CHRISTINE: It’s kind of like brightening your teeth. You don’t want to brighten them halfway.
CAIRA: Just go halfway.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
CAIRA: Are you sure? I think that’s a style.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Never go halfway.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin, and you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
CAIRA: This episode is called Cleaning Hacks from Wirecutter Experts.
Hi Christine.
CHRISTINE: Hey, Caira.
CAIRA: Oh my God, it’s just the two of us today.
CHRISTINE: Just the two of us. I feel very strange, like we’re missing a limb or something.
CAIRA: I know.
CHRISTINE: Rosie is out sick today.
CAIRA: Poor thing.
CHRISTINE: I know.
CAIRA: This is it, our last episode on spring-cleaning, we did it.
CHRISTINE: Five episodes, it’s been a cleaning bonanza at the pod.
CAIRA: We really wanted to round it out with our best advice for the season. Here at wirecutter, we do do a TON of cleaning coverage. Like… almost everything we recommend, we tell you how to clean it.
CHRISTINE: Really, when we recommend a product, we want you to understand how to clean and maintain it cuz it will make it last longer and that’s part of our coverage. We even have a cleaning newsletter, which is wildly popular. If you don’t already get it, it’s called Clean Everything, and we’ll drop a link to sign up.
CAIRA: And Christine – you happen to be working on a super secret special project about cleaning.
CHRISTINE: It’s true it’s top secret. And because of this, I’ve been going through all the cleaning content on Wirecutter over the last few months for this project. And we have so much great advice on the site. Everything from like how to clean everything from your microwave to your shoes, to your hairbrush, how to clean your car. There’s a ton of advice that our writers have given their expert advice on.
CAIRA: And after going through all this coverage, you are now an expert. which is why you’re gonna be one of our guests on this episode.
CHRISTINE: I’m gonna be in the hot seat! It’s my turn.
CAIRA: It is! And you have some firsthand experience, right?
CHRISTINE: I actually do. Before becoming a journalist, I was a housekeeper for a hot minute. And it was such a hard job, I really respect people who do that work. But it taught me a ton about cleaning. I can’t unsee dirt now when I go into someone’s house like dusty baseboards or a dirty bathroom. It’s kind of rude but I am a little judgy.
CAIRA: Wow, ok. You’re never invited to my house.. today we’re gonna start with some questions for you. We’re gonna talk to you about the best way to tackle spring cleaning. And then a little later, we’re gonna hear some tips from other Wirecutter staffers about cleaning things that we often overlook.
CHRISTINE: I love it!
CAIRA: Ok, so Christine, let’s get into it. Let’s talk about spring cleaning. What do you think people need to know about tackling the project of cleaning their homes?
CHRISTINE: Everybody’s marketed spring-cleaning at this time of year. You don’t have to spring-clean, you don’t have to do this right now. You could choose to clean at a different time of year. You could choose to do little things over the course of the year. I think the advice we’re going to talk about in this episode is really applicable to any time of year.
CAIRA: Totally.
CHRISTINE: But I do think that there’s a reason why people focus on this in the spring. You’ve been stuck inside all winter and your home is maybe a little bit dingy, a little bit dirty. It could use a refresh. It’s also when you’re maybe turning over seasonal things in your home. You’re turning over your clothing, you’re bringing out your patio furniture, you’re going to think about grilling. There’s all these things that you’re going to be using again that maybe need a clean, and then there’s things that you may need to retire for the season. So I think there’s a lot of methodologies around how people approach this type of thing when they’re thinking about big holistic cleaning of their home. And personally, I focus on one area of my home at a time. If I’m really thinking about cleaning my apartment, I’ll focus on my laundry room, I’ll focus on my kids’ rooms. I’ll focus on my room and not try to take it all on in one go. My best advice is to tackle it in pieces.
CAIRA: Okay. And do you spread it out over a day, over a few weeks? What’s your method for that?
CHRISTINE: Personally, I will take a few weekends. My apartment is not huge, so I can actually clean it pretty well in a couple of weekends. Just figuring out how to break it up for yourself so it makes sense with the time that you have, and maybe the attention you have.
CAIRA: I can kind of see, when people are dragging their feet, what is your advice for just getting started? Sometimes the hardest part really is just doing it.
