Cleaning

Q: There have been several House Tours that had a hidden litter box of sorts. How are you able to keep your cat box clean and smelling fresh in an apartment that may be only 600 square feet? 500? 400?? It boggles my mind. I mean, obviously, clean it out as soon as you can, but cat urine has such a strong odor. Even with a cool hidden compartment in a piece of furniture, it wouldn’t suddenly eliminate the smell. Any tips would be great.

Q: I just bought a new glass top stove. I was really in love with the idea of it, but it was delivered and on their way out the door the delivery men said, “Oh by the way, make sure you don’t use any cast iron pans on it”. My heart just broke. I almost exclusively use cast iron. I just didn’t realize it made a difference. My parents have a glass top and they use cast iron all the time. Is there a way around this? Is it more of a suggestion or a law?

Q: The house we are looking to purchase has a lot of cedar [please see photo below] and it was built in 1975. It just has a lot of that cedar smell, and I was wondering if anyone had an idea on how to remove that? Thank you. -Sent by Sanja Editor: What a gorgeous ceiling! Readers, how can Sanja eliminate the musty cedar odor from this house? Or do you recommend she pass on it because there’s really no solution? • Have a question for our community?

Q: I really hope someone can help me with this, because it’s driving me crazy. We’ve been in this apartment 6 years and in that time, I’ve gone from being a messy 20-year-old to a surprisingly neat guy who actually enjoys cleaning. I keep up with problem areas, especially in the bathroom, but there’s one thing I’ve been neglecting for a while now: the horrible, horrible ceiling [photo below].

Q: I’ve known for years that mosquitoes love me. More recently, some other type (types?) of insect bites me and the bites are terribly itchy. (One of the most recent is on the bottom of my foot.) I’ve inspected the bed for bed bugs (appears to be fine), and there isn’t an obvious culprit. It’s often in bed but not always. And when it is in bed, my husband NEVER gets bitten (jealous!!!)… It’s usually multiple bites over a body part (e.g.

Keeping your home clean and tidy when you have furry roommates can be challenging. So can making sure your home doesn’t look more like “Cat Chic” or “Dramatic Dog Modern” than your own personal style. But our pets are a part of our family, and this is their home, too. How do you keep your space stylish with toys, bowls and more sprinkled about? Here some secrets from someone with a very stylish home and FOUR four-legged friends.

The saying that nothing is certain except for death and taxes should be revised to dust and taxes. Because, no matter what you do, it’s a constant. It’s from dirt coming through open doors and windows, pollen, air conditioner vents, insects — you name it. The best you can do is wipe it down, and minimize the surfaces it will cling to in the future. Seek & Destroy: Find all the places where dust lingers and take care of it quickly and efficiently.

Q: I recently scored a set of six chairs in IKEA’s “as-is” section ($6 each!!). They were super grubby (previously used in the cafe area of IKEA) but I purchased them anyway thinking I could make them shine again. I did a bad, bad thing and didn’t “spot test” the chairs before cleaning the heck out of them with a Magic Eraser. They LOOK good and super clean, howevvvvvver now the feel tacky and gross.

Thanksgiving, probably more than any other holiday, is all about the food and warmth of togetherness. If you’re hosting, though, the combination of having overnight guests, getting the house ready for them and for meal preparations, and then doing all the cooking can be overwhelming. Here’s how to plan ahead so you can enjoy the festivities too. By this point, you’re likely to know how many overnight guests you can expect.

I have to fess up: our end goal, with this spring cleaning plan, isn’t a totally spotless home, top to bottom. We’re all here to tackle our seasonal cleaning slowly—20 minutes at a time—over the course of 20 days. So, you know, life is going to happen in between.

Walking out of a stinky bathroom has got to be on everyone’s top 5 list of cringe-worthy moments. Lighting matches or using spray aerosol are common remedies to mask the smell. Matches are great, but you can’t use them in airplane bathrooms. And aerosol? Don’t get me started – that stuff is poison. A new-ish product growing in popularity (which might seem like an April Fools joke) is Poo-Pouuri Before-You-Go toilet spray.

Most of us probably keep our recycling bins near the kitchen and are pretty good about tossing things like empty cans, bottles, and cereal boxes inside. But we dispose of lots of other items around the house that we may not realize can be recycled, too. Here are some things that you can transform from trash to recycling, just by knowing you can. Note that not all of these items can go into your curbside pickup bin.

