CLEANING HACKS with DIY CLEANERS!

welcome to the clean Myspace Channel my name is Melissa maker I am an accidental cleaning expert which means I hate cleaning but I somehow became embroiled in the cleaning game for the past 15 years and over that period of time I have learned a lot about cleaning products I know which ones you need to spend money on and which ones you can make on your own four pennies first up your allpurpose cleaner now I use this on counters cupbo I use it for general purpose cleaning dusting frankly it's soap and water and it gets rid of most of the mess in my home so if you want to fill your spray bottle with something that you can just pick up and use in a safe manner I'm using pH neutral soap here a little bit of essential oils and water so let's whip this up I've got a good spray bottle in fact I've had this spray bottle for almost as long as we've been making clean Myspace videos that's almost 10 years or something like that now to the spray bottle I'm adding roughly two cups of water and when that's done I am adding about a teaspoon of dish soap and a little tip here you want to add your soap after you've added your water otherwise your water is going to Bubble Up if you put the soap in first then I'm going to drop in roughly five drops of essential oils I'm using lavender here cuz who doesn't love the smell of lavender going to screw it on shake it up and we probably make two bottles of this a week you spray it onto your surface you can let it sit for a minute or two and wipe it off as I said pH neutral is great because it's safe on most surfaces you can also save money on your glass cleaner for years and years and years I have not purchased the famous blue glass cleaner in place of this recipe I'm going to show you right here which is equal parts water and white vinegar so I have this little teeny tiny spray bottle and by the way this is like a Mr style spray bottle and I'd be curious if you've ever tried it you can let me know in the comments down below so I'm adding equal parts white vinegar who's on Prop Duty here man they should have opened the vinegar for me it's me equal parts vinegar and water and to this I'm going to add a couple drops of peppermint essential oils I'm going to put about five in there now one of the things people will often say to me is hey won't essential oils leavea streaks if you're using this on glass and mirrors and my answer is no there's actually not enough oil in essential oils especially if you're using five drops to actually leave a streak but the thing hey you know it would be great if this actually screwed on there we go the thing that makes the biggest difference when it comes to streaks on mirrors and glass is the type of cloth that you're using which is why I always recommend whenever you're cleaning a surface like that high gloss finish or something like glass or mirror you you always want to use a flat weave microfiber cloth something like this that can't cling on to any dirt and removes all lint and streaks so what you'll do is you'll give this a good Shake you'll apply it and by the way this spray bottle is cool because it kind of gives like a Mist then you'll just wipe using the S pattern and you'll see your glass and mirrors are cleaned to a beautiful shine and you don't have to spend money on Blue cleaning products anymore you might be surprised to hear that I don't actually think we need to mop our floors all that often I think hard floors need to be swept or vacuumed regularly and spot cleaned but every now and then mopping them is important just to remove oil and dirt and other things that can build up over time I think over moing them can actually affect the finish and the quality of the floor so if you are going to be cleaning SL mopping your floor you might use this recipe in a bucket or a spray bottle depending on the type of mop that you use I recommend using a microfiber pad mock mop I've got a link to ours our makers clean mop which is a cool Taco shaped mop in the description box down below and I'm going to whip up the recipe for you right here now we've done a lot of research on this over the years and this is the one that we love for hardwood floors so I've got two cups of water that I'm putting right here into this spray bottle and I'm going to just patiently wait for this to fill and there we are then I'm going to add 1/4 cup of white vinegar too much white vinegar is not good for hardwood but a splash like this is really going to help lift up dirt and oil which is what we want then I'm going to put in about a half teaspoon of dish soap I do not need a funnel for that soap is a surfactant so again it's going to help lift anything to the surface but too much soap leaves a sticky finish or film underfoot which you don't want and I'm just going to add a few drops of essential oils here just for a nice smell this is orange oh my gosh you got to love the smell of orange essential oils then what you're going to do and again this is not going to leave a an oily finish on your floor shake this up apply it section by section to the floor that you're going to be cleaning I always recommend sweeping or mopping first and then going in a w pattern with your mop working along the Grain and working your way out of the room instead of into a corner I'm going to show you instead of spending a bunch of money on a tub and towel cleaner how you can make your very own for just a few cents of bottle to bust up soap scum use a half cup of white vinegar and a half cup of dish soap this is also such an inexpensive recipe I also throw in a few drops of my favorite essential oils just to help it smell a little bit better and you know it's got some extra cleaning properties in there too give it a good shake you will be so amazed with how well this works I just spray it into a bathtub now mine's fairly clean in this shop but trust me I have cleaned the dirtiest of bathtubs with this and it