Don’t Damage Your Things When You Try to Clean Them

When you are cleaning up spills to avoid stains or just cleaning around the house, you want to make sure that you don’t damage the items you are trying to clean. The article from Good Housekeeping at the link below provides nine tips to help you get things clean without any damage. Here are some thoughts on their suggestions.

Clean spaghetti off of carpet

Photo: Good Housekeeping

  1. Pouring water or cleaners on red wine or food that fell on your carpet. As the article states, you do not want to flood the area and end up with a wet and possibly moldy carpet. For red wine spills, use a small amount of white wine or vodka to dilute the red wine and then use paper towels to absorb as much liquid as you can. For spills, such as the spaghetti shown in the photo, scrape up as much as you can to avoid pushing the food deeper into the carpet. Use a commercial spray carpet cleaner or follow their suggested blot method to gradually absorb the stain into paper towels or rags.
  2. Cleaning coffee maker with bleach. This is definitely not a good idea. Save bleach for disinfecting things like sponges and whitening clothes in the washing machine.
  3. Using vinegar on everything. As the article states, vinegar has a lot of good uses, and makes great salad dressing, but it can damage natural stone and marble counters.
  4. See article.
  5. Battling sticky spots with nail polish remover. Nail polish remover should be used as a last resort because it can dissolve and damage so many materials. If you do use nail polish remover to clean a spot off of something, test it first on an inconspicuous area first. For sticky spots, dishwashing liquid or rubbing alcohol are better choices.
  6. Applying chlorine bleach to rust stains. This is another bad use for bleach. In addition to using vinegar to clean off rust as the article suggests, commercial products, such as Bar Keeper’s Friend (a powder), Lime-A-Way, or CLR are good choices.
  7. Wiping windows with newsprint. Whoever originally suggested using newsprint to clean windows probably meant unprinted newsprint paper – not newspaper pages where the ink comes off and makes a mess. In any case, microfiber and other lint-free cloths work better. Remember not to use fabric softener or dryer sheets when washing rags because it will make them less absorbent.
  8. See the following article for all of the suggestions.

9 Cleaning Tips that Could Actually Ruin Your Stuff