Ten Quick & Simple Cleaning Hacks

 To kick things off, here's a compilation of some of my favorite quick and easy cleaning tips and tricks to make cleaning up after your family easier:

Toothpaste has many uses other than the obvious brushing our teeth, and I'll get into a comprehensive list in another post. I'm including one useful hack here that moms of small children are likely to find especially helpful:

Keep in mind that with this next tip, you need to follow the exact instructions. According to plumbers, using the citrus rinds alone will leave acid behind in your pipes, which will cause costly damage over time. If you choose to use this hack, you must be sure to put an ample amount of ice cubes in the disposal with the citrus rinds and make sure the water is running at the same time. It will definitely be noisy, but there will be no damage done to your disposal or pipes.

Clean hair brushes are better for your clean hair than brushes filled with leftover gel, hairspray, and other products. You can use this hack once a month, if you're like me and rarely use hair products, or more frequently based on your usage. If your brush is covered in sticky hair spray residue, it's time to clean it. Well maintained hair brushes have a relatively long life.

Here's another one for the moms out there. I wish I'd known this one when my kids were toddlers!

There's more to maintaining and caring for a wooden cutting board and keeping it in good usable shape, and that entire process will be addressed in another blog post. For now, here's an easy way to clean and deodorize your wooden cutting board between uses:

I haven't tried this one myself, but I know people who swear by it, so I'm including it in my list. Walnuts are easily available at the grocery store, and I'm sure we all have some wood with scratches we'd like to fix up:

I use Mr. Clean Magic Erasers regularly in my cleaning business for a multitude of purposes. I'll include an in depth post on the blog at another time, but here's one that will come in handy on an everyday basis in your kitchen:

I can personally attest to the fact that coffee filters are far better to use for cleaning glass and mirrors than paper towels. They leave no lint and no streaks behind. Soft cotton cloths or microfiber towels are even better, as they can be washed and reused, but in a pinch, this hack is great.

The best way to use this next hack is to carefully cut an X in the tennis ball and put it on the end of a mop or broom handle. Using the handle will give you the extra leverage you need to get those difficult to remove scuff marks.

I haven't tried this one yet, but one of my fiance's hobbies is metal detecting and often he finds unusual shaped glass bottles and jars in the dirt that can be difficult to clean. I'm looking forward to testing this hack and hopefully finding a new and easier way to clean these narrow-necked containers.

Well readers, that's it for today. I hope you find these simple cleaning hacks helpful. If you've got some useful hacks of your own, leave them in the comments!