The Surprising Reason I Always Keep Q-Tips in My Kitchen

Kitchen maintenance sometimes feels like a full-time job. Between the (never-ending) cooking and cleaning up, these jobs must be done to maintain order and cleanliness in what’s by far one of the hardest-working, most-used room in the home. 

But there are also the little everyday cleaning tasks that add up to an overall squeaky clean kitchen, like scrubbing the sink every night. These small habits extend beyond your kitchen fixtures to the items you keep in your kitchen as well. Maintaining your blender and making sure your family’s water bottles are bacteria-free is just as important on that long list of kitchen duties as a weekly deep cleaning of the microwave. 

With all these responsibilities, anything that makes any of the myriad jobs easier is helpful. For instance, I discovered that plastic razor blades are my favorite tool to clean my cooktop. And now, I’ve found another favorite that you probably already have in your home, too: cotton swabs. 

I realized I could use one when I was trying to get the gunk out of the threads of my son’s water bottle’s screw-top lid. A sponge wasn’t reaching it, and even a small scrub brush wasn’t lifting the dirt. I needed something absorbent and small that I could squeeze into those tiny crevices and wipe away the muck I didn’t want anywhere near the water my loved ones were drinking. A cotton swab was perfect. 

Once I introduced cotton swabs into my kitchen, I saw how many other ways I could incorporate them into both my small and large kitchen cleaning habits. Here are some of my favorite uses for cotton swabs:

• Reaching into those seams where faucets and other fixtures sit on the countertop. They’re great for small crevices on the fixtures themselves too.
• Going in and around all the twists and turns on oven knobs.
• Getting at any kind of corner, whether it’s on the counter or microwave. 
• Cleaning all the nooks and crannies and threads on water bottles as well as lunchbox seams, where dirt and crumbs collect.
• Additionally, getting into the seams and corners of the refrigerator. 
• Reaching the crevices in your in-fridge water dispenser so you can finally get it thoroughly clean.
• Fitting into small spaces and the grooves in your dish drying rack.

Do you have an unexpected cleaning tool in your arsenal? Share it with us in the comments below.