CHRISTINE: Well, this is true. One strategy is, I think putting it on your calendar, committing to the time that you’re going to do it. I think also having a supportive group of people around you is helpful. So I’ll let my husband know, “Hey, we’ve got to focus on doing this project in our home this weekend,” and he’s super supportive and on board and we’ll do it. So I think that if you’ve got the people in your life, whether you have roommates, whether you have a partner, if they can lend a hand at the same time. I get my kids involved, they do not like it, but they do it. And so I think just setting aside the time, making sure everyone knows that this is the time we’re doing it, and going for it. That works for me personally. That’s not going to work for everyone, obviously.
CAIRA: Yeah, I can’t tell my cat to get it together this weekend.
CHRISTINE: But yeah, if you’re on your own, maybe that’s a little bit simpler. You just are accountable to yourself. I also know people who’ve found it very helpful to even break down cleaning projects into shorter periods of time. So clean for 15 minutes or something like that. You set a timer and you go clean as much as you can in 15 minutes. That might be a solution that works for some people.
CAIRA: Amazing. And what do you think are some things that you really want to make sure you have on hand when you are tackling spring-cleaning?
CHRISTINE: The supplies and tools that you have in your home do matter. I think at Wirecutter we obviously think that having good stuff makes things easier, but I don’t think you have to over complicate cleaning. You don’t need to have every tool and gadget under the sun to do a good job. I will say that there’s really just a condensed list of things that we recommend that you have. And so a good vacuum is paramount. That is something that is going to help you clean all sorts of things. Microfiber cloths are really, really helpful. They are great for dusting. They grab onto dust. They are great for doing even simple things like shining up stainless steel surfaces, where if you were using just a cotton rag, it might not buff or shine things up the way a microfiber cloth would. Having some old toothbrushes on hand is really helpful for doing little detail work and scrubbing things. You’ll want a broom, mop and a bucket. A lot of people already have those. And then also, it can be really, really helpful to have a few safety items on hand when you’re cleaning. Having a mask, a KN95 or something like that, especially when you’re dusting. If you’re working in a really dusty environment where there’s a lot of particulate matter, you should be wearing a mask.
CAIRA: I see.
CHRISTINE: The same is true of safety glasses. If you’re cleaning something above your head, things can fall into your eyes. One of our editors actually told me a story about his mother was cleaning an overhead fan and it was the type that had a lamp attached to it and she accidentally broke the glass. And that could fall into your eye. So just wearing $3 safety glasses from Amazon or something, that is a really smart thing to do when you’re doing certain types of tasks.
CAIRA: So you really want to get suited up to do the job.
CHRISTINE: I mean, you don’t have to be totally suited up, but I do think that for certain tasks it can be really helpful.
CAIRA: Okay. And what about the cleaners themselves? I know I always just have a random mosh posh just hiding under my bathroom sink, and it’s always a surprise what I reach in and get. Maybe it’s bleach, maybe it’s Lysol. Is one better than the other?
CHRISTINE: Well, there are certain cleaners that are certainly better for certain tasks. So I would say that what you’re going to want to have is some kind of all-purpose cleaner that does have bleach in it. You can actually make a bleach solution that will disinfect. But for ease of use, you might just want to get something like a Lysol that has some bleach in it that will help you disinfect certain surfaces and kill pathogens. You don’t need that kind of a heavy hitter cleaner for everything if you’re just doing some maintenance where you don’t need disinfecting. You can also have an all-purpose cleaner without bleach, which is very helpful. So think like the Mrs. Meyers type sprays or something like that.
CAIRA: I see.
CHRISTINE: It’s also helpful to have some kind of mild abrasive. So I would say baking soda is really helpful. Barkeepers Friend is really helpful. These are really great for buffing up, shining up the surfaces like a stainless steel sink or really getting the gunk off of maybe soap scum or something like that. So those are really great to have in your toolkit. We often recommend using dish soap for a lot of things. We recommend washing your floors with a very mild dish soap solution. You don’t really need to go get a store-bought solution. You can really just use a few drops of dish soap in water. I think later today in this episode, we’re going to talk about cleaning your oven. We recommend using dish soap for that.
CAIRA: That’s wild.