Here is an entirely true story about my first week in my NYC studio. I was cleaning the kitchen (because I am a certified grown-up), and I got out the vacuum to get the nooks and crannies beneath the dishwasher and cabinets. Before moving in, I had gone a full year without experiencing more than a spider in my living quarters and I was not going to entice any new friends with crumbs from my Cheerio-based dinner. As I moved the vacuum under the stove, it caught something.

We feel pretty strongly about vacuums here at Apartment Therapy, and definitely aren’t immune to the allure of the Dyson. There’s something almost magical about them: They’re high-quality, design-forward—and very expensive. Hence, we always keep an eye out for ways to get these status symbol products for less. While sites like Amazon and Bed Bath & Beyond have frequent sales and tout lower prices, there’s another one that you may not be thinking of: eBay.

There’s a well-meaning mommy meme out there about sticky floors and happy children. But here’s how that would work in our house: Sticky floors mean an unhappy mama and when mama ain’t happy… well, we all know the rest of that one. I have learned to let a lot of things go and I’m conscious about not missing opportunities for connection by constantly cleaning or organizing.

Out with the toxic, in with the sustainable!

In the age of trendy multitaskers like concentrated cleaners, staying eco-friendly and saving money are, understandably, top priorities. If you can have one product that does a lot of things well, why spend your whole paycheck only to waste plastic and take up hard-fought storage space? Which begs the question: Do we really need both dish soap and hand soap in the kitchen if just one could do the trick?

Wasps can be helpful little creatures- they’re to thank in part for keeping the pest population in check- but they can also be quite the nuisance. Picnics and other outdoor summer activities are a bit difficult to enjoy when wasps are swarming overhead, so try to keep things under control with a DIY wasp trap. 2-liter soda bottle Honey or sugar water Utility knife Stapler or clothespins 1.

Traditional cleaning solutions are great, but your pantry is full of everyday items you can put to work when you clean. You already know about keeping blackboard chalk around for treating stains and using cream of tartar to clean your brick fireplace facade. So what’s the deal with using cola to clean? Before you whip out your 12-pack of Diet Coke and go to town on your kitchen, keep in mind that certain sodas work better cleaning specific surfaces.

You know that feeling you get when you walk into a space and it just plain smells good? Yeah, me too, and I’ve spent the last six months in my new apartment trying to achieve that singular goal. There wasn’t anything wrong with how my apartment smelled, but there wasn’t anything really right with it, either.

Chopsticks are wildly useful little tools to keep handy. And while most of us save our spare ones, or buy a more permanent pair, there are all sorts of clever ways to use chopsticks around the house. From cleaning crevices to stirring paint, read ahead for 10 genius things you can do with an extra set of chopsticks. Searching for a foolproof way to deep clean tough to reach nooks and crannies?

I get it. You’re proud of yourself if you manage to even vacuum as many times as it says to on your cleaning schedule. Me too. My personal goal is a quick vacuum with my cordless in the kitchen every night, a thorough vacuuming of common areas twice a week, and vacuuming the bedrooms once a week. But all of this rarely happens. And you know what’s even more impossible to achieve? Vacuuming areas of the floor that the vacuum cleaner can’t get to easily.

I’ve been reading a bit about birth order and one thing I learned about myself is that the reason I’m so committed to doing everything “the right way” could be because I’m a first-born rule-follower. There are ways things should be done in my house, and especially my kitchen. But I try to remind myself all the time: There are other ways of doing things that could be just as fine as your way—could be *better* even.

There’s a special kind of satisfaction that comes from finding solutions to problems that use things you already have on hand. I’m still very proud of myself for MacGyver-ing a broken pop-up shade canopy with a hair tie and a plastic bag—it’s silly, but it made me feel like I might just have made it in the pioneer days. Taking things you already have and making them more useful isn’t just self-congratulatory, it’s also frugal and earth-friendly.

Still using the same basic brushes to clean all the nooks and crannies of your apartment? You should know there’s a whole world of superhero brushes and scrubbers with all kinds of special features that will help cut your cleaning time in two. From soap dispensing dish brushes to a rechargeable spinning scrubber, here are eight cleaning brushes that will put your current basics to shame: Consider this soap-dispensing sink brush the Cadillac of dish brushes.

A good stain remover can do more than save your carpet, furniture, and textiles—it can save you tons of money, too. That’s why we have to pause and celebrate every solid stain remover we come across. This cult-favorite cleaner on Amazon is no exception. If you don’t already have a bottle of Whink Rust Stain Remover at home, now is the perfect time to get your hands on one.

Apartment Therapy Weekend Projects is a guided program designed to help you get the happy, healthy home you’ve always wanted, one weekend at a time. Sign up now for email updates so you never miss a lesson. Collective action moves me. Being in a crowd of children singing the national anthem before an event at school, or seeing a caravan of trucks going to help people after a hurricane—both can trigger tears.

