Cleaning and Housekeeping Tips
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Why Are Kitchen Trash Cans So Expensive — And Are They Worth It?
We talked to someone at SimpleHuman to find out.
Mar 8, 2018
You Should Put a Cotton Ball in Your Trash Can Right Now
I’m trying to watch my waste, and we recycle a lot. So my trash can doesn’t get a lot of attention. An egg shell here, some uneaten leftovers there (I should probably start composting, I think) — it takes some time for my trash to get full, and in the meantime it can kind of start to stink. I’ve heard a gentle sprinkle of baking soda into the can every once in a while can help, but the truth is that I need something more “set it and forget it.
Mar 6, 2018
How To Get Scorch Marks Off the Outside of Your Dutch Oven
The outside of our Dutch ovens can take a beating. That’s where food goes when it bubbles over or splatters — and then it bakes on hard. And let’s say you accidentally left your Le Creuset on the stove a little too long (who, you?) and now there are brown scorch marks on the bottom and/or side. Ugh, don’t worry — you haven’t ruined a $300 piece of cookware. You just need to be gentle (no steel wool!) and grab the baking soda.
Mar 2, 2018
The Best Way to Clean Up Food Stains from Any Couch
Whether you’re throwing a party that gets a little rowdy or have a mishap while eating dinner in front of the television, every once in a while food is gonna drop on the couch. Unless you have the whole thing slipcovered in something you can pull off and throw into the washing machine, it can be tricky to remove stains thoroughly without getting water spots on the sofa.
Feb 27, 2018
The Most Ridiculous Things Our Pets Do in the Kitchen
While it’s not exactly hygienic to have your pets help with food prep, most cat and dog owners know the truth: It’s inevitable they will end up in the kitchen. Whether your pet’s in there to beg for food, demand attention, or judge your knife skills, it’s hard to keep those roving tongues at bay! Here are some of the weirdest, silliest, most disgusting things we let our pets do in the kitchen, according to a recent Facebook poll.
Feb 24, 2018
Your Best Tricks for Making Dish Duty Easier and More Fun
Doing the dishes falls somewhere between death and taxes in the realm of life’s certainties: Whether you’re eating cereal out of a bowl or making a gourmet meal, someone’s going to have to clean those dishes up! So the real question is, does it have to be such a slog? We reached out to our readers on Facebook to get their best tricks for doing the dishes faster and making the process easier — here’s what you suggested. “Clean as you go.
Feb 23, 2018
The One Thing You Need to Ensure a Clutter-Free Kitchen
In my family, everything happens in the kitchen: work, bill paying, meal planning, arts and crafts, homework, evening gardening. Oh, right — and cooking and dining, too. Even though those are the main purposes of the space, so much other gear can creep into the kitchen it seems like sometimes there’s no space at the kitchen table to eat, or on the kitchen counter to prep food!
Feb 22, 2018
This Cleaner Should Be Your Dutch Oven’s New BFF
I’m a huge fan of my Dutch oven. I break it out so often in the wintertime for hearty foods like delicious stews and braised meats that by the end of the season it’s ready to hibernate! And every once in a while I abuse the poor thing by making something without enough liquid, or leaving it on the stove for so long that I end up with burnt bits everywhere.
Feb 20, 2018
How To Rescue Your Favorite Cookbook from Spills and Stains
Some cooks like to keep their cookbooks pristine. Others consider those blotched, wrinkled pages an homage to all the wonderful meals they’ve enjoyed. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, there are a few practical reasons you’d want to minimize food spills on your cookbooks.
Feb 16, 2018
3 Things Science Says You Should Clean & Declutter to Snap Yourself Out of the Winter Blues
The season of winter cheer is over, Groundhog Day is past us (Phil saw his shadow, by the way) and we’re left to stare down a few more weeks of cold and darkness with holiday bills still to pay down. But don’t let winter get you down without a fight. Here are some ways to combat the winter doldrums right in your own home. Most of the difficulties brought on by a severe form of winter blues, called seasonal affective disorder (SAD), stem from a lack of light.
Feb 14, 2018
5 Tips for Speed-Cleaning Your Entire Kitchen in 20 Minutes or Less
While there are benefits to cleaning your kitchen project by project or getting really deep into a single cleaning task, sometimes what you really need to do is buckle down for 20 minutes and clean in a crazy flurry of activity to get it spic-and-span in no time. Here’s what to do in order to clean your entire kitchen in less than half an hour. Do not waste precious minutes searching for the broom in the hall closet!
