Lemons Lemons Lemons

by Tidy Up Angels Team | Apr 12, 2025 | cleaning services overland park, Home Cleaning Overland Park, House Cleaning Services Overland Park, maid service in Overland Park, move in cleaning Overland Park, move in out cleaning services, residential cleaning services Kansas City

If you’re wondering why lemons and lemon juice are often recommended for cleaning, you’re not alone. I had the same question, but a quick search confirms this is down to the properties found in citric acid. These help lemon juice function as an antibacterial, antiseptic, and bleaching agent.

This is also what makes lemons so great in a kitchen, where you’re bound to confront a wide variety of messes in all of these categories and more, from grease to rust.

Cleaning My Countertops
We live in a rental, and—if I’m being honest—our countertops are not my preferred finish. They’re a black granite that instantly shows any crumb or mark, and can easily look scuffed and stained. Paired with hard water, the area next to my sink is constantly dull and covered in white limescale rings.

Usually, we tackle these with either an all-purpose spray or white vinegar, both of which work fine—though I’m not the biggest fan of the vinegar smell.

Because lemon is supposed to be great for removing these stains, I decided this was a good place to start. I simply cut a lemon down the middle, and used one half as if it were a sponge, wiping in a circular motion around the whole area. The end result?

Not too bad, actually! It removed the rings, and smelled great. This is definitely something I’d do again, especially if I had a leftover lemon I could use rather than toss.

Killing Bacteria on Wooden Accessories
Like many kitchens, most of our cooking utensils and cutting boards are wooden. Because of the aforementioned antibacterial properties found in citric acid, I learned that wooden kitchen accessories take well to being cleaned with lemon. Naturally, I decided to take the second half of my countertop lemon and scrub accordingly.

Once again, the lemon smelled great and it certainly didn’t seem to harm anything (with no suds and no shiny, sparkling end result, I honestly can’t be sure if it worked).

I think in the future, this would be a great option to quickly clean after cutting veggies or stirring pasta water with my wooden spoon. Though for anything with real bacteria—such as raw meat—I’ll stick to more traditional dish soap.

Removing Odors From a Microwave
For my next lemon-flavored trick, I cut a second lemon in half and squeezed all the juice into a Pyrex measuring cup full of water. Then, I popped the glass container into my microwave and blasted it until it was boiling.

After a recent family movie night that left our microwave smelling extra buttery, this was my favorite hack so far. The odor was completely cleared, leaving only the scent of lemons in its wake.

This is one I’m sure I’ll do again and again.

Leaving Glassware Streak-free
I let this microwaved mixture cool in the fridge, and then poured it into a spray bottle and tackled a few drinking glasses, wiping them down with the solution. While I was promised a streak-free shine, I was dubious about this tip—and I was right to be.

The end result wasn’t particularly streak-free, and I decided to revert back to my normal cleaning methods for glass moving forward.

Conclusion
Out of the many natural home cleaning hacks I’ve seen and tried – this makes the top of my list. I loved the way it made my kitchen smell, and in a few places, it was incredibly effective. My favorite, hands down, was to remove the odor in my microwave.

How to make cleaning a game with kids

by Tidy Up Angels Team | Mar 15, 2025 | cleaning services overland park, Home Cleaning Overland Park, House Cleaning Services Overland Park, maid service in Overland Park, move in cleaning Overland Park, move in out cleaning services, residential cleaning services Kansas City

Teaching your kids to clean up after themselves can be a chore in itself. (And good luck trying to enlist an extra pair of hands when you’re trying to declutter or deep clean the entire house.) Though having a little one at home means it’s inevitable that mounds of toys and clothes will pop up, there are actually plenty of ways to make cleaning fun for your kids. Making kids part of the solution is all it takes. And at the end of the day, keeping things tidy is a plus — the real goal is to instill good habits in your children at a young age. So if you’re wondering how to make cleaning fun for your family, here are easy ways to get your kids cleaning (without a fuss).

Teach Them How to Organize
At some point, it’s worth incorporating a bit of design or aesthetic instruction into your child’s cleaning routine. After all, kids might be so eager to finish the actual task of organizing their room that they rush through it and end up sweeping things under the rug, literally and figuratively. Teaching your child to color-code their toys can be a great way to have them engage more deeply with the way their belongings are stored. When it comes to books, for instance, show your child your own library and how to organize their books the same way. Work with them to develop a purpose for every drawer or shelf, so that every object has a home that makes sense.

Stage a Cleaning Contest
Why not entice your kids to clean by offering them a fun contest? If you have more than one child, you can assign each one a room to clean and whoever can clean that room the quickest will receive a prize You can also set a sliding scale for allowances — for example, if your kids clean their room once a month, they get $10. If they clean the living room on top of that, they’ll get an extra $10. Instead of money, you can also invent a points system, where each household chore earns a certain number of points that can be traded for rewards such as an extra book at bedtime, a video game, a toy or a sweet snack, depending on their age.

Show Appreciation
Instead of resorting to punishments or rebukes when your child throws a tantrum or makes a halfhearted attempt at cleaning their room, try to be supportive and encouraging as often as possible. Make sure to thank them for their hard work rather than insincerely praise them for a less-than-successful execution, and find opportunities to continue practicing the task again together while giving them helpful hints that will make them more successful the next time around. If you ask them for help during a spring cleaning binge or weekend tidy-up, be sure to express your gratitude and explain to them exactly how they’ve made the space clean to positively reinforce their contribution.

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