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Clean Any Surface in Your House
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 9:00 AM on August 25, 2008
Real Simple posts a smart follow-up to their guide to assembling an ultimate cleaning kit: a guide to using those supplies to clean pretty much any surface in your house. This guide gives you the dos and don'ts of cleaning stainless steel, glass, marble, ceramics, hardwood cabinets and floors, butcher block, and much more. Those proud of their bamboo or other wood cutting board, for instance, might heed this advice:
Cut down on the amount of time and effort you spend cleaning by doing mini-sessions throughout your day. Heloise, the domestic diva of Good Housekeeping fame, shares tons of helpful mini-tasks sorted by each room of your home. For example:
Windows only: Free application ZSoft Uninstaller is a beefed up repalcement for the default Windows Add or Remove Programs dialog. ZSoft isn't quite as good as 
Maintain your leather shoes with the occasional military-style deep shine. The Art of Manliness blog runs down how. First, spread newspaper underneath the pair of shoes you're working on. With a horsehair shine brush, remove all dirt from the sides and toes of the shoes. Add a liberal amount of polish to the shoe but be sure to match the colour of the polish to your shoe as closely as possible. Let the polish dry, and then focus on giving the toes and heels that extra shine using cotton. Rinse and repeat until your shoes look brand new. The article suggests practical gear to build a solid shoe shine kit, which could come in handy before that big wedding or formal event. Photo by 
Wipe your grill clean without the chemical waste by rubbing an onion against the grate of the grill. The Apartment Therapy blog explains that scrubbing a halved onion faced downwards on a heated grate will remove the grime and grit without requiring the hard and frustrating scrubbing of a Brillo pad. Plus, it's an affordable green alternative that won't cause putrid smells like most chemicals do. That is, as long as you like the smell of onions. Photo by 
Has warm weather brought a plague of ants down upon your home? We've talked about 
The dinner was a success, the guests are gone, and your cast iron pans—well, they've seen better days. The TipNut blog suggests pulling out a spare potato and going to town on your sauce-crusted cookware:
A new UK study shows that keyboards swabbed from an ordinary London office had more harmful bacteria than—you know what's coming—a toilet seat. Yeeks! The accompanying survey showed that most users clean their keyboard infrequently (if at all), and clean their mouse even less often. Here's what you do: shut down your PC, unplug your keyboard and mouse, shake out any dust, lint and other crap, and wipe 'em down with disinfectant alcohol wipes. Right this very minute. For a more thorough cleaning which involves disassembly and compressed air, see this 
Real Simple offers three-step processes to tackle the oft-neglected spots around the house that require a little more motivation to get into. From hardwood floors to drapes and curtains and into furniture fabric, the advice is sound and possibly worth printing, if only for the little nuggets of wisdom that prevent further cleaning down the line, as with this cabinet idea;