Feb 13, 2018
The Single Best Thing You Can Do to Minimize the Number of Dishes You Have to Wash
Who wants to spend less time doing the dishes? What’s that? All of us? There’s no need to overthink it. Sometimes the answer is simply to create fewer dishes in the first place. But how? Try this simple tip. One person gets one drinking vessel a day. Period. None of this one cup for water in the morning, another one for iced tea in the afternoon, another one for more water later. Just rinse the glass between uses and keep it with you all day.
Feb 6, 2018
I Didn’t Clean Before I Had Company Over — Can You Guess What Happened?
We moved into a new house recently, and after about three weeks of getting settled, we had our first house guests — my sister and her fiancé — for a whole weekend! But between stocking up on food and taking the kids to school and trying to get pictures hung before they arrived, I didn’t get to the last thing on my to-do list: actually clean the house. I fully intended to sweep and mop the floors, vacuum the rugs, clean all the dishes in the sink, and scrub the toilets.
Feb 2, 2018
I Didn’t Clean Before I Had Company Over — Can You Guess What Happened?
We moved into a new house recently, and after about three weeks of getting settled, we had our first house guests — my sister and her fiancé — for a whole weekend! But between stocking up on food and taking the kids to school and trying to get pictures hung before they arrived, I didn’t get to the last thing on my to-do list: actually clean the house. I fully intended to sweep and mop the floors, vacuum the rugs, clean all the dishes in the sink, and scrub the toilets.
Feb 2, 2018
15 Things That Matter to You That No One Else Cares About
Why is it that, no matter how much you plan and prep, the hour before any party is always spent frantically running around? I almost always spend the time hyper-cleaning things, and freaking out about the pillows being angled just so on the couch and whether the kids left popcorn kernels on the rug last night when they watched a movie before bed.
Jan 31, 2018
4 Things Tidy People Do in the Kitchen Every Day
Who wants to be tidier? It’s not as hard as you think. Those people with effortlessly clean kitchens just know a few rules that you don’t — and we’re here to spill. Tidy people wouldn’t dream of going to bed with dishes in the sink. They know that doing a quick sweep for out-of-place items every night before bed will help them and their kitchen get a fresh start in the morning.
Jan 30, 2018
You Might Be Storing Your Steel Wool Pads the Wrong Way
When I’ve got a disgusting caked-on mess in my stainless steel cookware, there are few things I like better than breaking out the steel wool pads to scrub it off. I have visceral memories of using these to clean when I first started helping my mom out in the kitchen, pulling out that box of SOS pads with the cool retro packaging and then getting to work on a terrible mess.
Jan 25, 2018
5 Ways to Make Your Kitchen Look Cleaner in 5 Minutes
Good news: It really doesn’t take that much to make your kitchen feel cleaner — in fact, five minutes is plenty of time for a quick revamp. Because kitchens tend to be some of the smaller spaces in our home, it’s not as much work as you may think to tackle a small project that’ll make a big impact. Don’t believe me?
Jan 24, 2018
The Internet’s Brilliant Trick for Cleaning Plastic Containers in the Dishwasher
Not to be all “woe is me” or anything, but sometimes dishwashers aren’t all that great. (I know … it must be nice to even have a dishwasher to complain about.) They can break, they can leave dishes dirty or streaky after a cycle, and they almost always insist on flipping our plastic food storage containers upside down, which results in still-dirty containers that are also filled with gross water. Rawr!
Jan 22, 2018
5 Ways to Make Dishwashing Gloves More Comfortable and Even Better
A few months ago, I posted about my recent conversion to wearing dish gloves, after never really wearing them. I’ll have you all know that I’m still wearing the same pair of gloves just about every time I wash the dishes. In fact, I’m worried that I’ve become one of those people with an aversion to touching sponges, because I’ve become that attached to my gloves. A true convert!
Jan 10, 2018
This Kitchen Spot Is the Key to Happiness, According to One Expert
I recently learned about the Flylady. She’s the character version of Marla Cilley, whose site Flylady offers cleaning and organizing advice with a lot of positive, empowering messaging to keep you motivated. And one thing she firmly believes in is if you can make your kitchen sink sparkle, you will feel accomplished and motivated to keep the rest of your home under control. And she has a very detailed 12-step plan for the first time you clean your sink.
