How to Clean Your Kitchen

The room where you cook can also be a prime mess zone. Here's how to get it sparkling, fast.

Your Strategy

• Clear counters, empty dishwasher


• Do the takes-time-to-work stuff first: Set a coffee mug half-filled with water in the microwave and cook on high for two minutes to steam-clean the inside. Then apply a degreasing cleaner to the stove top and stove hood.


• Spray counters, surfaces and appliances with an all-purpose cleaner, then work your way around the kitchen, wiping down everything you sprayed.


• Wipe out the microwave, stove and oven.


• Clean the sink with an all-purpose cleaner (a squirt of dish liquid on a sponge works fine).


• Sweep or vacuum the floor, then mop or hand-wash using a mild cleaner and a damp rag.
  

Trouble Spots

Fridge: Use warm soapy water to clean the inside of the refrigerator and freezer. Or blend your own cleanser by mixing 2 Tbsp. baking soda in a quart of hot water. A toothbrush works wonders on the rubber seals.

Stove hood: Borrow Lysol Basin Tub & Tile Cleaner from the bathroom and spray directly under your greasy stove hood, let it sit, then wipe with a damp sponge. Cover your stove top with newspaper to catch any messy drips.

What’s Easy to Overlook

The oven: If you’re lucky, you have a self-cleaning oven. If you don’t, and you want to avoid harsh oven cleaners containing lye and ammonia, Mary Findley, co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cleaning, suggests making a paste of a degreasing cleaner (like Bi-O-Kleen All Purpose Cleaner-Degreaser or Orange Clean Pro Multi-Purpose Cleaner & Degreaser) and baking soda. Plaster it in a cold oven and leave for a couple of hours. Scrub dirt loose, then rinse with a solution of vinegar and water. Turn oven to 350ºF for five minutes to “bake off” any fumes that might harm your food.

Note: If you do use a chemical-based stove cleaner, it’s especially important to follow the “bake-off” step.

Your Secret Weapons

Dawn Power Dissolver: Perfect for cleaning burned-on grime off your stove backsplash! Spray it on, let it work for 10 to 15 minutes, then wipe the stove clean.

Mr. Clean Magic Eraser: The soft cleaning pad acts just like an eraser — and rubs greasy fingerprints and smudges off kitchen surfaces.

Nature’s Miracle Pick: up this enzyme cleaner at a pet store. To keep your drains clog-free, pour the solution down your drains once a month, where it will gobble up mold, mildew and debris.

Here’s A Way You Can Save Thousands of Dollars In Interest and Pay Your Mortgage Off Years Sooner!

Most people think when you get a mortgage you’re stuck with it for 30 years. What they don’t realize is that using a couple of easy and painless ways to make some extra principal payments can cut years off the life of your mortgage and save thousands of dollars in needless interest costs.

Here are a few easy strategies you can use:

Round Up To the Nearest Hundred.

This is an easy strategy to take advantage of, and the results are dramatic!

Let’s say you have a mortgage of $100,000 over 30 years at 8% interest. The monthly payments would be about $734 a month.

Now, let’s see what would happen if you rounded that payment to the next $100 by increasing your payment by $66 extra each month.

By paying $800 a month you’ll shorten the length of your mortgage by 7½ years. Just this one simple strategy will save you over $48,000 in interest payments over the life of your mortgage!

Use Your Income Tax Refund to Make a One-Time Pre-Payment.

Let’s say you have that same $100,000 mortgage, and you have a $1,000 tax refund this year. (Very possible with your new homeowner deductions.)
If you take that $1,000 and apply it to your mortgage, you’ll save over $8,600 and shorten your mortgage by one year and one month! Not bad for a simple one-time pre-payment.

Start Out With a 15-Year Mortgage.

One of the best things you can do – if you can afford it – is to start out with a 15-year mortgage instead of 30. It’s actually not that much more expensive, and the interest you save is incredible.

With the same $100,000 mortgage at 8% over 15 years, your payment would be about $200 more ($955) and you’d be paying $72,017 in interest over the life of your mortgage instead of $164,160!

By rounding up, using your tax refund, and taking a shorter mortgage, you can save thousands and be free of your mortgage years sooner. That’s worth considering.