CHRISTINE: There’s a million things you can do with dish soap. It’s not toxic. You’ve got it on hand. It’s easy-peasy. Some kind of window cleaner is a good one. You can make your own window cleaner with vinegar and water or you can just get Windex. And also just keeping vinegar on hand. It’s also very helpful for cleaning things like limescale or deodorizing things. So that’s a nice one to have. And then you might want to have something like rubbing alcohol in your toolkit that is helpful for cleaning electronics. If you have pets, an enzymatic cleaner for your upholstery, that’s really helpful.
CAIRA: That is good. I need that note. Okay, so for tools: you’re gonna want a vacuum, microfiber cloths, mop, broom, a bucket, some old toothbrushes, and a mask and goggles. And then for supplies, we’re looking at a basic all purpose cleaner, a product with bleach for disinfecting, and then some vinegar, some dish soap… and an abrasive like barkeeper’s friend. Pretty straightforward!
CHRISTINE: Yeah. I would just say don’t over complicate it. You don’t need to get all the things that you’re marketed. Most things can just be cleaned with this simple list of items.
CAIRA: Yeah. I love that. So we’re going to take a quick break and then when we’re back, we’ll get into some of our staff experts’ best cleaning advice. We’re going to focus on a couple of cleaning tips for things in your home that are hidden in plain sight. You might not think about cleaning them, but that probably means that they need it. Be right back.
CAIRA: Welcome back. Now it’s time to consult some of the great minds here at Wirecutter about how to clean and why we should clean some often overlooked items in our homes. So we’ve asked a few of our colleagues to give us their best tips on things that they think we are not cleaning enough. First up, a kitchen item. Let’s hear it.
MARGUERITE: I’m Marguerite Preston. I’m an editorial director at Wirecutter. My spring-cleaning hack for the year is that you really should be cleaning your coffee maker regularly. There’s a couple reasons and there’s a couple things that will build up in your coffee maker. First, is just straight-up flavor. Coffee is a very oily substance. It’s going to leave this oily residue on the filter basket, on all the little parts that are touching the beans that you’re brewing. And if you leave that on there, it’s going to just give your coffee this musty old coffee flavor that you don’t want. Over time minerals from the water that you’re using will build up in the machine, so you also need to descale it regularly to get rid of those mineral deposits. It’s important to get rid of those mineral deposits because they’re going to slow down your machine. It’s going to be harder for water to get through all those little tubes and pipes that can long-term cause your machine to just break. If you notice that your coffee machine is taking a long time to brew, if the temperature is too low, it probably is time to descale the coffee machine.
So to clean your coffee maker…It’s a good idea every time you use your coffee machine to at least rinse out the filter basket, rinse out the coffee pot after you use it. I’m not going to tell you to scrub all those pieces every day because nobody’s going to do that. But once a week or so, you probably should pull them out and either wash them by hand with just dish soap and water, or a lot of those pieces are also dishwasher safe. To descale your coffee machine, which how often you want to descale your coffee machine really depends on how hard your water is. Once every three to six months, depending on how hard your water is, descale the machine. To descale it, fill the water reservoir all the way with 50% white vinegar, 50% water, and just run a cycle. Your kitchen will smell like vinegar, but it’ll get rid of that scale. Best to do that cycle like twice. And then after that cycle, run just a plain hot water cycle several times just to get rid of that vinegar smell.
There are commercial descalers that you can buy in powdered form. The advantages of buying that and using that are A, it doesn’t stink. It’s a little more effective, so you don’t need to run it more than once. You can just do it once and be done, and you don’t need to do a bunch of rinse cycles. But if you don’t want to buy that, you can use vinegar.
CAIRA: Okay. I have to know, are you taking care of your baby?
CHRISTINE: Oh, my Mocha Master? I was about to say, I think I need to descale my Mocha Master. Yeah, that’s a lot of work that you need to do for your coffee maker, but I feel that it is worth it. If you love your coffee maker like I love my coffee maker, it’s worth it.
CAIRA: Yeah.
CHRISTINE: One other thing I think that people might want to do when they’re thinking about cleaning out their coffee maker is to take a look on the inside of their coffee mugs or their tea mugs and see if there are any stains inside. It’s actually really easy to clean those. In fact, Michael Sullivan, who is one of our kitchen experts who was on the show a couple months back, he shared a really great tip with me, which is basically, all you have to do is fill your mug with one part bleach and three parts water and let it sit overnight. You can do this in a teapot, you can do this in a mug, and then rinse it out in the morning and those stains should be gone. You just want to make sure to fill whatever the receptacle is up to the top, because if you don’t, if you’ve only let the waterline be lower-
CAIRA: It’ll be discolored?