Jan 8, 2018
The Tiny Miracle That’ll Make Over Your Cleaning Supplies
Even if you don’t believe in miracles, you probably believe in tiny miracles. They’re the little things that, against all odds, happen and make a huge difference in our lives. A tiny miracle can be a recipe that gets dinner on the table during the most hectic weekday, the little hack that finally organizes your fridge, a newfound motto that helps you stay on top of kitchen messes, or anything else that seems like a gift from above.
Jan 5, 2018
The Tiny Miracle That’ll Make Baking Just a Little Bit Neater
Even if you don’t believe in miracles, you probably believe in tiny miracles. They’re the little things that, against all odds, happen and make a huge difference in our lives. A tiny miracle can be a recipe that gets dinner on the table during the most hectic weekday, the little hack that finally organizes your fridge, a newfound motto that helps you stay on top of kitchen messes, or anything else that seems like a gift from above.
Jan 3, 2018
The 10 Cleaning Stories Everyone (Besides You) Has Read
We typically run some sort of cleaning (or organizing story) every single day. Turns out, you guys love reading about how to scrub things! There’s just something super satisfying about learning how to do a chore and then actually doing it — with visible results that make your efforts worth it! A once-gross coffee maker that now looks like it just came out of the box? Yes, please! A five-year-old stainless steel fridge that doesn’t have a single a finger print? Bring it!
Jan 1, 2018
The Best Way to Dispose of All That Holiday Gift Wrap
Few things inspire more joy than a collection of beautifully wrapped presents under a Christmas tree! The problem with gift wrap, though, is that it’s often not recyclable. Even though the base of most gift wraps is indeed paper, many have overlays like metallic foil or glitter, have tape stuck to them, are saturated with problematic inks or dye, or are so thin that the fibers aren’t useful for recycling.
Dec 22, 2017
Everything We Learned About Dishwashers in 2017
The dishwasher can be the best tool in the kitchen (way better than your favorite knife or your trusty Dutch oven). You just have to know how to care for it, load it, and take full advantage of everything it can do. Here’s everything we learned about dishwashers in 2017. You’d think dishwashers would be inherently clean, right?
Dec 20, 2017
29 Things in Your Kitchen You Can Get Rid Of
It’s easy to assume that many of the items in our kitchens are necessities. But a closer look almost always reveals that the heart of our home could use some paring down. The rewards of stripping down to the actual necessities are especially great when done in this highly utilitarian room because you’ll reap the benefits of a much more efficient food prep space.
Dec 19, 2017
Everything You Need to Know About Hanging (and Organizing) a Kitchen Pegboard
Back in March, we went a little pegboard crazy. And we still find it totally justifiable. The kitchen pegboard is one of the most underrated, highly versatile ways to organize. Think about it: You don’t need a ton of space, or any real carpentry skills, or a ton of money. You just have to hang the board wherever you have a blank wall and then you can store whatever needs a home. You can even rearrange and repurpose the board as your needs change. Hooked? We thought so.
Dec 19, 2017
The Best Way to Clean Up Flour
Baking is a messy endeavor, and the messiest bit of it all is the flour. It gets everywhere! And heaven forbid you try to clean it up with a sponge, like you would any other kitchen mess, because when you add water to flour, it turns into glue. Like, literally, glue — water plus flour is exactly the recipe I used to make papier-mâché with my kids one time, and that stuff has still not come out of the clothes we were wearing.
Dec 16, 2017
The Best Ways to Clean Up Christmas Tree Needles in Your House
A live Christmas tree instantly fills your home with holiday cheer — and pine needles. They land on your furniture and floor the minute you bring the tree into your house, and launch themselves into the far corners of your living room as soon as you take off the plastic netting. The branches deposit them little by little for weeks, then make one last stand at the end, showering pine needles everywhere, as you wrestle the tree out the door once its time is past.
Dec 15, 2017
The Most Surprising Thing You Can Clean with Baking Soda
Baking soda is a kitchen workhorse, doing double duty as a baking aid and super-cleaner that can scrub away greasy spots and burnt-on food. Plus, you know it’s an all-star odor absorber. Baking soda’s kitchen applications are so vast that you may never take it out of the room — but that, my friend, would be a mistake!