Here’s the thing: We wish we could hate Dyson. The tech company keeps coming up with smarter and smarter home products that completely upend our perception of “reasonable pricing”. Before Dyson, we never would have considered spending upwards of $600 on a vacuum cleaner, or $400 on a hair dryer. Now, we not only think about it, we actively figure out a way to make it happen.

As much as I appreciate the calendar nudging me to deep clean every spring, I never can seem to psych myself up for it. It doesn’t matter how vividly I remember the self-assured satisfaction of dusting the ceiling fans or finally digging the gunk out from the window tracks. Some days, I’m just not in the mood. Honestly, making that connection between mood and motivation is what inspired this year’s spring cleaning plan.

NBD wants to be the next big cleaning brand. But right now, NBD is literally no big deal—because it doesn’t exist yet. If you search this startup cleaning brand’s name, the first page is all unrelated results like one from Urban Dictionary that defines the internet acronym NBD as “no big deal.

From freezing your jeans in lieu of washing them to cleaning the toilet with Coca-Cola to the one about magically removing silver tarnish with aluminum foil; I have to admit I feel like I’ve heard it all. These urban myths of household cleaning have been kicking around for a while — we’ve even blogged each of them on Apartment Therapy. But the question is, do any of these actually work?

Some people enjoy cleaning, and for various reasons. It could be the feeling of accomplishment or being able to exert a small but tangible amount of control over their environment. Or it might be something as simple as catching a thrill from vacuum lines in the carpet. I’ve never heard of anyone who likes dusting, though. Dusting, of course, is essential to any well-thought-out cleaning regimen. And when left undone, it’s not only unsightly, but can lead to allergy attacks.

Sent by AngelaEditor: First try using a pink eraser to remove the mark. If the marker stain proves stubborn, a mixture of 1 part isopropyl rubbing alcohol with 2 parts water (you make have to tweak this proportions) can also remove the stain.Ironically, using a black dry erase marker over the permanent marker can also help remove Sharpies marks, due to the solvent in the formula!Leave any additional suggestions for Angela in the comments below.

Finding out that you have food sensitivities is an enlightening experience — both in good ways and bad! For one, you finally figure out why you’ve been feeling terrible for months, years, or perhaps your whole life. On the bad end, you’ve got a lifestyle change coming! When you’re extremely sensitive, it’s time to either buy new pans and kitchen tools, or do a very extensive cleaning.

As hard as one might try to piece together the perfect kitchen, if you find yourself with an uncontrollable mound of dishes, that perfect kitchen ends up looking like a pile of mess. But is every spoon, fork, cup and plate in the sink absolutely essential? Can you really cut down the amount of dishes you do every day, without using disposables? Yes! Here are five places to start. 1. Own fewer dishes.

Time for a gross grout intervention? Skip the drama- all you need is a whole lotta elbow grease and two basic household cleaners. If elbow grease isn’t your thing, rent a steam cleaner. The power of steam is astounding- handheld cleaners are super powerful and allow you to avoid making a mess out of pastes or using bleach. If you live in a home where tile covers more than just your entryway, you might want to consider investing in a residential steam cleaner.

Congratulations! You’ve just removed that ugly label from your prized possession, but now you’re faced with a new problem: sticky residue from said label. What’s the quickest and easiest way to make it disappear? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back- just start walking towards the pantry.

Q: Let me start off by saying that my boyfriend [let’s call him Steve] has been living with his roommate for years and had been hesitant to look for another living situation for fear of finding someone/something worse. They were friends, but now he isn’t so sure. She [let’s call her Kelly] let her boyfriend [let’s call him Brandon] move in after weeks of them going out together and neither of them really do any washing up.

Q: A few years ago I DIYed an upholstered headboard for our queen-sized bed. Since then, we’ve moved into our own house and are looking at finally upgrading to a California king, as my partner is 6’5″ and has never slept on a bed that his feet didn’t dangle off of. In looking for a new mattress, we’ve also started considering a new headboard.

Yes, marble is a stone, but it is surprisingly soft which makes it very susceptible to damage. Minimize the risk of scratches by avoiding using tools like a metal spatula blade or butter knife to remove sticky residue. Try this tip instead: Cooking oil (canola or olive work great!) 1. Pour a good amount of oil over the sticky residue and lightly work it in with your finger.

