Cleaning and Housekeeping Tips

It's okay to use it — as long as you read this first.

Here are just 7 of the things you can clean with it.

The winner took less than 5 minutes.

Save money and avoid foodborne illness with this DIY solution.

Machines getting a lot of daily use can develop clogs that can cause the system to quit completely. Here's how to keep it running well.

An easy prevention tip: Cover all those leftovers!

Forget about that stinky self-cleaning function!

Plus, a few ways to prevent these odors in the first place.

If your carpet is in otherwise good shape and you're just noticing a persistent smell in the room, you might want to deodorize it.

I caught *at least* 50 fruit flies this way!

Two of the methods had the best results, but one of those became our favorite.

When the coffee you brew starts to taste bitter and funky, it’s time to give your coffee machine a little extra love.

Dust it at least once a week!

It's a lot easier than you might think.

You already know they’re icky. And you probably know that if you have one mouse, you really have more than one (if you didn’t, I’m sorry). I happen to know, from an unfortunate experience in my last apartment, that they enjoy cookies most, pasta next, and Thai rice noodles least — at least, that’s the order they got into food in my pantry. Here’s some other stuff you should really know about mice in the kitchen.

I’ve mentioned before how much I love splurging on getting my house professionally cleaned. I like to think I know just how to get the best cleaning experience, but to make sure, I asked my awesome house cleaner to share the biggest things she wished her clients knew. Cleaning is hard work. Hard work makes you thirsty. Be respectful of the person doing that hard work in your home and get them some water already! Your house cleaner is a professional, but not a magician.

These methods all rely on the same basic technique, but have tiny tweaks depending on what you have in your kitchen.

A few years ago, my best friend bought a new house and had me over to check it out. Right away, I noticed how amazing her home smelled — like she’d infused the whole place with freshly washed laundry (she hadn’t). After I got home, I couldn’t help but fixate on one thing about my own space: It didn’t smell good. My house didn’t stink (no icky smells in my kitchen drain, thank you), but it also didn’t smell memorably good like my friend’s.

Whether company’s coming over or you find yourself with a few spare minutes, it’s never a bad time to think about polishing your silver for some extra shine. If your chest of flatware or julep cups are looking less than occasion-ready, worry not! This quick kitchen remedy made of simple ingredients can save you a lot of time and a big mess — and you probably already have everything you need. This simple setup isn’t too far from an elementary school science project.

Carbon steel is a lighter alternative to cast iron. Take care of it and it will take care of you — in the form of delicious, perfectly cooked food that won't stick!

One Saturday morning, years ago, we awoke to a rather horrifying sight: hundreds of little brown bugs pouring out of the pantry cupboard and across the kitchen floor. We’ve encountered ants, pantry moths, and grain beetles, but this was a new one for us. We did some research and learned that our new guests were grain weevils (aka wheat weevils). Grain weevils are pantry insects and before they multiply, learn how you can prevent them from invading your pantry.

Because a sticky, opaque pickle jar does NOT look great on a holiday table.

Learn how to eliminate smelly sinks with these reader-tested and editor-approved tricks.

Ready, set, clean!

There are cooks out there who see a three-hour cooking marathon as just another weeknight dinner. These are the cooks who like taking the long way; they do it for the challenge, the process, the joy of screwing up and starting over. (Oh, discovery!) These are the cooks who reorganize and declutter the kitchen for fun, and have never met a to-do list they didn’t like. If the previous paragraph makes you want to grab your pillow and crawl into bed: welcome.

I use my blade grinder a lot for grinding coffee and spices, and I used to find it almost impossible to keep it clean. The oils from coffee build up into a residue that can go funky and rancid, and if you switch it up and grind some spices, well, then things can get really messy. Then I learned a quick trick for blotting up those oils and spice fragments. Use rice to clean your coffee or spice grinder; grind the rice until it is pulverized, then wipe the inside clean with a paper towel.