Dec 6, 2017
Your Best Defense for Cleaning Up Sticky Dough
I’m not a huge baker (Christmas cookies are my one exception), so my mother and I have gone back and forth on the virtues of making your own pie crust versus buying the ready-made kind. In case there’s any confusion: She likes to make it, and I tend to buy it.
Dec 5, 2017
This Is the Best Cleaning Advice, According to Reddit
Today I discovered something shocking: Reddit is an excellent place to go for cleaning tips. The site is best known for dog memes and jokes, but it’s also full of a lot of actually useful information. The massive online discussion forum has over a million sub-forums covering everything from video games to food to random thoughts people have in the shower. And with that many people around, a lot of them are bound to know what they’re talking about.
Dec 1, 2017
How To Get Rid of Burnt Cookie Smells
Every year, my husband and I throw a cookie party over the holidays. It’s actually a long-standing family tradition — my sister and I used to do it together, when we lived at home, and now do it separately in our own homes. Typically, I take off the day before the big event and spend hours baking (my sister prefers to do her baking in batches and freeze the cookies).
Nov 30, 2017
Even More Things You Can Clean with Baking Soda
You may already know that baking soda has many properties that make it an amazing cleaner, including the fact that it absorbs odors and is just slightly abrasive, so it can scrub delicate surfaces without scratching them. Plus, it’s inexpensive and probably already in your home, making it a good candidate for impromptu cleaning sessions when the mood strikes or you find yourself with a few minutes. We already ran a list of 10 things you can clean with baking soda. Here are 10 more things.
Nov 28, 2017
You Need to Know This Brilliant Bartender Trick to Cleaning Out Glass Bottles
When you’re totally snooping on somebody’s shopping list, there’s no other word for it. You’re not being “curious” — you’re just being straight-up nosy. But I couldn’t help it. Left to my own devices for a minute while I was at my favorite local cocktail lounge in Louisville reporting on their new cocktail menu, I spied a scrap of paper.
Nov 27, 2017
How To Clean Food Spills from Car Upholstery
Whether you’ve got a leaky container or something spilled while you were making a sharp turn, spills are often part of the deal when you’re transporting your Thanksgiving contribution. If you’re lucky the item that spilled is something dry (like a basket of biscuits), but more likely we’re talking about cranberry sauce or gravy, tricky spills that are hard to pull up and can permanently stain your upholstery if you don’t act fast!
Nov 20, 2017
The Most Important Step When Cleaning Wine Glasses
I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about how to clean wine glasses. Few things bug me as much as going to someone’s house and being offered vino in a dirty-looking glass Now, my wine glasses don’t tend to get that dirty, because we keep them in a closed cabinet and use them fairly frequently. And my methods aren’t particularly fancy — I’ve found that unscented dish soap, hot water, and a gentle scrubby sponge do just fine!
Nov 16, 2017
What Having a Dog Taught Me About My Kitchen
First, let me explain: When I say “having” a dog, what I really mean is “babysitting” a dog. I do not have a dog of my own. Mostly because my husband and I can’t agree on a size. I want a dog that’s small enough for me to carry around like a baby and he wants one that he can ride. So until they come up with a breed that can grow and shrink on demand, we spend a lot of time taking in other people’s pups while they go on vacation.
Nov 5, 2017
What Having a Dog Taught Me About My Kitchen
First, let me explain: When I say “having” a dog, what I really mean is “babysitting” a dog. I do not have a dog of my own. Mostly because my husband and I can’t agree on a size. I want a dog that’s small enough for me to carry around like a baby and he wants one that he can ride. So until they come up with a breed that can grow and shrink on demand, we spend a lot of time taking in other people’s pups while they go on vacation.
Nov 5, 2017
Don’t Be a Monster! 3 Things Good People Do for Friendsgiving Cleanup.
Friendsgiving is the best! All the delicious food and festivities of regular Thanksgiving — with more wine, better music, and fewer questions about why you’re still single! If you’re a Friendsgiving guest, you already know to bring at least one side and a bottle of wine. But don’t stop there: The best guests are ones who don’t just show up, eat, and leave, but make an effort to help with cleanup so your host isn’t stuck doing hours of work later.
Nov 3, 2017
These Cleaning Supplies Make Cleaning Seem Like Way Less of a Chore
I’ve spent the last few years culling down my cleaning supplies to just the essentials and switching over to natural cleaners where I could. Despite a brief stint making our own laundry detergent (this was before we had two small children), I never had enough time or motivation to make my own cleaners. I enviously pined away at beautiful glass bottles of homemade cleaners on Pinterest and resolved to hiding even my favorite cleaners under the sink.
