The Best Cleaning Tips & Hacks for People that HATE to Clean

If you are like me and really hate to clean, read on for tips, tricks and cleaning hacks that making keeping a clean house far easier!

I am so excited to partner with Clorox to tell you about some of my favorite cleaning hacks and a product I have been faithfully using the last 9 months.  Clorox is sponsoring the post, but all the ideas are right from my home!

Cleaning.  Ugh.  I love to do a lot of things.  Cleaning is not one of them.  It seems like especially since I have had kids it can just be a never ending battle to keep up.

I have friends that houses always sparkle and shine.  They swear the LOVE to vacuum.  And I am jealous.  I wish I loved to vacuum.  And scrub tubs.  And clean counters, tables, and toilets.  But I have to admit it… I don’t.

I don’t love any of those things, but what I do love is to have a clean house though.  Don’t get me wrong… I don’t LIKE to clean, but I do plenty of it. Over the last 10 years I have been finding little tips and tricks that help me keep up better, make cleaning easier, and keep the house more tidy.  Things that make cleaning much easier for those of us who just hate to do it.

Get Rid of the Yuck Factor

My first tip is just to get rid of the yuck factor as much as you can.  One of the reasons I hate to clean is just because it is gross.  Who wants to go touch all the icky dirty stuff to make it clean.  Ewwww.

So finding ways around having to deal with the gross stuff makes tasks much more palatable and easier to do.  Easier to do = do it more often around here, which ends up to be a huge win for the clean factor of this house!

1. Disposable Products– Use disposable products where it makes sense.  I had an epiphany about 9 months ago when I realized that I HAD to clean our toilet more.  I hate cleaning, and I really don’t like toilets.  I mean talk about gross.  So in turn I always avoided it and it didn’t get cleaned nearly as much as I liked.

I took stock of the situation and decided there were a few reasons that I avoided cleaning toilets:

1. I don’t like lugging out all the stuff and having to put it back up all covered in nasty toilet water.
2. I don’t like touching things that go in and out of the toilet and then storing them in my house.
3. Toilets are gross and the longer I avoid cleaning them the grosser they get (a never ending circle!)

I went to Walmart to replace my toilet brush which was seriously grossing me out, and found the Clorox Toilet Wand and a I had a total light bulb moment.

1. For just a few dollars I have something compact that I can keep right by the toilet or under the sink in the cabinet.  No more lugging out stuff or storing stuff coated with gross toilet water.
2. Each time I use the Clorox Toilet wand I replace the part that goes in the toilet with a fresh clean scrubbing pad and throw it away when I am done.  The cleaner is already on the disposable pad so less stuff to buy and store, and since I just push the end of the Clorox Toilet Wand into a brand new pad, no more touching gross stuff!!! Just click, swish, and toss.  Couldn’t be easier!
3. If it is right there, and the gross factor is gone, I clean much more often and don’t end up with embarrassing toilet rings!  Best part of all, you don’t sacrifice anything, because the cleaner is super powerful, kills 99.9% of germs, and worked great on the stains I want to keep my hands far from!

This product really has changed the way and frequency with how we clean the bathroom and I am a huge fan!  There are other disposable cleaning products as well like Clorox scrubbing singles which allow you to get into other really gross spots in the house and are designed to be tossed when you are done.  It makes much more sense to spend less on something you can throw away when you know it is a really tough cleaning job.  Both are available at Walmart on the mop & broom aisle, so you can pick them up quick and easy on your next shopping trip!

2. Cling Wrap in the Fridge– This is really an awesome cleaning hack, especially if you have lots of kids in and out of the fridge that might not be as careful as you are.  Basically you line your refrigerator shelves with cling wrap.  When you have spills, leaks or messes, instead of taking everything out, spending tons of time scrubbing away, then letting everything dry and getting it back in, you can just peel up the wrap when there is mess and toss it in the trash.  Lay another piece and move on with your day.  Way easier!

3. Paper in the Garbage Can–  Don’t you HATE when you take out a big stinky trash bag and there is liquid, or even worse… goo at the bottom of the can.  Who wants to dive half their body in a dirty trashcan to get it cleaned out?!  YUCK!

The fix: Place a thick layer of old newspapers at the bottom of the can.  If the bag leaks it will be absorbed by the paper and you can just dump and replace, rather than doing a swan dive in the can to scrub.  As a bonus, the newspaper will also help absorb odors from the trash as well.

Tip:  Make sure it is a thick layer or else if the bag leaks and is not cleaned up right away and dries, the liquid may cause the paper to stick to the trashcan instead of coming right out for an easy clean.

4. Gloves for Dusting Blinds – Yet another thing that makes me cringe… touching something super dusty and coming up with it all over your hand.  Blinds are the WORST!  They are hard to clean, yet you have to since every time you open and close dusty blinds it throws dust into the air.  A nightmare for my allergies!