CHRISTINE: Yeah, it’ll be discolored above that. It’s kind of like brightening your teeth. You don’t want to brighten them halfway.
CAIRA: Just go halfway.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
CAIRA: Are you sure? I think that’s a style.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Never go halfway. Yeah. So I think that’s a really great tip to do along with this descaling.
CAIRA: That honestly sounds awesome and way easier than descaling. All right. Well, next, we’ve got some advice on cleaning your walls, and this is some advice that everybody could use, right?
CHRISTINE: Yeah. I think this is a common issue people have.
CAIRA: Yeah, so let’s hear it.
DOUG: My name is Doug Mahoney. I’m a senior writer at Wirecutter. Cleaning a painted wall is not very complicated. For the most part, you can keep them clean just by dusting them. But if it starts to get a little messier than that, if you start to notice fingerprints, if you start to notice smudges, if somebody dropped a plate of food nearby and there’s something splattered on it, then you should just stick to the basics, which is just water and a sponge. If it’s a stain that’s really stuck on there, you can add a little bit of dish soap. The one thing to know about cleaning your walls is that you want to take a very, very gentle approach. The main concern here is that you could damage the paint that’s on the walls. You could change the sheen on the part of the wall that you’re working on. So if you’re rubbing with something…Even the rough side of a kitchen sponge could be enough to change the paint sheen in that one area. And if you do end up using anything abrasive like a magic eraser or something like that, which we don’t generally recommend, but if there’s a very difficult stain, we would definitely recommend testing a magic eraser in an area maybe down by the baseboard in a corner so you can see if it will actually change the sheen of your paint.
CHRISTINE: I have to tell you, Caira, that not using the magic eraser on the wall is a big takeaway for me from Doug. He and I talked about this at length because I had always been using magic erasers on my walls.
CAIRA: Same.
CHRISTINE: And it was news to me, like, “Don’t do that?” I then went back and looked at my walls where I had used the magic eraser and I could see where I had used the magic eraser.
CAIRA: No way. Really?
CHRISTINE: Yes. I still use one every once in a while if it’s a really bad stain. And with kids, I have a line…It’s almost like a flood happened. There’s a line on my wall where the children have-
CAIRA: Just dragged their hands?
CHRISTINE: …just dragged their hands. It’s just like an oily wall everywhere in my apartment. And my husband and I tend to try to repaint some of that stuff every year because you can only clean so much. Sometimes you do end up having to repaint a wall if it looks really dingy.
CAIRA: You’re a great tenant.
CHRISTINE: Oh, I am.
CAIRA: Really great. I’m like, “This isn’t my house.”
CHRISTINE: It’s more like I just want the bright walls. It’s one of those things like an oversized delivery when you have clean walls. Dingy walls can really make your place look dingy pretty quickly.
CAIRA: I mean, I know.
CHRISTINE: I also think that a great little cleaning thing to do when you’re looking at your walls and thinking about cleaning your walls is to look down. Look at your baseboards. Do they need to be dusted? Take a little microfiber cloth, a little dampened microfiber cloth, and just pick up that dust.
CAIRA: That’s a good note. Well, now it’s time for some tips on cleaning one of the things that, if I’m being honest, I absolutely hate to clean.
RACHEL: My name is Rachel Wharton and I cover large kitchen appliances for Wirecutter, which is your stoves, your fridges, your microwaves, your range hoods. And I’m going to tell you today about why you should clean your microwave and your oven. You should clean your microwave because it’s really disgusting if you don’t. It is right at eye level. You open it up, there’s splatter in there, nobody wants to see that. You put your food in there. That’s gross. The easiest way to clean your microwave is to clean it after every single time you use it. It’s all humid and steamy in there. You can just wipe it out. That is the easiest way. The second-easiest way is to try to avoid splatter in the first place because splatter is the gross stuff. If it gets splattery, which it will, we know it will, then the best thing to do is put a bowl of water inside your microwave. Put it on high for five, 10 minutes so that the microwave gets all steamy and then you wipe it out.
