill battle. And it’s an expensive battle, too, with companies constantly releasing pricy new products to clean pet hair. But what if you already had the perfect way of cleaning this hair just kicking around your house?

All you need to do is wear rubber gloves and move your hands over the areas where the hair is. This effectively gathers all the hair into one clump that, while nasty, is super-easy to throw away. And this technique is very quick, which is great when you need to clean ahead of some guests coming over.

Cleaning ceiling fans with pillowcases

Ceiling fans are difficult to clean for two reasons. First, you often need a ladder to get high enough to reach the fan. Second, most traditional cleaning techniques end up raining a bunch of nasty dust from the fan blades into the rest of the room.

We can’t really help you with the ladder, but we do have an idea to help you with the cleaning. Just bring a pillowcase up with you and put it over each fan blade. One at a time, you can wipe the blade with the case still on it. This gets all the dust off the blades and gathers it in your pillowcase. Just like that, you have a way of cleaning your ceiling fans without creating a larger mess.

Clean more often to save time (no, really!)

Our last tip is very straightforward, but most people never believe us. Nonetheless, here it is: if you want to waste less time cleaning, then you need to clean more often instead of less often.

If they are being honest, most people put off cleaning because it seems like such an annoying hassle. When such people break down and finally clean their houses, they find it takes forever to get everything done. This means they’ll dread cleaning again in the future, creating a perpetual cycle that leaves them with a dirty home.

However, if you clean certain parts of your house at regular intervals, you get the best of both worlds. Your home will always look clean and ready for guests, and it actually takes less time to perform a bit of maintenance cleaning here and there than having to clean your whole house.