Covert Affairs: Spring Cleaning in the Forgotten Places

article3I don’t mean to panic you, but I saw Christmas decorations in the shops the other day—yes, Christmas is coming, and you’ve been putting off the spring-cleaning.

With Christmas comes parties and get togethers, and that means guests in your home—including those snooty neighbours from down the street, who always manage to come over to your house when it looks like Dorothy Gale just used it to drop on the Wicked Witch of the East.

So if you’ve been putting off the spring-cleaning, now’s your chance to get into those oft forgotten places, so that by the time Christmas rolls around you’ve already had a head-start.

Handles and Switches: When you’re wiping down the cupboards in your kitchen, how often do you clean the door handles? Better still, how often do you clean the your light switches? Handles on cupboard doors, refrigerators and microwaves are probably the dirtiest places in your kitchen, because they’re used most often and can hide dirt and grime easily. Switches, on the other hand, just think of where you’ve been right before you switch off the light in the toilet? That’s what we thought! Give these a good wipe down, and try to do it often.

Bathtubs: But, you’re thinking to yourself: we rarely use the bath! While at a glance it might look all sparkly and white, take a closer look: your bath is the place all those stray hairs settle after they’ve been blow-dried in the morning, and where dust loves to collect and hide out. The best way to avoid the hair/dust party in the bottom of your bathtub is to clean the bath every second time you clean your bathroom.

Remote Controls: Used often and while your hands are in all manners of cleanliness and sometimes un-cleanliness, yet they’re rarely—if ever—cleaned. Think about it; you’re eating nachos on the couch and watching Homeland, but an ad comes on: flick goes the sour cream-laden finger on the remote. A week later, you’re off sick and channel surfing between Ellen and The Real Housewives of Somewhere, putting the remote down only momentarily to sneeze, before picking it up again and flick: back to Ellen. I think you get what I’m saying: wipe them with disinfectant!

The Toothbrush/Cutlery Holder: Perhaps the mangiest place in your kitchens and bathrooms, and yet it’s also the place we keep things that go in our mouths! The bottom of the cup where you keep your toothbrush is a cesspool of bacteria sprayed up from the toilet, usually. The cutlery holder in the kitchen isn’t much better—a small pool of water forms at the bottom, and eventually turns mouldy and grows fungi, yet we happily put the bits of cutlery we’ve rinsed in the sink there to dry. Choose holders you can put in the dishwasher once a week, otherwise, clean them with warm, soapy water each week.

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