works incredibly well scrubbing it with a non-scratching sponge because this is an acrylic tub giving it a good rinse here and then I like to buff it dry that's really the magic finish here buff it dry so you get that nice shine there are three key reasons why baking soda is so good at cleaning first it's a powerful deodorizer second it provides mild abrasion and third it's a Whitener and a brightener so as you can see all three perfect cleaning combo if you had a crusty lasagna explosion in your microwave no judging we've all been there there's an easy way to clean that mess up using a cup of water in a microwave safe bowl and two tablespoons of baking soda you're going to mix this all up and microwave for five minutes the water the steam is going to help transport little granules of baking soda onto the sides of the microwave and then once that 5 minutes is up remove the bowl and then take a cloth and wipe the inside of the microwave down not only will that mild abrasion help to lift off the dirt will also help remove some of the staining and offer some deodorizing power as well if there's a smelly little corner of your home baking soda's got you covered take a jar or a can you know an old Candle jar is actually perfect for this fill it about halfway with baking soda you can add 5 to 10 drops of your favorite essential oil if you choose that's entirely optional and then just stick the little container in the smelly corner and leave it baking soda is amazing at just absorbing and neutralizing odors so it's a set it and forget it type situation there's no Pleasant way to say this you might have a smelly toilet and if you do there's a solution for you the next time you go to clean your bathroom before you start anything else take a cup of baking soda along with you get your toilet bowl brush out and kind of use a bit of water to moisten around the side of the bowl then you're going to sprinkle kind of like generously toss that baking soda you get a baking soda you get a baking soda you get a baking soda and then dump the rest into the toilet bowl itself while you're doing the rest of your cleaning just let the baking soda do its thing deodorize so solve problems make changes in the world then when you're ready you can go back about say 30 minutes let's be generous here go ahead and scrub that toilet clean give it a flush and then you can use your regular toilet cleaning solution to do one more cleaning the pre clean with the baking soda is going to help lift up any odors and then the regular toilet cleaning that you do will clean your toilet you might have a glass surface in your home that has a film stickiness or a residue on it and you're wondering how do I clean that well baking soda is going to take care of it for you so what you'll do in this case is you'll dampen a microfiber cloth and I'll sprinkle on some baking soda there's no real measurement here but let's just call it a teaspoon and then you'll start cleaning the glass surface using my famous s pattern to remove that film from the top to the bottom so after that's done you'll notice there's some residue Left Behind from the baking soda just give it one rinsing wipe down and then you can treat the glass with your glass cleaner of choice I would use vinegar and water a flatweave microfiber cloth and do my regular cleaning now I know your shoes aren't smelly so this is for your friend that has smelly shoes if they want to deodorize their shoes they can take something like a coffee filter a couple pieces of paper towel or even a piece of old t-shirt that's cut up you just need a piece of semi-permeable cloth and then you're going to add to that a half a cup of baking soda right in the center then you'll gather all of the sides together you'll secure it with an elastic I mean your friend will secure it with an elastic band and throw it in their shoe you can obviously make a pair of them and let that sit for a day two a week a month whatever just keep it sitting there throw them in whenever those shoes aren't being worn and what will happen is the baking soda will start to eat away at the odors in the shoe the booth the slipper whatever it is it's going to start smelling better and your friend will thank you for the tip if you hand wash your dishes baking soda can really help things along fill your sink with warm water as usual to it add a squirt of dish soap however much you normally add is probably fine and two tablespoons of baking soda let your dishes pots pans whatever have you soak in there for about 10 or 15 minutes and when you start to do your dishes you will notice that that dirt slides right off in fact even when I do pots and pans sometimes I'll throw some baking soda on there just to boost the abrasion and make things move along a little bit faster what we love vinegar foring cleaning is the fact that it can degrease and deodorize what we have to be careful with is also vinegar superpower it's an acid so it can be corrosive that means you have to know what surfaces it is safe for and where you have to say no to the vinegar the first place that I started using vinegar when I started cleaning was to clean windows and mirrors and other types of glass and it is so good at doing this because like I said it is great at cutting grease and it also is known for not leaving streaks behind that's one of the reasons why people love ammonia based glass cleaners but vinegar is just so much cheaper so much easier to come by and it works just as well so I've got a whole bunch of glass cleaning recipes that you can check out incorporating things like corn starch and essential oils and the right ratios I've got a link down below for you to our 50 DIY cleaners ebook it is awesome but very quickly when I do my glass cleaning I just use equal parts water and white vinegar I spray it on the surface I use a flatweave microfiber cloth I use an S pattern nice Groovy Little s pattern to get rid of the moisture and