How To Clean Hard To Reach Places In Your Home

No one likes cleaning. Which makes it even easier to miss hard-to-reach spaces, like your ceiling fan, the top of the door frame, and behind the appliances. With the right tools and a little focus, you can keep your home clean easily in less than an hour each month. We look at how to clean hard-to-reach places in your home. Here is your complete cleaning checklist with these housecleaning tips for challenging areas.

Hard To Reach Places You Should Clean Once a Year

In most cases, the hardest-to-reach places you need to clean at high up, between, or underneath things you use every day. However, sometimes you just don’t think to clean a place – like under the lip of your countertops. Here are some of the hard-to-reach places you should clean once a year.

Cleaning Checklist for Hard-To-Reach Places:

• Ceiling fan blades
• Inside ceiling lights or recessed lighting
• The top of the cabinets
• Between and underneath kitchen appliances
• Around door frames and window sills
• Underneath the edge of the medicine cabinet
• Under the lip of the kitchen and bathroom countertops
• On top of partial walls and tall, built-in shelves

Begin by going room by room and taking an inventory of the hard-to-reach spaces. To do this, you may need to look around your house with a new perspective.

Cleaning Tools for Hard-To-Reach Places

One of the biggest reasons we avoid cleaning is that we are using the wrong tools. Dusting wipes and multi-purpose cleaners are convenient, but they aren’t meant to clean everything in your home. Here are the best tools for cleaning hard-to-reach places.

Angled dusting brushes

Angled dusting brushes are perched on top of a long, lightweight handle similar to a broom’s. If you don’t already have one, look for a good-quality microfiber duster or a disposable duster that can be easily replaced when worn out.

Dust the following high surfaces with this type of brush:

• Ceiling fans
• Light fixtures
• Partial walls

Wide, fluffy dusters

Dust is attracted to electronics—as you have no doubt noticed as you wipe off TV and laptop screens.

Wide, fluffy dusters with long handles and flexible heads are good for cleaning behind and underneath heavy electronics, such as stereo systems and large televisions.

They also work great on blinds, fan blades, and around door frames.

Brooms and sweepers

Long, narrow brooms and sweepers are great for reaching into narrow spaces, like between the stove or refrigerator and underneath cabinets and furniture.

Once a month, sweep out loose debris and vacuum it up. Once a year, you should scrub behind and underneath your stove and refrigerator with a grease-fighting household cleaner. This will get rid of heavy grime that can build up.

Step stool

The adage “out of sight, out of mind” is especially true when it comes to cleaning. A step stool can be an important part of your cleaning kit.

A small three-step stool will give you a new perspective on your home and show you surfaces you’ve missed. Use it to reach the tops of your cabinets doors, your fan blades, and anything just out of reach.

Remember the Hard-to-Reach Places

Just because some areas are hard to reach doesn’t mean they should be left out of a regular cleaning schedule.

You won’t need to drag out the step stool every week, but add these new tasks to your cleaning rotation once a month or so. Even if guests don’t comment on your sparkling ceiling fan blades, you’ll still get the satisfaction of knowing they’re clean.