You should clean your oven because if you don’t, it can catch on fire. All the grease in there, it can smoke. Smoking is what happens more often than it catching on fire, and smoke is not any fun either. The smoke gets in your food, then you really have to clean it. Usually the smoke is a sign that you have are way too late to clean your oven. Just like a microwave, you should really be doing it every time you use your oven. None of us ever do this. I did not do this until I tagged along with some house cleaners throughout Brooklyn and watched them clean ovens. And they told me that you really should be wiping your oven down after you use it every time, just like your stove top. And that had never occurred to me, and it’s because the stains and the spills and everything’s still warm. All you have to do is wipe it out and it prevents all those gross sticky stains that start to build up in your oven. So now I actually wipe my oven out with…I use just a damp sponge. When it’s cools down to just warm I just wipe it out every time I use it, which makes me seem probably fastidious and crazy, but it’s really nice. It works.
To clean your oven, the first thing you want to do is fill up a little spray bottle with a solution of half water, half dish soap, and then lightly mist the entire inside of your oven. And then you let it sit for 40 minutes so it rehydrates all the crusty food in there, all the stains in there. And then you turn the oven on really low, 200, 250 degrees for about an hour or two so that it’s all rehydrated and warm. And then you go in there hopefully with a microfiber cloth and wipe it all down. And then the window, which will probably have some of those brown stains that make you wish you could get a new oven. Then you take Barkeepers Friend, sprinkle it across the surface and use a scrubby pad on the glass part of the window to get rid of that.
CHRISTINE: Caira. I know. Your face right now. You’re like, “I don’t want to have to wipe out my oven every time I use it.”
CAIRA: Every time? Are you serious? God.
CHRISTINE: Okay. So I remember editing this piece on how to clean your oven, and I was very dubious. I was like, “Really? You’re just using dish soap and water?” Because when I was a housekeeper, I would use oven cleaner, and I personally hate the smell of oven cleaner.
CAIRA: It’s strong.
CHRISTINE: It’s gross, it’s strong. It leaves this really chemically smell in the kitchen. So this was one of the guides where I tried it at home and I used Rachel’s advice, and I was shocked. It worked. It was great. And it takes a little bit longer to clean your oven this way than if you were to use one of these high-powered chemical cleaners. But the plus side is that it didn’t leave a weird odor in my kitchen. It actually really did clean my oven, and I found it a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.
The other thing is, is this same technique works well for a toaster oven. So if you’ve got a countertop toaster oven, you can use basically the same method. You just want to be careful not to spray the heating element or the metal guards that encase them. And if you have a convection toaster oven, you don’t want to spray it on the fan because you don’t want water getting in there. And you definitely don’t want water to pool on the bottom of the toaster oven, and also for the regular oven. So you’re not going crazy here with the spray. You’re just spraying enough to coat the walls and the surfaces.
CAIRA: Okay. So what I’m getting from this episode so far is that less is more. Dish soap is a wonderful-
CHRISTINE: A winner. Yes.
CAIRA: …multi-purpose cleaning tool. And I love that because it’s cheap and you always have it on hand.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. And I would also just add a non-scented dish soap is great to have on hand, especially for that oven hack. You don’t want to turn your oven on and then start smelling perfume. So unscented, non-scented is the way to go.
CAIRA: And you can use it on your floor, your oven, your dishes.
CHRISTINE: And if you’re the type of person who likes to have some kind of odor while you’re cleaning, maybe you like the smell of mint or lemongrass or something like that, you could always have an essential oil on hand to add to your cleaner for your floor or something like that.
CAIRA: Yeah, I really like that. I also got that people need to be cleaning their coffee pots. For me, it’s probably my electric kettle, actually. I don’t think I’ve cleaned that in a minute, but same idea. You just want to take a cleaner like vinegar and water and just run it with that and then rinse it out. I’m also hearing that to touch up your walls, you need to be really gentle with it.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Again, less is more there.
CAIRA: Less is more. And tackle the problem if you see it right away.
CHRISTINE: That’s right. It’s always going to make it easier.
CAIRA: Okay, so coming up, did you know that a dirty humidifier can actually make you sick? We’ll hear more about that and how often you need to clean yours. It might be more than you think. Be right back.
CAIRA: We’re back. And now we’re talking about all those overlooked tasks on our spring-cleaning lists. Let’s get back into some tips from Wirecutter staffers. Next up, we’ve got the lowdown on how often you should actually be cleaning an appliance that I did not know was so full of gunk. Humidifiers.