I have this pot I use all the time in the kitchen. And it undergoes some pretty rough treatment. Everyday cleaning with dish soap gets it clean enough. However, heavy use leaves it blackened and burned over time. Every once in a while, I like to give my burnt pot a deep clean that leaves this trusty standby looking like new. To do so, boiling water does the trick; aside from that you would need baking soda and a mesh dish cloth to remove the burnt stains. Here’s how.

I cook a lot. For instance, I still remember cooking through and photographing all the recipes in my cookbook, Bakeless Sweets. The amount of dishes generated by those 75 recipes was mountainous. So this clutter of dishes you see in the photo above expresses how my kitchen looks, most of the time. And yet I have an open kitchen, with the mess on display for everyone to see. (See my whole kitchen renovation reveal.) How do I hide all the dirty dishes?

You'll just need two things that are already in your kitchen.

Where would we be without refrigerators? If you’ve ever lost electricity for any period of time (as I have recently, thanks to the intense heat and an overloaded electrical grid), you understand quite quickly and keenly the crucial role the refrigerator plays in everyday life. That’s why it’s one of the five greatest breakthroughs in food science, and rightfully so.

Even the most organized home cook tends to have a messy freezer. Why is that? It doesn’t have to be that way! We spent the past year writing about all sorts of tips for cleaning the freezer, organizing it, and just taking better advantage of it. Here’s what you should do in 2018. Just like your fridge, your freezer needs cleaning. It’ll probably need it less often, but it still has to happen.

PICTURED ABOVE • 1 Professional Kitchen Tip: Use Masking Tape to Label Containers • 2 Tip: Store Cookie Cutters on a Paper Towel Holder • 3 Store Your Sponges in the Dishwasher!

The "after" was so clean, I could see myself in the glass!

Before horror (left) and after (right) — so much better, but the door is still gunky. Day 4 Task: Deep clean You know things are serious when it’s 10:30 at night and your oven is caked in baking soda, your oven racks are soaking in the bathtub, your tea kettle is bubbling with boiling water to pour over your stovetop grates, and your husband is on his hands and knees washing the floor with a sponge because you realized too late you didn’t have a mop in the house.

Get it now while it's still available.

Seriously. Never. Ever.

That glass is supposed to come out of your dishwasher sparkling and clear! Not cloudy!

Clean these stains with quickness!

Here's how you do it.

Chewy caramels and caramel sauce, we love. Cleaning the burnt pans or sticky pot shellacked with sugar residue after making those caramels, we love not so much. Here’s a trick that will save you some time and save your poor arms a lot of scrubbing! (Hint: It involves laziness.) Once you’re done with the pot, just fill it with water until the water covers all of the sugar residue.

It only requires two little ingredients you already have in the pantry.

The winner has actually been Kitchn's preferred method for years.

The winning method was certainly a surprise.

What to do when your carbon steel skillet, wok, or paella pan gets more funky than chic.

Our go-to method just calls for some liquid dish soap!

We did not predict these results.

The answer might surprise you.

How does something so sour clean so well?

True confession: I avoid certain recipes because of the messes they create, which in my world means anything fried or anything that demands the use of a cast iron skillet. So no matter how amazing a recipe looks, the extra work of dealing with hot oil or a seasoned skillet is often enough to make me pass. And I doubt I’m alone here.

When it comes to cleaning, we talk a lot about cleaning as you go, but what does that actually mean? Other than washing every pot as you get it dirty (which isn’t always practical or time-effective), what does clean as you go actually look like? For me, the first step in cleaning up is this super basic thing that many of you probably do: keep a soapy bowl of hot water by the sink.

It only takes five minutes!

A ball of crumpled-up aluminum foil to the rescue!

Don't let your kitchen continue to look like this before photo!

You can use a cast iron skillet for almost anything — as long as you take the time to maintain it and keep it in good condition. Here's how.

Please be sure to read Number 6!

Infusing vinegar is the perfect way to combine vinegar's natural cleansing and disinfecting benefits with a much more pleasant aromatherapy experience.