Friday Favorites: Cleaning Tips/Tricks

Welcome to another Friday!  Today's topic kind of shows the lack of motivation I've felt this week.  At the same time, it's a little ironic, because I'm not a cleaner.  I am an organizer, but NOT a cleaner.  I'm pretty good at keeping things surface clean, but deep cleaning is not something that I've ever been good at.  Just ask my husband or past roommates.

This is a pic from the link... I wish mine looked this nice,
and this is her before picture!

But this week, I'm going to share a tip that I'd heard about from others, but didn't actually try until I was so fed up with the problem that I finally did something about it.  That's usually how I roll.

We have a flat-top stove.  I hate it.  Our last place had one too, but at least that stove top was black.  You could see the burnt-on food stains, but you could pretend they weren't not there for a little while.  Our current stove top is white.  WHITE!!  Who would do that?  Every single drop of food shows up and I hate it.  I can't wait to have a gas range or even those ugly spiral burners.  Anything would be better.

Having never experiences a flat-top stove before, I took our previous landlord's advice and used the scrub he left for us.  It worked good enough, but took some elbow grease and usually resulted in some sore arms the next day (sad, I know).  In our current house, I found some cleaner at Wal Mart that has more or less got the job done, but takes SO MUCH WORK, that I usually let it go until the entire surface of each burner is disgusting and embarrassing.  Then I found a pin on Pinterest that saved me.  Here is the website it linked to.  The basic idea is to sprinkler baking soda on the stove top, cover with a warm cleaning rag, and let it sit for 15 minutes.  It creates this kind of paste, and then you scrub it around the stained areas.  THAT'S IT!!  Seriously?  I felt kind of dumb after seeing how much easier it was.  Most of the stains come off pretty easily.  Some still took some scrubbing, but eventually came out too.

I'm so glad I found this tip/trick!  It's probably not new to anyone else, but there has to be at least one person out there who has the same problem, and is as clueless as I was.  :)  Hope this helped!  Have a great weekend!!

Allison
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice, Allie!  I'm going to have to try that on my gas cooktop.  It always looks a little less than sparkling clean! 

Well, for my turn on this post I thought I'd share with you a couple of cleaning tips that I had heard about but haven't tried yet.  I'll try them this weekend and give you the results on Monday with my weekly post.  They are tips I've seen on Pinterest (love that place!) but seem too good to be true!  First let me say, I really don't like to clean!  I love a clean house but always seem to have a hard time maintaining the level of clean I'd like.  Maybe it is because my beautiful babies/teenagers haven't mastered the idea that they should clean up after themselves!!  So, anytime I can find a shortcut to hours of scrubbing, I'll take it!!

1) How to clean the grates on your gas stove.


This one appears relatively easy.  Just put the grate into a gallon sized zip bag and put a little ammonia in with it.  Let it soak 12 hours and rinse.  Easy.  Hopefully it works because I hate scrubbing those things!!

2)How to remove rust spots from your knives.


Just put the knives in with some lemon juice, let them soak, do a quick scrub with a green scrubby pad and done.  I hope it is this easy!

3) How to clean your stained cookie sheets.

I don't have a picture for this one but they recommend scrubbing with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  I do love how amazing those erasers are!!

So, there you are.  I'll let you know the results!!  Hopefully it is magically cleaned!!  Have a great weekend!
Lisa