Top 5 most often overlooked places during home cleaning

Maintaining a regular cleaning routine is not an easy task, especially when combined with working a full-time job and taking care of your family. There's never enough time for chores like cleaning. Those who are organized and determined enough to carve out time for house cleaning can give us now a virtual high five. Good job! But wait, didn't you forget about anything? Let's check 5 top places people tend to forget about when cleaning their homes and see if you should still feel so proud.

Upper surfaces of kitchen cabinets

Remember that deep cleaning you did 3 months ago when you cleaned the upper parts of the kitchen cabinets? The mix of grime, fat, dust and who knows what more you found there was quite revolting. You spent a couple of hours cleaning it, and felt quite accomplished. Now, are you sure it was 3 months ago? Time passes by faster than we realize. I bet there are some people reading this who haven't check that area in years. Next time you clean your kitchen, make sure to take a look there.

[caption id="attachment_1120" align="alignnone" width="700"] Upper parts of kitchen cabinets tend to accumulate lots of airborne grease over time.[/caption]

Under the couch

Out of sight, out of mind? Not true when it comes to cleaning. Leaving piles of dust under your bed, couch, dark corner and other not easily visible places is a very bad habit. I am not talking here about someone finding out about the dust there and shaming you for it. No worries, if you do a rapid cleaning before an unexpected visit of your parents, they won’t even find out about it. But you should always remember to clean it for your own health benefit and time-saving. Dust left in one place is easily carried by air fluctuations to other parts of your home. And dust is a natural habitat of dust mites, little creatures responsible for causing asthma and allergy symptoms (you can read about it in our recent article on dust).

[caption id="attachment_1125" align="alignnone" width="700"] Dust under the couch may not be easily visible, but can still trigger allergy and asthma symptoms[/caption]

Surface above the trim of a door

There was a study recently about the composition of dust in American households. To get good, standardized data, scientists had to decide on places from which to collect dust samples. Ideally, they should be areas which most people don’t clean too often (in other words: areas that are almost perpetually dusty in every home). Do you know what they picked? That’s right, the little horizontal surface above the trim of the door. Noah Fried, one of the scientists behind the study summarized it fairly well: “The reason we had them sample there is because people don't touch it, and it is not typically cleaned very often”.

[caption id="attachment_1127" align="alignnone" width="700"] If you'd have to pick one area in the house to find dust, above the door trim could be your best bet.[/caption]

Light switches

When doing the routine cleaning people tend to focus on furniture, electronic devices, fixtures, and floors. Going from top to bottom, by the time you start vacuuming and mopping you may already be exhausted. Maybe you just dumped the dirty water from the mop bucket and all you want is to lay down on a couch and enjoy your German-style “Kaffee und Kuchen”. It happened to me too, I admit. But there is at least one more thing you should check before you give yourself “well-done” pat on the back. Light switches. We use them all the time, sometimes with dirty hands. Make sure that your weekly cleaning routine covers sanitizing the light switches. A lot of bacteria can gather there over the week. And please remember to be careful when dealing with electricity.

[caption id="attachment_1130" align="alignnone" width="700"] Remember to sanitize the light switches at least on the weekly basis. Be careful with electricity.[/caption]

Dishwashers

I decided to add this item here, even though not every home in Germany has one. Especially if you are renting an apartment. Dishwashers made it to our list of top 5 overlooked places during house cleaning because people lucky enough to have them rarely remember to them. Some don’t even know that it should be done periodically. It may sound quite counterintuitive – why should you clean something that is designed to clean? Well, particularly for this reason. Leftover food, accumulated on the dishwasher filter can come to life if left alone for long enough (i.e. develop mold). Combined with the residue dish soap and hard-water deposit (in German ‘Kalk’ – a typical problem of houses in Berlin) can be a nice little universe you should clean on at least monthly basis.

[caption id="attachment_1132" align="alignnone" width="700"] Contrary to a quite common belief, the dishwasher won't clean itself during use. You should clean it at least monthly.[/caption]

No time for cleaning?

If you do not have time to clean your home yourself or just don’t want to remember about all different items on the cleaning checklist, you can get a professional cleaning help from SPIC AND SPAN. Since August 2016, we have been helping people in Berlin and other German cities in finding experienced, English & German speaking home cleaners. You can book your cleaning appointment online in 60 seconds using our interactive order form or by calling our 24/7 world-class customer service at +49 30 588 494 40. SPIC AND SPAN. cleaning services can be ordered on the one-off and scheduled basis with a dedicated cleaning lady or cleaning lad.

Jennifer Pearce