CHRISTINE: Yes. This is a tricky one.
THOM: My name is Thom Dunn and I’m a staff writer on the home improvements team here at Wirecutter. I do mostly HVAC stuff on heating, cooling and humidity. Cleaning your humidifier is a crucial part of simply owning a humidifier, because what humidifiers do is they pump moisture out into the air. And water is a wonderful thing, but also water helps things to grow, including gross little microbes and other nasty things. So you need to make sure you’re cleaning your humidifier on a very regular cadence. Otherwise, all those teeny microscopic things that love the water just as much as we do, they start to fester and grow. And then you start to breathe them in. You can develop something that is called humidifier lung. This is an actual sickness. It has a much more complicated scientific name. But essentially, all that bacteria gets into your lungs and it gives you pneumonia.
So once or twice a week, you’ll want to take out your humidifier, empty out all the water. Maybe you take a sponge, clean the inside of the tank, look around the corners, rinse the whole thing off and let it air dry. We try to recommend models that are simple to clean, that don’t have too many weird crevices and corners that are hard to navigate around, but they all have some nooks and crannies. So even if you are keeping up twice a week, over time, there’s still stuff you’re not going to hit, and that stuff can still fester and grow. Usually, we say do this about once a month for a deeper clean, but when it gets dank, it’s time for deeper clean. To do that, you can make a solution with your water, with hydrogen peroxide or bleach, fill the humidifier up with your solution of hydrogen peroxide and water and let it sit so it kills all the stuff in there. Then empty it out, rinse it out with water, rinse it out again, make sure none of those chemicals are left inside. And then once again, let it air dry. You want to make sure that all that hydrogen peroxide or bleach or whatever you want to use to kill off the germs, you want to make sure it’s all gone before you use the humidifier again.
CHRISTINE: Humidifier lung, oh my gosh.
CAIRA: This just makes me not want to ever get a humidifier.
CHRISTINE: I think of all small appliances, humidifiers are ready for disruption. Come on. Can we please get some companies to make humidifiers that don’t have these problems? I mean, it’s so annoying.
CAIRA: That’s wild.
CHRISTINE: I mean, I have three humidifiers. I do try to clean them-
CAIRA: Twice a week?
CHRISTINE: Well, no. I’ve got to say, no. I mean, we’ve reached the end of humidifier season for my home at least. But I do think this tip that he has about cleaning it out really well, whether it’s with bleach or hydrogen peroxide, is a really good one for the end of season, making sure your humidifier is clean before you’re putting it away for the season. So Tom is also a wealth of advice on cleaning other appliances in the home. he’s our writer for air conditioners and for fans. And a tip that I love that he introduced me to is for how to clean an overhead fan. So you take an old pillowcase, you spray the inside of it with some all-purpose cleaner, and then you gently put the pillowcase over the fan blade and pull off the dust that way, so none of the dust falls onto the floor. I love this tip. I have used it. I think it’s a really great hack.
CAIRA: That’s genius.
CHRISTINE: Yes. Thank you, Tom, for that one.
CAIRA: Love it. All right, next up is something that if you live somewhere with seasons, you might be starting to think about, outdoor furniture. Let’s hear if keeping this stuff clean is as challenging as it seems.
HARRY:
My name is Harry Sawyers. I’m a senior editor at Wirecutter. My tips are all about how to clean outdoor patio furniture, which is a love-hate relationship that I have. So the first step is to take the cover off the chairs and see what surprises are underneath. It’s like opening the worst present you’ve ever gotten. Cat fur, bird stuff just finds its way inside. So the first thing I do usually is a quick leaf blower to just blow off most of the loose stuff that has just accumulated up under them, even while they’re covered. After the leaf blower, I will treat them a little bit like a floor or like a rug the entire time I’m cleaning them. I will sweep them if needed and then I will vacuum it, and that gets most of it. I will often, for stains, just go at it with a scrub brush. You can get in there with an old toothbrush in the little crevices and things. That’ll work it out.