The Fix: Again I don’t like touching yucky things, so I came up with this little trick I have been using the past few years.  Just get an inexpensive pair of microfiber gloves, I got mine at the dollar store, for well… a dollar, and then put them on and use your gloved fingers to run through the rungs of the blinds.

This works great because your hands are totally covered so you never accidentally touch the gross stuff, the microfiber clings to the dust so it doesn’t go everywhere, and you are able to have the feeling of your fingers to make sure you are really covering all the area you need to.

The best part?  When you are done, you just pull them off carefully and throw them in the washer and they come out clean. GOODBYE DUST!!

Convenience – Make it Easy

The second tip I have for you on keeping things clean even when you hate to do it, it making it so convenient that it is just silly not to keep things clean.  I told you above about how the convenience of the toilet wand changed my life and these are right up there with that!

5. Tub Scrubber– Besides the toilet wand, this is THE tip that helps really keep the bathroom clean.  This is one of the first things I tried when I got on Pinterest years ago, and let me tell you folks… it is a PIN WIN!  Basically, you keep a dish scrubber filled with a solution of half vinegar, half dish soap in your shower caddy, and when you are in the shower you run it around each time so you never get build up.  Genius.  Amazing.  Works like a charm!

Tip:  My favorite use  for this little guy is in the tub where my kids take baths.  They play hard almost every day and when they get out of the tub there is almost always a ring.  I keep one in their tub also, and after we let out the water I let them scrub around the tub.  It is like the cleaning trifecta- the tub gets clean, my kids learn to help clean, and they have fun doing it.

6. Lint Brush on Couches–  What is worse than the feeling of sitting down on the couch and feeling crumbs or debris on the back of your legs… Keep a sticky lint roller in the end table (or even hidden between the couch cushions) and use it to pick up crumbs, dirt, debris, or whatever your or your kids might have left behind super quickly.  Lint brushes are small and easy to store right next to the couch so they are much less cumbersome than lugging out the vacuum each time you have a little mess to clean up.

7. Steam Clean Microwave– Another task that is just plain awful is cleaning out the microwave.  This time instead of swan diving into a trashcan, you have to try to fold yourself into a tiny box that is usually way to high up to reach easily.  Then once you are there, you kill you hands scrubbing at all sorts of splatters and cooked on food.

Well my friends, there is a better way!  You know how when dishes are super dirty with caked on food, you let them soak awhile?  You can steam your microwave so that it brings moisture into the cooked on particles and makes them loose and easy to wipe away with just a stroke of the cleaning rag rather than hours of souring.

Basically steam cleaning involves microwaving a bowl of water and vinegar until boiling so the steam comes up and loosens cooked on food. You can grab full instructions on steam cleaning your microwave here!

Have the right tools

My third tip for you is when you do have to clean, make sure you have the right tools.  It gets the job done faster and better which leaves less time cleaning and more time for anything but cleaning!  These are a few things that I have found to be total life savers for me for tricky things and problem areas in the house.

8. Lemons–  It is miraculous how well completely natural things can work sometimes! I once had a glass dish that got a ring of water minerals around it.  I could not get it off with ANYTHING!  I gave it up for clean, but blemished and went on with life.  Then a few months later, I needed fresh squeezed lemon juice for a recipe.  I by chance grabbed this glass bowl with the ring on it and squeezed in the lemon juice.  I fixed the rest of the recipe and then poured in the lemon juice.  When I poured the juice out of the bowl, the ring that had been there months and cleaned with everything I had in me, was gone!  Ever since, if I have a stubborn build up like hard mineral or hard water stains I reach for lemons to make the job easy!

9. Pumice Stones– Now before the days of my Clorox Wand, I am a bit ashamed, but will admit that I went far too long between toilet bowl cleanings on more than a few occasions.  When that ring in the toilet builds up it is darn near impossible to get out.  I tried about a million things over the better part of the day and none of it worked.  Then I turned to The Pinning Mama Facebook page and asked my readers there.  There were many ideas that were thrown out (over 100!) and I tried out quite a few of them.  In the end though, nothing was easier or faster to remove the ring than a pumice stone.  I picked it up at Walmart and it is always there when I need it and still lasts for years!

10. Microfiber Rags– You know when something shouldn’t be that difficult but it ends up taking WAY longer than it should?  I feel like stainless steel is like that almost every time!  I figured out the secret to getting a streak free shine is actually using a stainless steel cleaning product WITH microfiber rags.  I don’t really know what the magic is but it works like a charm.  As an added bonus, they dust better and make granite countertops shine!

These are some things that have helped streamline my cleaning, helped me get the yuck factor out, and keep things much tidier without feel like I am using my MIND!  If you have an easy cleaning tip, trick or hack I would love to hear about it in the comments!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Clorox. The opinions and text are all mine.