This $3 Paint Aisle Staple Is My Secret for Cleaning Hard-to-Reach Places

Ever since moving into my mid-century house last year, I have been stumped on how to effectively clean my baseboard heaters. The whole house is filled with them — they stretch over entire walls — and they’re a bit of a dust trap. The heaters sit a couple inches above the ground, which is enough space for dust, dirt, and dog hair to easily collect — but not enough space to fit my vacuum’s roller brush (even when popping off the front covers). Meanwhile, the narrow openings at the top of the heaters where the warm air comes out are hardly big enough to fit one of my fingers. In the year my boyfriend and I have lived here, I’ve never really managed to get them actually clean. And I suspect the previous homeowners struggled with this too, because there is certainly more than one year’s worth of dust in there.

Microfiber cloths — which I love and bought in bulk for multiple around-the-house uses — do an OK job in reaching that tiny gap at the top, it feels like they leave a lot behind in the super small crevices. A vacuum can pull a fair amount out, but even my teeniest attachment was too big here. And while popping off the front cover — that big bottom piece — helped in cleaning the heaters as a whole, the dust in that teeny gap on top remained evasive.

Maybe the above heaters look familiar to you, or maybe you have other spots in your home (behind toilets, in the cracks between appliances and cabinets) that feel completely impossible to get fully clean. In either case, I have a secret weapon that I picked up in the paint aisle at the hardware store: tack cloths.

Tack cloths are made from a loose-weave muslin, kind of like cheesecloth, and coated in a slightly sticky substance — sometimes a petroleum-based wax, sometimes beeswax. Painters and furniture refinishers use them to clean up sawdust and drywall dust before going in with paint or stain — that way, they get an ultra-smooth finish without any grit.

But I found that tack cloths also do wonders for pulling dust out of the most annoying corners and cracks in my home, since you can just press a bit of the cloth into the space and it will grab onto anything there.

Unlike microfiber cloths, tack cloths aren’t washable. But you can still get a lot of use out of them before they lose their stickiness, especially if you pull off big dust chunks (gross, I know) to toss in the trash as you go. If you only use part of the cloth in your project you can also store it in a sealed plastic bag until you’re ready to pull it back out so that it retains its tackiness.

And about that tackiness: You’ll want to avoid pressing too hard in your cleaning so that you don’t leave any behind, and you might also find that a bit can wind up on your fingers when you’re done. Fortunately, it washes off skin easily with hand soap, but it’s probably best to avoid touching fabrics or upholstery while you’re sticky-fied.

Oh, and lest I forget the best part of my secret cleaning weapon: These run at most a couple bucks a pop — I bought mine in a three-pack for just $3. It’s not something you’d want to use as a large-surface cleaner, but for all the little places that have you saying, how in the world can I dust that? this little paint aisle hero absolutely does the trick.