Yahoo Finance Your top-to-bottom winter cleaning guide for every room in your home
With more time spent indoors, winter is the perfect time to tackle projects around the house. From renovations you can complete in one weekend to cleaning tips for every room, Canadian Tire and Yahoo are bringing you everything you need for the season.
Since winter often means hunkering down indoors with your loved ones, it’s more important than ever to have a clean, healthy home.
During the winter months, we tend to stay indoors more often where it’s warm. When we’re inside in enclosed spaces with other people, it’s a lot different than being out in the open air. Although it’s nice to stay inside, there is moisture, and bacteria can grow quickly, leading to other problems.
A clean home is a healthy home, so it’s important to know how to do a thorough clean of your home, as well as which areas in your house can harbour the most germs. Winter is peak flu season, and it’s important to protect yourself and the ones you love by washing your hands often and stopping the flu in its tracks. When we know we’re keeping ourselves and our families safe, cleaning begins to feel less like a chore and more like a form of self-care.
We’ve gathered some helpful winter cleaning tips to help you keep your home looking spotless (and germ free!)
The kitchen
The kitchen is one of the busiest rooms in the house due to how often it’s used — and because of that, it’s one that should be cleaned and sanitized the most frequently. Just think about the spills on your stovetop, food you sometimes leave lying on the counter, or the moisture in your sink. Cutting boards and garbage cans can also be hotspots for bacteria.
Two of the most-used appliances in your home are likely your stove and your oven. To keep them in tip top shape and free of any bacteria from leftover food particles, it’s important to keep them clean. For the stove, a cooktop cleaner can easily remove tough, burnt on stains and leave a gleaming finish.
For the oven, remove all oven racks and let them sit in soapy water for a few hours. While those are soaking, use an oven cleaner to deep clean your oven. Remove the racks from the water, wipe clean and voila — you’ll be surprised by how fresh and clean your most-used appliances look.
For appliance exteriors, clean using an all-purpose antibacterial spray, or if you have stainless steel appliances, a stainless steel spray.
The kitchen sink is one of the most germ-filled places because, while people clean their dishes, they forget to clean their sink. Although it can seem like an annoying extra task, it’s important to keep germs at bay. It’s suggested to wash and disinfect your sink's sides and bottoms at least once a week.
Soap and water can work as a first step, but to remove soap scum and gunky clogs, products like Drano Kitchen Crystal Clog Remover will do the trick. It allows for an extra deep clean and sanitizes your drain.
Your dishwasher is another location that needs to be cleaned because bacteria and fungi can grow near where you clean your glasses, utensils and other items. Even though high temperatures and jets in the dishwasher make it tough for microorganisms, germs can still grow. Using a dishwasher cleaner can help remove build-up, restore dishwasher performance and kill odour-causing bacteria.
And don’t forget to clean your kitchen surfaces after cooking to ensure that you wipe any bacteria away. An all-purpose antibacterial cleaner is a great choice for this task. It kills over 99.9 per cent of household bacteria on hard surfaces.
The bedroom
The place you go to relax and rejuvenate should be one of the cleanest places in your home, right? Not necessarily.
When was the last time you washed your bedding? Experts say you should wash your sheets, duvet covers, pillow cases and any other bedding at least once every two weeks — more frequently if you have a cold or flu, have night sweats or an outdoor pet who loves to jump up and cuddle before bed.
It may seem like a little thing, but dead skin cells, sweat, saliva and more can turn your bedd into a petri dish for germs. According to WebMD, lab tests found that swabs from pillowcases unwashed for a week harboured 17,000 times more colonies of bacteria than samples taken from a toilet seat — so frequently washing with a top-rated detergent is an absolute must.
Be sure to vacuum and clean under beds and furniture, as well as dust and wipe down any light fixtures, blinds and curtains and windows. When it comes to vacuums, we love this top-rated Dyson V7 Slim Cordless stick model that removes ground-in dirt from carpets for an ultra-deep clean. It also has advanced filtration that captures 99.97% of microscopic dust particles so you can breathe (and rest) easy.