Plop plop, fizz fizz — oh how easy it is! Whip up a batch of these fizzy-fresh toilet tablets and say goodbye to the harsh chemical cleaners. 1 cup baking soda 1/2 cup citric acid 40-60 drops of essential oil (we recommend Rosemary, Peppermint, Tea Tree, or Lavender) Water Silicone or non-stick baking mold Medium bowl Mixing spoon Our tablets contain just a few simple ingredients and are essentially bath bombs.

Q: My house—over 150 years old—has one room that is different than the others…my living room has an “old” smell. The kitchen on the same level has no odor. There is NO crawlspace for these rooms. Back when the house was built, they used white oak logs to support a room added-on. We’ve had a lot of rain lately, and no, we do not have gutters.

Q: My husband and I picked up a fantastic shag rug from West Elm a few months ago. So excited was I by the prospect of digging my toes into its plush woolly depths on cold wintry mornings in the future, I didn’t stop to consider that this rug would shed. And shed it does. First we tried waiting it out, but it’s been months now and balls of wool still roam our hardwood floors like tumbleweeds.

This was the most popular weekend project last year, and with good reason! Start using this system for your household stuff and you’ll get more life out of everything you own, and save money in the process. It also has the added bonus of making your home look and feel brand new again. Ready to go? The Big Stuff: Grab someone to help and flip those mattresses and rotate your rugs. You’ll prevent odd lumps and bumps in your bed, and ward off any localized traffic wear and tear.

Although it doesn’t take up space, this unwelcome guest still weighs your entire household down. Getting rid of it completely is almost impossible, but if you strap on your meditative mindset and get to work this weekend —for however long you’ve got — your home will truly feel, and actually be, a whole lot cleaner, without question.

This year, we’re on a mission to help you tackle spring cleaning on your time. Each weekday until April 13, we’ll guide you through a plan to clean and organize different areas of your home, but you’ll have the flexibility to choose exactly what to work on and how long you have to dedicate to the job. Sign up with your email so you don’t miss a spot! Seasonal cleaning is all about digging in on those areas of your home that don’t get daily or even weekly attention.

If you’ve been playing in the garden and find your Hunter boots covered in all the offerings of spring, they may be lookin’ worse for wear. Keeping them clean and tidy may seem as easy as jumping in a puddle, but high quality rubber requires just a bit more attention than your basic rain galoshes.

Apartment Therapy Weekend Projects is a guided program designed to help you get the happy, healthy home you’ve always wanted, one weekend at a time. Sign up now for email updates so you never miss a lesson. If your “walls could talk,” wouldn’t the walls around your eating area have a lot to say?

As much as we love the cleaning tools and hacks that promise to make cleaning as quick and painless as possible, there’s no real substitute for our own eyes and hands. Getting down on hands and knees and mopping the old-fashioned, bucket-and-rag way results in a detailed kind of clean that no other method provides and that, every once in a while, is so worth it. When you get yourself on a different level, you’ll see things that haven’t been cleaned in a very long time.

Apartment Therapy Weekend Projects is a guided program designed to help you get the happy, healthy home you’ve always wanted, one weekend at a time. Sign up now for email updates so you never miss a lesson. The change of seasons also signals a change in the interior conditions of our homes.

This quick trick instantly delivers more space—just by raiding your utensil drawer.

I hate to toss around tired old adages, but the truth of the matter is that taking care of a problem when it’s small is far easier than addressing a bigger problem once it’s grown. “Stitching in time” is particularly relevant when it comes to home-keeping—where procrastination, like not sweeping dirt from hardwood floors, can lead to major tasks like eventually refinishing your scratched-up floor.

Q: Hi all! We are renovating a town home and I have a question related to our kitchen renovation. With the new layout the sink needs to be in a center kitchen island which faces our main kitchen/dining area, as opposed to against a wall. Are there any solutions for drying dishes (e.g. draining pans) that somehow hide the dishes that people have had success with?

Are you ignoring your gorgeous artisan jewelry (you know, that piece that you had to have at the craft market?) because it’s tarnished and you just keep forgetting to pick up silver cleaner at the store? We’ve been there. And we have a simple solution for you using what you’ve probably already got in your pantry! Lemon juice Baking sodaClean ragWarm waterDishwashing detergent 1. In a small dish, add lemon juice to a small amount of baking soda to make a paste.

Spring is here! It’s the season of flowers and bunnies and new life, and it’s also the season for throwing open the windows and doors and giving your home a really deep clean. We’ve dug through our Apartment Therapy video archives for some of our best cleaning tips. Here are three solutions and shortcuts that will have your home gleaming in no time. Here’s a tip from Maxwell about how to get the chrome in your bathroom super shiny.