Oct 31, 2017
The Best Ways to Clean an Oven, According to Our Readers
We once asked Kitchn’s Facebook friends to tell us the best way to clean an oven. Many of you suggested the self-cleaning button, which is an option we’re not always fans of. (See: Why You Should (Almost) Never Use Your Oven’s Self-Cleaning Function.) Even more of you suggested either not using your oven at all or getting someone else to do it for you. But those aren’t super-realistic suggestions because we like to cook and we don’t live at Downton Abbey.
Oct 21, 2017
The One Thing I Started Doing That Immediately Made My Kitchen Neater
Every once in a while, something clicks for a home cook. Maybe it’s a new technique that seemed impossible to master a day ago, or a new ingredient that somehow makes every dish better, or anything in between. I had one of those aha, palm-to-face moments a few weeks ago. It was so simple and obvious, and yet it feels totally life-changing. I’m not overstating things when I say I’m a neater, more organized cook now because of this one little thing. Duh! So simple, right?
Oct 16, 2017
The 2 Worst Dishwasher Mistakes You’re Probably Making
A few weeks ago, we spent some time talking to Ted Lindeman, a professor in the biology and biochemistry department at Colorado College. We originally wanted to know which packing material he preferred for bagged lunches: plastic zip-top bags, aluminum foil, or plastic wrap. (He picked the bags as long as we all promised to use each bag at least five times before tossing them — and that when washing them between uses, we use just a little bit of not-too-hot water.
Oct 5, 2017
This $35 Swedish Hand Soap Is Totally Worth It
To say that I’m frugal isn’t exactly accurate. I have survived on a very meager salary; used Dove soap bars to wash body, face, and hair; and eaten rice and beans for an entire summer due to insufficient funds (my fault for lending a guy all of my savings, only to find he used the money to pay off his credit card bills).
Oct 3, 2017
11 Cleaning and Organizing Tips from Real People Who Have Open Shelving
In my early 20s, I had open shelving in the kitchen. And it was awful. There was no vent into the kitchen, and only one tiny window that opened into a filthy courtyard with no air circulation. (Sometimes pigeons would get in there and fly around and poop everywhere.) The stuff on the shelves got filthy. Plus, they were totally jammed with stuff and the kitchen always looked cluttered. When I moved out, the Fiestaware dishes on the uppermost shelves were just coated with grease.
Sep 26, 2017
Does Open Shelving Really Get All That Dusty? An Investigative Report.
Growing up, we had chores; one of those chores was dusting. Whoever’s turn it was that week would have to go through the whole house with a rag and a can of Pledge and move every individual tchotchke out of the way to clean what felt like miles and miles of shelving. It took forever (probably less than an hour) and instilled in me both a hatred of dusting, and also the intrinsic knowledge that my house is not clean unless it’s dusted.
Sep 20, 2017
How To Clean a French Press
When my husband and I were first married, we used a coffee maker I’d bought shortly after college for about $9. The thing constantly clogged and overflowed and made generally mediocre coffee. As we’ve gotten older and more sophisticated, and especially since becoming parents, really good coffee is more and more important — like, extremely important at 6:15 a.m. on a Saturday. So we splurged on a lovely French press.
Sep 16, 2017
Why It’s Totally Worth It to Have a Weekly House Cleaner
But on Monday morning, after we leave for work and school, something magical happens: Our house cleaner, Melissa, comes in for a few hours to clean the house. It’s not inexpensive, because it’s important to me to pay what I would accept to do the same job, but coming home to a sparkling house on Monday night is worth every penny. Here’s why. We don’t have a housekeeper, someone who does it all, right down to folding and putting away all the socks.
Sep 11, 2017
These Are the Most Annoying Things Your Family Members and Roommates Do in the Kitchen
Not to be all negative or anything, but sometimes our roommates (read: our family members, friends, strangers we found on Craigslist, pets, etc.) can be super annoying to live with — especially when it comes to how they use (or even don’t use) the kitchen. For example, I love my husband to death, but he is very bad at closing cabinet doors. In that, he just doesn’t. He can open cabinet doors, but I’m starting to worry that maybe he doesn’t know how to close them.