the product and then I am left with a beautiful streek free shine because people love using vinegar for DIY Cleaning Solutions I will often see people talk about using vinegar on their countertops and based on what I've seen from a lot of Home Rena shows over the past 10 or 15 years people have stone countertops at home and guess what they don't like acids they can start etching if acid is placed on their surface what does that mean it means you kind of see discoloration in the stone it can lead to pitting which is sort of like pock marks in the stone that can eventually lead to cracking or at the very least it just gives you an uneven finish so the idea here is you want actually want to stay away from vinegar when it comes to cleaning stone countertops how about using vinegar to deodorize your drains well they can be quite smelly and people suggest that you can boil up some vinegar and dump it down your kitchen or bathroom drain to help break down any of the smelly buildup that's causing that odor to emanate from your sink so this is what I've done in the past I've put a cup of baking soda into the drain of kind of you know shaken it pushed it down let it sit there because baking soda is a good deodorizer and then I would take boiling vinegar so i' boil it in the kettle get a little Kettle cleaning in while you're at it and then pour that down the drain and what that does is it causes that lovely daycare science experiment that all the children enjoy which is the big volcano from the reaction of the vinegar and the baking soda so this is one of the only times where I think mixing vinegar and baking soda makes sense um and it does help but I'm going to say it helps to an extent so if you have like an ongoing issue and your drain is smelly it's probably indicative that's probably a symptom that there's a larger issue that you need to deal with you might need to use a proper store bought product you might need to call in a plumber to help you figure out what's going on but for general drain maintenance like a nice thing to do once a month every 3 months something along those lines that feels safe to me now I've also seen people say you shouldn't be pouring boiling hot anything down the drain if you have plastic pipes so if you feel uncomfortable with this please check with your friendly local plumber quick side chat on mixing vinegar and baking soda for a long time a lot of us in the cleaning space talked about mixing vinegar and baking soda and what a great cleaning product that was however when the chemistry behind it is better understood and forgive me I left my chemistry degree in grade 11 uh what we did learn is that actually mixing vinegar and baking soda neutralizes the two and you get in essence diluted salt water so really it is not doing anything for you from a cleaning standpoint if you do want the benefits of cleaning with both vinegar and baking soda my recommendation is to clean in tandem so start with one clean that off and then finish with the neck so that you can get both benefits just without neutralizing or canceling out what you can gain now how about cleaning stainless steel appliances vinegar is quite good at cleaning stainless steel appliances specifically in getting rid of those fingerprints this is the application that I use I would mix equal parts water and vinegar and just so you know that is the standard way that I clean with vinegar there are certain applications where I want to use it straight don't worry I'll cover that but for most of the average cleaning that we're going to do in a house we're going to mix it so you've got that equal parts vinegar and water you're going to I'm looking at my fridge while I'm talking to you you're going to spray it on the fridge or the appliance you're going to let it sitp for a sec and then you're going to get yourself a flatweave microfiber cloth in essence you're going to treat the stainless seel the same way that you would treat glass or a window we're using flat wave because we don't want to scratch our stainless steel we're just going to use the S pattern and work our way down if you need to youve got an area with concentrated fingerprints say around the handles you can stick your finger over the cloth and kind of focus on that one little area and then you should have a beautiful streak free finish we've talked about cleaning the exterior of our appliances now when it comes to the interior of your refrigerator you might notice that it's picked up some smells over time that's because the inside of your fridge is made from plastic and plastic like our skin is porous so it can absorb odors this is a perfect application for vinegar which is a known deodorizer so there are a couple of different ways that you can work vinegar into your cleaning routine for the fridge here so if you're cleaning out your fridge you can remove all of the items remove the shelves remove the drawers and you can use a mixture of a little bit of dish soap say a tablespoon of dish soap a cup of vinegar and a cup of water and use that to spray everything down when you're doing your cleaning in the sink you're going to scrub that and rinse well but then when it comes to the inside of your refrigerator like the plastic lining what I would recommend after you've cleaned the interior so let's say you've used a little bit of soap and water just to get rid of any of the marks or buildup that you see there if you want to really give that extra deodorizing punch just take a bowl of vinegar or a spray bottle and if you're using a bowl dip a cloth in there and wipe down the inside with plain white vinegar if you're using a spray bottle Spritz it down let it sit for a couple of minutes and then you can do a rinsing wipe to remove any excess you might be worried about the vinegar smell that will go away and what vinegar is doing is it's neutralizing the odor that the plastic has absorbed vinegar is such a good descaler and what