We’ve all heard the saying that cleanliness is next to Godliness, so to become a true domestic God in your household you need to harness the power of the humble hoover, pick up that dishwashing brush and get to scrubbing. The MALESTROM has collated the best tips and tricks for cooking, cleaning and everything else, that’ll have the lady in your life wowed with this sudden, newly found prowess around the house, or give bachelors a serious level up in the cleanliness stakes so that they don’t stay bachelor for too much longer.
Household Hacks
How to put on a duvet cover:
So this one is a dark art. How to successfully put a cover over a duvet without a) taking an hour b) giving up and sleeping filthily without a sheet on it. The trick is first to turn the cover inside out first.
Once that’s done, put your arms into the cover and pinch the two bottom corners between the fingers of each hand. Now grab the bottom corners of your duvet with each hand. You’re now able to pull the ends of the cover over the duvet to it’s other end. Button up the top and you’re good to go. A usually painful job completed in under a minute. Your welcome.
Hoovering:
Ok so the next time you vacuum (assuming you have one), try this hoovering hack to eliminate nasty niffs around the household and from your vac. Add 5 drops of any essential oil you have in the house into the vacuum bag and start cleaning those floors. The nice scent will fill your house and the vac, 2 for 1 cleaning goodness.
Carpet stains:
Get a load of salt on any stain pronto. If there’s a vine rosso spillage on the carpet putting salt on the area straight after and rubbing it in will massively help matters. Leave for a few hours and hoover that stain away. A drop of white wine on the area can also help neutralise the mark.
For cleaning vomit (we’ve all been there), mix some baking soda with water to make a paste. Take a spatula and coat it all over the vommity area. Let the paste dry overnight, or until it becomes powdery, you can then hoover it away. Sick man! For cleaning cat urine out of carpet, this site recommends to use a mixture of liquid detergent and warm water.
Cleaning glass:
One word vinegar. One of the most multi-purpose liquids on the planet. Forget all those pricey window cleaning sprays down the supermarket, a spray bottle filled with 50% vinegar (white) and 50% water cleans glasses and mirrors about as well as anything.
Washing clothes:
Make sure you do a 60-degree wash to clean your bed linen. Wash other things at a lower temp to help the environment, but you still need an occasional hot wash to get rid of nasties like dust mites and bed bugs. Important for anyone with asthma or skin complaints.
Instead of using pricey softener to your wash, add a drop of white wine vinegar, it does just as good a job of helping your clothes dry soft rather than hard as board.
For removing stains on white shirts reach for the milk. A bit of a soak in it pre wash will help them come out sparkling.
Fresh shoes:
Hot weather can cause funky foot odours, trainer tamers can cost bucks. Instead get a little bottle of tea tree oil and sprinkle it inside shoes, and the pong is gone for pennies.
Another good tip if you want to go sockless this Summer, without the shoe smells that come with that, is to add a bit of talc to your innersole. Helps keep things fresh.
Table trouble:
Scuff on your wooden table? Forget calling the french polisher. Get your nuts out, walnuts that is. Run your finger along the scratch and then start to rub the walnut into it. Your finger will heat up the walnut’s oil and help it to soak into the wood masking the scuff. After that buff with a cloth and the jobs a goodun, or at least a lot better than it was.
Dusting:
Put an old sock on your hand and dust around the household as though you have a Kim Woodburn glove puppet on. Who said cleaning wasn’t fun!
Cooking
Sharper knives:
Keep your knives sharp using a ceramic mug. A few strokes of the blade against the rough ceramic on the bottom of the mug should keep things razor sharp and ready to tackle that chopping.
Easy pasta:
If you’re cooking dry pasta, heat the water up to the boil then put the pasta in the water. Bring it back to the boil and then turn the heat off. If you leave it for around 18 minutes, the pasta will be completely cooked. No more pans left to boil over.
The perfect steak:
Use your thumb to tell how your steak is cooked. If you bring together your index finger and thumb and feel the fleshy pad area below the thumb then that’s what a rare steak should feel like. If you do the same thing with your ring finger and thumb that’s a medium steak. Using the same technique with the old pinky finger and thumb you have yourself well done.
Washing Up:
Get it out of the way straight after dinner or try and clean as you go when you’re cooking. If you’re just washing a couple of plates after dinner it makes life so much easier. If you’re leaving dishes to dry on a rack pour boiling hot water on them, they’ll dry much quicker.
For a clean chopping board cut a lemon in half and rub down any plastic or wooden cutting board. Leave it for twenty minutes, then wash it. This should remove any food stains and give the board a new lease of life.
Fresher food:
Keep your fruit & veg (not tomatoes) and bread in the fridge, it’ll make sure they last longer. Also place a few pieces of kitchen towel in your salad drawer. It absorbs the condensation as the vegetables chill stopping wilting and keeping things fresher.
Put your eggs in water to see if they’re off. Fresh eggs will sink to the bottom, whereas the bad eggs will float. A similar process to how they worked out who was a witch back in the day.
Have you got any top household hacks stored in the locker? Let us know in the comments below.
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