Sep 9, 2017
This Is the Magic Number When It Comes to Cleaning
It’s hard to get motivated to clean the kitchen. There’s Netflix to be watched, and Instagram to be checked, and honestly has anyone ever felt truly inspired to scrub the floor? The problem is, if you procrastinate too much on the cleaning, it turns into a really big chore that can take hours to accomplish. So the key is to figure out a happy medium — the least amount of time you can spend on cleaning to be effective and not get burned out either.
Aug 26, 2017
5 Surprising Things I Learned from Washing Dishes with Gloves for a Week
For no particular reason, I’ve never really worn gloves to wash the dishes. I guess my mom never did, so I didn’t get into the habit, and it’s hard to change habits! But my friends who cook a lot — and clean a lot of dishes — always wear them. Every time they do a dish! I mean, I guess I’ve pulled out a pair for Thanksgiving dinner clean up, but that’s about it. Anyways, I started to wonder if there was something there.
Aug 24, 2017
The Most Satisfying Cleaning Video You’ll Ever See
There are a plethora of “satisfying” videos to watch on the internet, and many of them revolve around food. There’s the cake decorating videos we can’t get enough of, and the Instagram boomerangs of someone squishing cheese, and mesmerizing videos of fresh pasta being cut. I’ve spent way too many hours of my life watching these kinds of videos over and over again, and I think I just found my favorite.
Aug 23, 2017
The Most Satisfying Cleaning Video You’ll Ever See
There are a plethora of “satisfying” videos to watch on the internet, and many of them revolve around food. There’s the cake decorating videos we can’t get enough of, and the Instagram boomerangs of someone squishing cheese, and mesmerizing videos of fresh pasta being cut. I’ve spent way too many hours of my life watching these kinds of videos over and over again, and I think I just found my favorite.
Aug 23, 2017
5 Tips to Help You Keep Your Sink Clean Throughout the Day
Think on this: There’s probably more bacteria (fecal and regular!) in your kitchen sink than in your recently flushed toilet bowl. “Sinks tend to stay moist, there’s food and scraps in there, you defrost meat in there, and you rarely clean it,” says Dr. Chuck Gerba, a professor of microbiology at University of Arizona. Because of that, bacteria can flourish. Not to mention, the garbage disposal spews out water and bacteria every time you run it.
Aug 21, 2017
The One Kitchen Thing That Grosses Microbiologists Out
There’s more than one reason your kitchen is even grosser than your bathroom: You clean it less often; you keep it warm, moist, and full of organic matter; and you drop food stuffs on nearly every surface. As for the worst offender? Well, that just might be the object you use the most: your sponge. “A sponge is bacteria heaven!” says Dr. Chuck Gerba, a professor of microbiology for University of Arizona. “It’s wet, dark, and constantly sucking up food.
Aug 21, 2017
How To Clean Your Kitchen Sink
I consider myself a pretty clean person, but I have to say that every time I start researching an article, I discover another totally filthy place that I haven’t been cleaning. In this case, it’s the kitchen sink. It actually harbors even more bacteria than your toilet bowl. And if you, like me, thought that it got clean as you wash the dishes every day? Well, you are sadly mistaken.
Aug 17, 2017
5 Ways to Use Aluminum Foil to Clean
We all know that aluminum foil is great for preventing a mess. It can catch spillage in the oven or grill, or save you a step of cleaning your baking sheets. But did you know it can clean up, too? When you crumple aluminum foil, it’s abrasive enough to tackle tough stains (on very strong surfaces, of course), and because it’s made from aluminum, it has some pretty cool properties that help out other metals. Here are five ways to use aluminum foil to clean.
Aug 15, 2017
5 Ways to Use Aluminum Foil to Clean
We all know that aluminum foil is great for preventing a mess. It can catch spillage in the oven or grill, or save you a step of cleaning your baking sheets. But did you know it can clean up, too? When you crumple aluminum foil, it’s abrasive enough to tackle tough stains (on very strong surfaces, of course), and because it’s made from aluminum, it has some pretty cool properties that help out other metals. Here are five ways to use aluminum foil to clean.
Aug 15, 2017
The Best Way to Sanitize Your Kitchen Sponge Is Not What You Think
Kitchen sponges are notorious for being bacteria-ridden. By some estimates, they are dirtier than toilet seats. Strains of germs range from campylobacter, salmonella, and staphylococcus to E. coli and listeria. Yuck. “That thing is very dirty,” Philip Tierno, a microbiologist and pathologist at the New York University School of Medicine, tells Tech Insider.