Whether you’re just pulling out your sweaters or putting them away for the season, a moth repellent is key to making your winter wools last. Forget the stinky, toxic moth balls—and who really has the space for a cedar closet? What you need is good smelling, tiny alternative, and we’ve got just the thing!

Scents play a pretty significant role in my home, and I’m always searching for the perfect combo of comfort, cleanliness, and freshness. Creating your own room diffusers allow you the opportunity to make exactly the fragrance you are looking for — and it’s way more cost effective than what you’ll find in a boutique. bamboo skewers or paper straws Essential Oils 1/4 cup water 1/4 cup vodka 1/3 cup mineral oil Vase or similar container 1.

Whether you’re working to get stains out of an old, neglected marble mantlepiece, or rust stains out of a newer marble shower, the method remains the same. Marble is a porous material — as is our skin, and like our skin when we have a wound, making a poultice to draw the stain out of your marble works in just the same way making a poultice to draw out infection in a wound would. The recipe may vary depending on the stain, but the poultice method is consistent.

The holidays are upon us, and with them holiday guests. From our video archives, here are a few tips for getting your home overnight guest ready, so that having friends or family crashing at your place will be a blissful experience and not a stressful one. Our first tip comes from professional organizer Justin Klosky, who suggests leaving space in your guest room for your guests.

Disposable products may be cheap and convenient, but there’s a cost associated with throwing out all that material. Many items have alternate uses and longer lives than just the one use their makers intended. Instead of throwing them away, get the most you can out of the following six things. Aluminum Foil: After using tin foil to cover the casserole, save it and use it again around the house. Alternate uses range from getting rid of rust to homemade funnels.

I love my apartment and there is very little I would change. But lately, after hosting several guests over the last few months, I’ve noticed that it could use a little TLC. So rather than make resolutions like ‘lose weight’ or ‘budget better,’ this year I’m making resolutions to give my apartment a little love. Since I think resolutions should fall on the positive side I’ve thrown in some random acts of apartment kindness.

It's not magic, it's science.

I went to the dentist today and you know what that means! Yep, another new toothbrush—which means I get to promote (demote?) the one I’m using to my cleaning arsenal. Toothbrushes are the best little tools for cleaning small spaces like window tracks, shower tracks, around the faucets, the drains in the sink, the seams between the vertical and horizontal surfaces of the counter, grout, and so much more.

Spring cleaning is (almost) upon us! Whether you’re hoping to declutter your cabinets or make a switch to more eco-friendly cleaning products, liquid concentrates could be your new best friend. Versatile cleaners that can be diluted at home in reusable spray bottles, these multi-taskers boast a number of benefits. Instead of buying separate products for each household cleaning need, you can save time, space, energy and money by just using one, powerful concentrate.

The way we’re inundated with images of what our homes “should” look like is unprecedented. Forget keeping up with the Joneses. We’re under subtle, even subconscious, pressure to replicate the homes of a whole universe of people we follow. (The word takes on a whole new meaning now.) And far from being the distant dreamy rooms obviously staged for a glossy magazine spread, we’re assimilating images posted by “real people just like us.

And what about bar soap? Or laundry detergent?

Bleach is a strong cleanser that, when used properly, can be a safe and effective option for sanitizing various objects and surfaces in your kitchen, in the laundry and around your house. “But it’s not an all-purpose cleaner,” says Nancy Boc, senior vice president of education at the American Cleaning Institute.

Any tool that multitasks in the kitchen means less wasted space and more bang for your buck. A gadget with a specific use has to be downright amazing for me to give up kitchen real estate to it. (A strawberry huller falls under that category in our family, and gets used several times a week in the summer.) But multitasking isn’t a trait reserved just for kitchen tools that fit in cupboards and drawers.

We polled some of our favorite cleaning, organizing, and design experts on what messy spots they might pick up on in others' homes.

Despite the fact that the sole purpose of the refrigerator is to keep your food safe—by chilling it enough to slow bacterial growth and rotting— it can actually pose some hazards to your health. When you think about it, it makes sense: It’s one of the few places you go in and out of multiple times per day. And when you do, you’re typically moving around food, in the middle of cooking (hello, bacteria on your hands!

I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am that the Year of the Dog is almost over. For Chinese people, the year of one’s zodiac sign is traditionally the unluckiest year for them with warnings of trouble and danger at every turn. So as a Dog person, I am looking forward to welcoming that first day of the Year of the Pig (February 5) with all the new positive energy that comes with it. But first, I have to sweep the past year away—literally.

We have a storage trick for your brooms, mops, dusters, and other handheld housekeeping tools.