6 Experts Share Unexpected Places Homeowners Forget to Clean

Originally published on Redfin.com

​When deep cleaning your house, it’s easy to focus on the main areas of the home, most likely being the bathrooms, bedrooms, and kitchens. With those spaces often being the most used areas of the home, homeowners tend to look over cleaning the smaller, less noticeable areas around the house. From furnace air filters to fan blades and air vents, dirt and dust can easily accumulate if not taken care of. To get your home in tip-top shape, we reached out to cleaning experts from Buffalo, NY to Vancouver BC for their best suggestions on unexpected places homeowners forget to clean and how to clean them. Keep reading to see what they had to say.

1) The carpets of your home
You probably change your furnace air filter a couple of times a year. The carpet in your home acts as a giant air filter, collecting dust, dander, and allergens, reducing the airborne particles, until the “filter” fills up. The best way to clean the “filter” is to hire a professional carpet cleaner for a cleaner and healthier home. – ChemDry of Lafayette

2) The bottom edge and metal areas of your dishwasher 
For dishwasher buildup and odors, clean the bottom edge of the door and metal lip area. There is a lot of build-up there. Spray with a degreaser, let it set, scrub clean, and repeat if needed. For window tracks, sprinkle with baking soda and spray with white vinegar. Let it soak and wipe clean. Lastly, for paint on carpets, loosen by rubbing with a damp, used dryer sheet. – Colleen Gasbarro, Owner of Custom Maid Cleaning

3) Nooks and crannies
One of the commonly missed areas in a home is nooks and crannies. What works best is to start off with dusting cobwebs, fans, light fixtures, trim around doors, doors, window sills, trim around windows, and baseboards throughout an entire level (or your entire home) before you start dusting furniture and items. This will give any dust that gets stirred up enough time to settle down, ensuring you actually get all of it. – Happy Maids

4) Baseboards and trim
Most homeowners don’t realize that “soil filtration” lines often occur adjacent to baseboards, and under where bedroom doors close. Along baseboards, sometimes it’s just dust that goes un-vacuumed because the vacuums can’t hit the edge, but other times, it’s actually greasy/oily soil that forms due to pressure differences between rooms and floors that cause air to move through these areas, using the carpet as a “filter” for the passing air. Don’t vacuum it, simply use a moist, white cotton towel and run it back and forth along the base of the baseboards, and the dust and lint will form into balls for easy vacuuming. If greasy soil still remains, adding a little carpet cleaner to the towel can help remove it. Be careful of protruding trim nails and carpet staples when using this technique. – Bulk Green Cleaners

5) High-touch surfaces like doorknobs and light switches 
In this day and age, it is important to make sure your home is clean and sanitized. High-touch surfaces are often overlooked in a home, such as doorknobs and light switches which can promote the spreading of diseases. Don’t forget to disinfect the handrails, remove the cobwebs on the ceiling and make sure to thoroughly clean the air vents. A quick wipe down can make an enormous difference. – Queen Bee Clean

6) Fan blades and air vents 
A place where a lot of our customers don’t realize that dust accumulates and are very surprised to find out about is on fan blades and air vents. We recommend that these locations are checked on a regular basis, especially because fan blades and air systems are used frequently throughout the year. – Juanitas House Cleaning 

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