Aug 8, 2017
One Thing You Need to Clean More Often than You Think
Now that my oldest is in school, we have discovered the joys of packing her lunch. Beyond the list of banned foods we need to be careful about (last year it included peanut butter, strawberries, and shellfish — as if I would ever send her to school with shrimp cocktail!), there are her ever-evolving and contradictory preferences we had to remember and adjust to. But you know, you do it. Five days a week.
Aug 8, 2017
Roaches in Your Kitchen? Check the Coffee Maker.
A few weeks ago, I started noticing small roaches occasionally scuttling around my kitchen. This being an old apartment building in New York City, I wasn’t too shocked. I had dealt with mice and ants in my last apartment and once stepped on a dead rat in the middle of the street (a story for another time), so it only seemed natural that cockroaches would one day appear on my personal docket of NYC vermin to confront. It wasn’t like I had a full-on infestation — or so I thought.
Aug 7, 2017
One Reason You Should Wash Your Kitchen Linens Separately
Kitchen linens get a special kind of dirty, because most people don’t just use them for drying dishes — they also use them to wipe up crumbs off the countertop, dry their hands, swab spills off the floor, and dab jelly off their kids’ faces. Often, all in one day, several times a day. And some of us (okay, me!) don’t wash our kitchen linens nearly as often as we should.
Aug 4, 2017
3 Ways Plastic Bread Tags Can Keep Your Kitchen Clean and Organized
If you’ve been looking for a reason to eat more carbs, this is a direct order from us: Stock up on some bread today! Why? The plastic tags that keep the baggies closed will be useful long after you’ve eaten that last slice of seedless rye. Just check out these alternative uses for bread tags. We all use our phones, tablets, or laptops when we cook. Sometimes, we use all three at once! (Gotta check the Insta, follow along with a recipe, and play some tunes, right?
Jul 31, 2017
5 Things to Know About Cleaning Your Freezer’s Built-in Ice Maker
There’s nothing better on a hot summer day than filling a tall glass totally full of ice cubes, then splashing a little something on top — be it water, LaCroix, or something stronger — for a super-chilly refreshment. But if that ice has an odor, or leaves little scaly bits in your beverage? That certainly ruins the moment.
Jul 27, 2017
The Best Ways to Remove Cherry Stains from Your Clothes, Skin, and Kitchen
My kids love cherries! But because my girls are young, I remove the pits before serving them, which leaves my cutting boards, laminate countertops, and fingers covered in cherry stains. Also because my girls are young, I inevitably end up with cherry-stained clothing, mouths, dish towels, and more. Cherry stains everywhere!
Jul 25, 2017
5 Things to Organize at Night Every Day This Week
My nights (like yours, probably) are jam-packed — home from work, cook dinner, get the kids to bed, and try to go to bed myself by 9:45 in order to get my full eight hours before the next day begins again. But nothing makes me sleep better than feeling like my home is clean and that I accomplished what I wanted to that day — which might explain why I love to organize my kitchen before I go to bed.
Jul 17, 2017
10 Office Supplies You Should Use in the Freezer
Our super-cold office got us thinking: Office supplies would probably be very useful in the freezer.
Jul 13, 2017
5 Secrets of People Who Always Seem to Have a Tidy Kitchen
There are some folks who seem to have immaculately clean kitchens at all times. Whether you’re over for a party or you swing by unannounced for a quick cup of coffee, their kitchens are always spotless — with gleaming countertops, floors you could eat off of, and everything in its place. How do these people manage to keep things so neat and tidy? They know to do these five things.
Jul 12, 2017
5 Things to Throw Away This Summer
Maybe it’s the wide-open windows, or that bright sun shining a spotlight on every bit of clutter in the house, but summertime makes me want to purge, purge, purge my kitchen! Plus, I use the space totally differently in warm-weather months than I do in the colder ones. “Summer means more frequent and casual get-togethers, friends and kids running through the house, and a desire to keep entertaining easy,” says Tanya Whitford of Organizing Wonders.
Jul 10, 2017
The One Thing You Need to Clean Out Your Freezer
The only thing you may actually look forward to cleaning this summer is your freezer. When you think about it, summer is the absolute perfect time to purge and organize your freezer space. We’re getting a thrill just thinking of the chill!
Jul 7, 2017