All of our picks and the outdoor patio furniture guide are Sunbrella. And if you look at the cleaning instructions on Sunbrella, they recommend some of the harshest stuff you could imagine. This is no wool sweater out here. It’s woven poly plastic fibers. And having cleaned some of the worst stains off of them that you could possibly imagine, I’ve come to believe they are nearly indestructible. I actually don’t use a hose on it. I have been able to treat whatever I have on the surface just by working on it on the spot. And I usually will start with just a dish soap and water mix just to get things going, and that will take care of most of it. But if I need to step it up a little, I’ll make what I call an OxiClean slurry, which is a little bit of OxiClean, maybe a teaspoon in just a bowl of water, and you just stir it up and you make this super concentrated detergent water that has a oxidizing bleach action too, and that’ll take care of it, whatever’s left.
CHRISTINE: Oh, poor Harry. That sounds terrible. Harry lives in LA and I know from visiting friends in LA how there are so many beautiful flowers and plants that droop and drop things on the patio furniture.
CAIRA: Oh, poor them.
CHRISTINE: But it’s true. I think because there is so much outdoor living happening there that people are truly kitting out their backyards almost like a living room. Whereas here in New York, I think it’s less of an issue for a lot of people. But I think that an addition to this guidance that Harry gives us about how to clean the cushions is how to clean the frame. So I think there’s many ways to clean the frame. You don’t have to go with just one way. I would always look at what the manufacturer says for your particular patio furniture. But we at Wirecutter, we love a good power washer. We love getting out there with a power washer. It’s very, very satisfying. We actually have a piece about this. And if you do have a power washer, it can be a really easy way to quickly clean your furniture.
CAIRA: It seems really satisfying.
Okay. I think we just reached the end of our Wirecutter expert tips. Christine, do you think anything might’ve slipped our expert’s minds?
CHRISTINE: Oh, well, I mean, honestly, Caira, we could have talked to dozens of more people at Wirecutter just because we have so much guidance. I think this is a really great time to think about cleaning your appliances. People don’t often think about cleaning their washer and dryer, their dishwasher, their fridge… but these are things that need to be cleaned and maintained and spring cleaning can be a good time to tackle them. I think a few other things that are helpful this time of year, if you live in a house, remember your gutters need to be cleaned, especially this time of year where you’ve got a lot of leaves from the winter that fell into your gutters. We get a lot of rain in the spring and summer, and if you’re dealing with that and your gutters are full of junk, then you may end up with some flooding issues. So it’s just a great time to just think, “Oh yeah, I need to go clean out those gutters.” We also have a guide on the site by Doug Mahoney on how to do that. This is a great time to clean that shower curtain, to maybe just assess your bathroom in general.
CAIRA: Did you just say clean my shower curtain?
CHRISTINE: Yes. Clean your shower curtain. Have you ever noticed kind of like a pink junk or staining?
CAIRA: That’s when I throw it out and buy a new one.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. No, you don’t need to do that. You can actually wash these things-
CAIRA: What?
CHRISTINE: …in a washing machine. You can wash either a plastic liner or a fabric liner, and certainly, the outside curtain, you can wash those things, and they’ll look pretty much new oftentimes after you’ve washed them.
CAIRA: I had no idea you could put plastic liners in the washing machine.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. We have a guide on the site for how to do that. And then this is just a great time to go through your medicine cabinet, check expiration dates on medicine, check that your makeup isn’t super old. Get rid of the things that are old.
CAIRA: I just found a BB cream that I’ve been using for the past three years. It expired eight years ago.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Look at those expiration dates. You’re going to want to get rid of that stuff. And you don’t have to tackle all this stuff at the same time.
CAIRA: Yeah, that’s right
CHRISTINE: Maybe make a list and just get to it incrementally over the course of a few months.
CAIRA: Alright, so…. don’t buy a humidifier. And if you do… you need to be cleaning it twice a week. And when it comes to outdoor furniture, it doesn’t have to be that hard. I like the idea of just sweeping it off and maybe spot cleaning a few areas. If you read their manufacturer’s instructions, maybe you can even just take a power washer to it-
CHRISTINE: That’s right.
CAIRA: …and solve all your problems at once.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. I mean, it might not work for the cushions, but-
CAIRA: Yeah, it’s fine.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
CAIRA: If you want to find out more about any of Wirecutter’s cleaning coverage go to our website or find a link in the show notes. You can subscribe to the clean everything newsletter at nytimes.come/newsletters.
And if you like The Wirecutter Show – give us a follow! It helps new folks find the show and makes sure you don’t miss a new episode. That’s it for us.
CHRISTINE: Bye.