When it’s cold, we tend to keep the windows shut, which can make the air in our feel a bit stale — plus, it can harbour dust particles and other bacteria. An air purifier is a great way to keep the air quality in your bedroom the best it can be. For winter, we love this one from Dyson, which simultaneously purifies and heats any room. It also monitors your air quality with the Dyson Link app to detect airborne particles and gases, then diagnoses and reports them in real time
The bathroom
It’s important to disinfect your bathroom weekly to keep a clean, healthy home. To prevent illness and infection, it’s suggested to wipe surfaces daily and deep clean your bathroom weekly, especially during the winter season.
Bathrooms seem to attract dirt and grime, sometimes in the most difficult areas to clean. You can prevent germs from spreading through your home by deep cleaning your bathroom with products like Vim Bathroom Cleaner, which is formulated to use foaming action to remove bathroom dirt from shower doors, walls, curtains, taps, showerheads and tiles. For disinfecting surfaces, a bathroom bleach is a great choice.
Many people cover their mouths when they cough, but many people don’t know the importance of flushing a toilet with a closed lid. Every time you flush with an open lid, bacteria can spray into the air around your toilet, and these germs could get passed along. It’s important to use a toilet cleaner to eliminate germs, as well as keep your toilet bowl clean.
A multi-purpose cleaner can be used on everything from toilet bowls, tile, shower heads, sinks, shower doors and bathtubs to effectively remove calcium, lime and hard water deposits.
The living room
It’s extremely important to vacuum your living room, because a dirty carpet can lead to health issues. Carpets can turn into a breeding environment for harmful bacteria and other microorganisms, especially if you have pets. An easy way to make sure that you’re keeping up with this task is to use a robot vacuum like the iRobot Roomba i7+ Wi-Fi Connected Robot Vacuum with Automatic Dirt Disposal. You can forget about vacuuming for months at a time with this product that will do all the work for you by pulling the stubborn dirt and messes out of your carpet and emptying itself for up to 60 days.
For a deeper carpet clean, the Dyson Cyclone V10 Animal Cordless Vacuum is a great option. It features a powerful torque drive cleaner head that deep cleans carpets and removes 25% more dust and has three modes for any floor type so you can seamlessly go from carpet to hardwood to laminate.
And while you’re likely used to cleaning the floors in your living room — another area that can be grosser than meets the eye is your furniture. Similar to in. your bedroom, dust, dirt and dead skin particles can cling to your couch or reclining chair. Pair that with dirty paws or some mud and you’ll find you’re no longer sitting in a place that feels very relaxing at all. Luckily, it’s an easy fix with a portable upholstery cleaner, like this one from Bissell. Compact and easily portable, this mighty machine can permanently remove spots and stains from almost any upholstery — and bonus, you can also use it on carpets and even your car’s interior.
When it’s time to relax, the last thing you want is to worry about catching a cold from one of the things we love the most: the remote control. When was the last time you disinfected your remote? We bet you can’t remember (and hey, neither can we) -- but it’s touched by pretty much everyone in your home. It’s important to disinfect the remote control at least a couple of times a week. The HoMedics UV-Clean Portable Sanitizer Bag makes this task simple by using its UV-C lights to kill 99.9 per cent of bacteria, germs, and viruses at the molecular level in just one minute, which means you won’t have to wait long to resume channel surfing.
The carpets
In addition to giving your carpets a good vacuum frequently, it’s also important to deep clean them, especially during the winter months when kids and pets can track in dirt and snow from outdoors.
To achieve a nearly-new look, we love Bissell’s Deep Clean & Protect Formula. It’s safe for use in all full-size deep-cleaning machines and has an advanced formula that deep cleans and resists dirt and stains. The best part? It also and contains Scotchgard™ to help protect your carpet from future stains.
Anyone who’s had an overly-excited dog bound onto your white living room carpets will know that wintery weather and pets can be a dangerous combination. Luckily, you can rest easy with the Bissell ProHeat 2X® Revolution™ Pet Pro Carpet & Upholstery Cleaner. The revolutionary device has an exclusive Pet Proclean-up system and includes CleanShot® pre-treater to remove spots and stains as well as pet hair and odours.
