Sponsored Post
Hello Dear Reader,
The camelias are in flower in the graden so that's spring enough for me! The cottage feels like it's been closed up for weeks whilst we've just kept warm through the very cold and wet winter. I'm going to make a start going through every room, pulling out all the furniture and cleaning every aspect of the room to give our home a really clean start to the year. I am one of the very few people I know who really enjoys cleaning. It does my soul good to have a clean and tidy house.
I've started with the kitchen, I removed the extractor fan filters and sprayed them with oven cleaner. I leave it on for a shorter time. It's gets into the nooks and degreases them entirely. Whilst they are out of the fan, I use the Aldi kitchen cleaner with degreaser (69p) and spray all around the rest of the cooker hood. I then use a hot wet cleaning clothe and rub over all the surfaces and it's amazing how much grease builds up even when I wipe all surfaces every week.
I leave the filters to 'soak' whilst I get on with something else.
I get a bowl of really hot water, then add some boiling water from the kettle to get it even hotter. I add some multi surface cleaner and get to work on all the kitchen cupboards, the coving around the tops of the units. I open all the cupboards and drawers and wipe down the edges and inside of the doors too. Kitchens get dirty and greasy really easily and need a really deep clean every now and then. I try to do this at least once a month.
When I'm going to do a really deep clean, it's easy to spend too much so I try and do this as economically as possible and buy products that do more than one job. I also like products that go a long way too.
There are products on the market that get rid of limescale, degrease and do wonders in the kitchen and bathroom but they really are expensive. You know the ones I mean! This one is a thrifty 69p and was just as good, in fact, I think it's better! I squirted it any where and every where and washed off with a hot damp cloth and I literally cleaned every surface in the kitchen.
I sprayed and washed down all the tiles too. I have a trick with tiles. Wash them, dry them with another cloth and then spray and polish with window cleaner. It will make your tiles really shine like they are new.
After soaking the cooker hood filters, I rinsed them under a hot tap and left them to drain. I then simply fitted them back into the cooker hood.
Here's another trick for you. Unplug your kettle and give it a good clean with window cleaner. It will get rid of any smears and will make it shine like new.
Here's the after with the tea tray washed and dried, the surfaces all washed and the kettle shining away.
After cleaning all of the cupboards, I moved onto washing down all of the walls. I changed the hot water, added another squirt of multi surface cleaner, wrung out my cloth and got scrubbing. I stand of the work top to do this. I use a de-greasing spray on the walls and it melts any dirt away and I then just wash it down with a cloth, rinse and repeat to make sure it's spotless!
Another job I do at the same time is clean the oven. I spray the oven inside and remove the shelves. I put a bin bag on the draining board and spray the shelves. To be honest, I inherited an almost dead oven when I moved in and it limps along only just working. It's not easy to clean and the spray option is the best I can do I'm afraid. It never really gets as clean as I would like.
Whilst the oven is 'soaking' I get and clean the windows, door and frames. I use the spray window cleaner from Aldi, again, it's 69p and it's my favourite of all their cleaning products. I use it on taps to make them shine, on the draining board and stainless steel cooker hob to make it shine, on the shower screen and of course on mirrors and windows. It's so cheap but brilliant and has so many uses.
I use a sponge and scourer, with a bucket of hot water by the cooker and keep rinsing off the oven cleaner and scrubbing until I get it as clean as I can. There are more abrasive cleaners that you can use on a hot oven, but even the one for a cold oven is harsh enough and please remember to have to doors and windows open when you use it.
Lastly, I wash all the lower cupboards and kick boards. I get some anti-bacterial spray and squirt it into the corner and scrub around the edges of the kitchen floor. The floor gets wiped down most days but this time it needed a proper scrub.
Then I give the floor a really good wash. I used a de greasing kitchen cleaner.
I then washed it with boiling water. It dries really quickly and gets the floor really squeaky clean. Once I have washed it, I get a dry cloth and rub the floor dry, it's surprising how much more dirt I can get up but doing this.
It took me just under an hour to spring clean this tiny kitchen. I now know it's had a deep clean and as I really enjoy cleaning, I love to stand back and admire my hard work.
Thanks to Aldi for sending me the vouchers so I could try their cleaning products. It's my supermarket of choice anyway. I was really impressed by the cleaning products and I think they are just as good a proprietary brands. I loved the multi surfaces spray, the window cleaner was fantastic and I'm going to enjoy the rest of the spring clean with the products.
Over to you Dear Reader, who else likes to give the house a really deep thorough clean once in a while? I'm ok at keeping up with the small daily tasks but don't have a lot of time to really give the place a scrub! I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Until tomorrow,
Love Froogs xxxxx