It’s essential to understand when you can clean on your own and when it’s okay and even necessary to call for help. The amount of mold with which you’re dealing has a lot of influence on whether you can handle it by yourself or not. Your instinct as a homeowner is to take care of any house-related issues on your own. Being a self-sufficient homemaker is a fantastic skill to have, but there are times when you need to nod to reality and call for a professional for assistance.

Hydrogen peroxide is a versatile and useful homemade tile cleaning solution that is also useful for all sorts of different cleaning tasks. Many home remedies for cleaning grout and other surfaces include peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is most often associated with medicinal purposes but has some real cleaning power. When you have months and months of soap scum and buildup to contend with, you need something exceptionally powerful to get the job done. We love that this electric scrubber has a 450 RPM motor that works harder and faster than most. It also has a handy telescoping wand that adjusts from 27 to 47 inches, as well as a brush head that can be adjusted to 90, 135, or 180 degrees to ensure every inch—even the hard-to-reach—of your bathroom is sparkling.This makes cleaning that much easier (and will save your knees from kneeling), which is a huge win in our book. Use it in place of bleach to get rid of mold and other nasty stains and smells. You can bleach your hair with peroxide or use it to get coins looking like new, and it’ll clean away all kinds of grime. A general rule is to remember that ten square feet of mold is the cutoff. If you encounter a patch of mold stains larger than ten square feet, or are concerned about your health, give the pros a call.Then fold the bags into a snug rectangle – this will form the body of the scrubber. I made mine about the same size and shape of the ones I use, but there’s no hard and fast rule here. If you’re dealing with an item of clothing that stays moldy no matter how many times you send it through the wash, give bleach a try. Chlorine bleach is exceptionally effective against mold, but it will discolor and damage dark clothing. If you're frequently dipping metal or plastic reusable straws into smoothies, iced coffee, and matcha, you should also be frequently cleaning those straws (like, after every use). You have to clean reusable straws, or that slender tube can become quite the home for gunk. These dishwasher-safe brushes are all about 8 inches long, with heads that come in two different sizes. The 8-millimeter brush works well for narrower metal straws, while the 10-millimeter one is best for plastic smoothie straws and the ones that come with water bottles. I ditched gross kitchen sponges years ago, and have been using (and loving) Swedish dishcloths instead (you can read more about them in this post!). But for tougher jobs – and I clean a lot of dishes throughout the day – I swear by my nylon scrubbies. They get the job done without scratching my good pots and pans, and are gentle enough to use on my vast collection of vintage dishware. Our favorite dish scrubbers are these silicone sponges from Lubrima because they're non-porous, so they don't hang onto smells the way foam and cellulose sponges do. Plus, these scrubbers are eco-friendly thanks to their silicone design. You'll only need to replace them every few months when they start to fall apart, and you can clean your sponges in your dishwasher until then.

I don’t know about you but winter always finds me flush with those nylon netting produce bags – from clementines, onions and so many potatoes. I usually just throw them away but then I came across a cute DIY that I had to share!A combination product like the OXO Good Grips Soap Dispensing Dish Brush helps keep your sink area looking neater, as you don't have to fuss with your dish soap bottle every time you do dishes. Simply fill the handle from the bottom and press a button to squirt out the perfect amount of soap for the job. Once you're finished, the brush can be propped up in a sink caddy or hung to dry using the hole in the handle. If there’s any downside, it’s that the brush is relatively heavy compared to others—particularly manual models. The brush weighs nearly 4 pounds, which may lead to fatigue, especially when you’re cleaning hard-to-reach areas with the telescoping handle. Storage shouldn’t be an issue, though—the kit comes with a hook, so you can easily hang the whole thing up when you’re done. According to Marilee Nelson is a cleaning expert, environmental consultant, certified building biologist, and co-founder of Branch Basics, to clean any dish scrubber without the dishwasher, simply soak it in vinegar and a few drops of dish soap for an hour or more. If desired, follow in a soak in 3 percent hydrogen peroxide for five minutes. Rinse in hot water and place where the scrubber can air dry. The downside to all of this cleaning prowess? At just over three pounds, this particular scrubber is on the heavy side, which may lead to some fatigue or strain as you scrub.