I love about descaling kettles and coffee makers is that it's such a lazy job like it really speaks to me um because it's high impact and very low effort so if you look inside your coffee maker or your Kettle and you're seeing that kind of white crusty buildup that is lime scale so here's how you're going to fix it let's talk about the kettle you're going to open it up and just pour vinegar up to the max fill line then you're going to boil your Kettle and you're just going to do literally anything else once it's boiled you're going to dump it out give your Kettle a rinse you might want to boil it up once more just to get rid of that vinegar flavor because you certainly don't want vinegar orl gray and move on with your life done easy and the inside of the kettle will look great now let's talk about your coffee maker whether it's a drip coffee maker or one of the fancy uh espresso curig type situations you can do the same thing regardless you're going to fill the reservoir with white vinegar then you're going to put a cup under where the cup would normally go you're just going to hit run and you're going to run through a few vinegar Cycles then you're going to dump out the reservoir you're going to give it a good cleaning with soapy water make sure it's nice and clean you're going to fill it with water and then you're going to run through a few water only Cycles this is going to get rid of that vinegar flavor so again you don't have vinegar French roast tomorrow morning for breakfast water hardness will depend on where you live and where your water supply is coming from and the way you know you have hard water is how quickly you get that hard water buildup in your bathroom and your kitchen it'll also be indicative if you have hard water if you're looking in your toilet and you see kind of those brown or rust colored stains that appear pretty quickly that are really stubborn and really hard to get rid of so let's talk specifically about using white vinegar to remove hard water stains does it work the answer is yes however you have to stay on top of it and it does require a little bit of effort to get the job done so if we're looking at faucets or taps areas around Taps where you have hard water buildup there are a couple of different ways that you can approach getting rid of that buildup the easiest way is to take a bag fill it about halfway with white vinegar tie it off with an elastic band under your faucet so that it can kind of soak and let all of that crusty hard water come off while it's soaking you can do this for shower heads as well when it comes to your toilets if you're noticing that you have kind of those brown or rust colored stains from hard water you can get rid of excess water in the toilet by pushing it down on the shoot with your toilet bowl brush and then applying vinegar in a spray and dousing it repeatedly you can also fill the bowl with vinegar and kind of let it sit this might be a time where you want to bring in extra strength vinegar or cleaning vinegar which has a higher percentage of acidic acid anywhere between 6 and 10% if you have matte black finishes in your bathroom which we do vineger and water is safe to use the idea here is you don't want to use anything abrasive that can scratch the that now if you feel uncomfortable with this at all feel free to check with your manufacturer but that's what we do and it is fine I know cuz every time we do a video about vinegar we get the comment section filling up with people who say but I hate the smell of vinegar I want to clean with it but it makes me gag what do I do okay so first of all listen we've all been through covid you might have a mask lying around you can throw the mask on okay that's number one number two you can turn on an air purifier and open a window just let it air out the smell of vinegar will dissipate it'll just take a bit of time but you can also scent your vinegar to help it kind of smell better I'm not going to say that it's going to smell like a perfume that you want to wear but I am going to say that it's going to make it a little bit more tolerable so number one is an easy hack you can just fill your spray bottle or your container with vinegar that you're going to be using for cleaning and you can add 10 or 20 drops of your favorite essential oil to the vinegar ones that work really well are peppermint and orange okay you can kind of shake that up and use it now again it's really going to mask the smell it's not going to totally get rid of it it's going to kind of smell like orange scented vinegar but it definitely does the trick the second thing you can do is kind of create like let's be honest it's like moonshine okay so here's what you're going to do you're going to grab a mason jar you're going to peel some citrus fruit orange lemons limes whatever you got you're going to throw the peels into the jar and then you're going to fill it with vinegar screw the lid on let it sit in a dark area like under your kitchen sink for 3 weeks or so then you're going to get out a mesh strainer you're going to dump the vinegar back into the jar and you're going to toss those peels that vinegar is now scented okay so you're going to have citrus scented vinegar it is very potent it is very powerful and you can use it in your cleaning recipes whether you want to dilute it or use it straight now that you're a bit of a vinegar expert and you know how to decipher what you see online from Truth Versus clickbait I want to know in the comments down below what cleaning misinformation have you seen online have you Googled something and your gut just tells you absolutely not what is the Wild and wacky that you have seen out there let me know in the comments down [Music] below [Music] [Music]

Channel: Clean My Space

Views: 47,148

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Id: xy0HN4RXb1o

Length: 24min 19sec (1459 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2024