15 Amazing Cleaning Tips You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner

6. Get rid of water stains with vinegar, too.

If water stains on your glasses are the problem, then vinegar is the solution yet again. According to cleaning service Maid Right, all you have to do is create a mixture of 50 percent vinegar and 50 percent water, apply it to the water stains, and let it sit for 15 minutes or so. Once the vinegar solution has had time to break down the debris, use a toothbrush to scrub the scum away, give the glass a rinse, and wipe the surface clean.

That grime stuck to your cookie sheets and frying pans is no match for your dryer sheets.

“Put the dirty item in the sink with soap, warm water, and a dryer sheet, and leave for an hour or two,”  says O’Hanlon. When you rinse with clean water afterward, the mess will go down the drain, too!

Don’t want to ruin your precious cast iron skillet by—gasp—cleaning it with soap? Break out a spud instead!

“Pour some coarse salt into the cast iron pan and use half a potato to rub it in until that mess has broken up and can be rinsed off,” O’Hanlon recommends.

A slip of the knife here, an overzealous fork there, and suddenly you’ve got a stack of unsightly scratched plates in your kitchen. Fortunately, it’s easy to make your plates look brand new again with some baking soda.

“Make a paste with baking soda and water, buff it into the scratches,” then rinse it away and those scratches will disappear, says O’Hanlon.

No dish soap? No problem! If you’ve got some rhubarb in your fridge or garden, you have everything you need to remove that caked-on mess.

Add a few sticks of rhubarb and some water to a pan and bring them to a boil, leaving them to simmer for five minutes, suggests Sean Parry, a cleaning expert.

Once the water has cooled down, wipe the pan down with a scrubber sponge and the mess will lift away. “The acids contained in rhubarb react perfectly with the carbons that are produced by burnt food,” explains Parry. “When they are boiled together, the reactions loosen the burned areas and make it easier to scrub away.” And if you want to avoid damaging your space.

Cleaning a blender is a perilous activity at best. The tedious task essentially involves sticking your hand into a bowl full of knives and hoping for the best every time you try to remove the remnants of smoothie from your blades.

But it’s actually easy to remove that stuck-on gunk. Just pour “some warm water, baking soda, and washing-up soap in your blender, and blend it for a few seconds,” says O’Hanlon. When you’re done, give it a quick rinse with clean water or toss it in the dishwasher to get it squeaky clean.

With all the junk we throw into our garbage disposals, it’s no wonder they’re a veritable petri dish—with the nasty odors to prove it. Thankfully, making them a whole lot cleaner is easy: “Drop some cut lemons down your drain for a fresh scent” when you turn the disposal on, suggests O’Hanlon.

While most plastic cutting boards can be popped into the dishwasher, wooden ones are a different animal entirely.

“You can get out those difficult stains in your wooden boards by rubbing them with some lemon and salt,” says O’Hanlon. She recommends letting the salt sit on the cutting board for a few minutes and rubbing it in with the lemon before rinsing it away.

That bottle of vodka in your freezer is good for more than just making martinis. If you’ve got mildew in your bathroom, it can help you get rid of the problem in no time.

“Fill a spray bottle with a 50-50 mix of vodka and water, spray it on the affected areas, and leave it for around 10 minutes,” then wipe it away with a clean cloth, suggests Parry. He notes that the alcohol in the vodka will not only clean the mess, but will kill the mildew, too. Want more bathroom cleaning tips?

Can’t find bleach in your local supermarket? Your favorite childhood drink mix can help you clean your toilet just as efficiently.

“Give your toilet a generous sprinkling of [lemonade] Kool-Aid powder, let the mixture sit, brush down the sides, and then simply flush,” says Parry.