What chore sits on the top of your mental to-do list with a little note beside it: Yuck? 

Every homeowner has a few chores that are the worst possible chores to do around the home. Many of these unpleasant chores are dreaded by more than just a few people. By implementing home hacks, you may not need to do these awful tasks at all – or they’ll get shorter, simpler, and easier to knock off of your to-do list.

1. Washing the House 

It’s the weekend: time to powerwash the house! If your house is looking grungy and you know you need to clean it, but the thought of washing the house is not your idea of a fun weekend, you need to look to house cleaning hacks.

Home Hacks: 

If you have vinyl siding, you can use home cleaning products such as bubbling shower cleaners on the side of your home. Place them on the siding, then use a hose to wash them off again. 

Be proactive about your siding maintenance. Make sure that your roof, gutters, and downspouts are in good condition, and you’ll prevent mold, moss, algae, and rot from impacting your home’s siding. Add a gutter cover system and inspect your roof regularly to ensure that water is moving the way it should: off your roof, into your gutters, and away from your home.

2. Cleaning Your Bathtub 

Every week, you should clean your bathtub. Every week, you want to avoid this task. If you avoid it for a long time, your tub will begin to look like a science experiment rather than a relaxing place to soak. How can you avoid bathtub disgust? 

Home Hacks: 

Keep a towel in the shower and wipe the tub clean after you use it. This will prevent soap and other material from building up inside the tub. You can also use equal parts of vinegar and water in a spray bottle that you keep in your bathroom. After you wipe down the shower and tub, spray them with this mixture, let it dry, and then rinse it off.

Instead of using harsh chemicals, combine salt and a grapefruit to make a pleasant-scented cleaner that easily removes rings on your tub.

3. Cleaning the Grout 

While your tiles look lovely for a few months after you install them, over time the grout begins to look nasty. As weeks and months pass the grout looks even worse until it gives the appearance of a dark brown grout between your tiles. What can you do to help keep your tiled floors and bathrooms looking clean? 

Home Hacks: 

Consider getting tiles and grout that are darker, so that they don’t show the dirt as easily.

Get a bathtub surround that doesn’t have any tiles. This makes it easier to clean the shower surround, without the dreaded task of cleaning out the grout. 

If you’re tired of scrubbing and the grout still doesn’t look clean, use bleach gel or a bleach pen to clean between the floor or wall tiles. 

4. Removing Hair From Drains 

It’s not long, it’s not onerous, but this chore probably wins the prize for Most Disgusting Chore of them all. If you don’t remove hair from your drains, the drains will clog over time, causing problems with your plumbing. Enjoy a bath in peace when you implement hairball-free home hacks.

Home Hacks: 

First, put a hair catcher inside your drain whenever possible, so you can clean it instead of going fishing in the drain. If your drain is still clogged, boil some water and send it down the drain. Pour half a cup of baking soda into the drain, then add 1 cup of vinegar mixed with 1 cup hot water. Pour this into the drain, plug the drain, and let it sit for 10-15 minutes before checking it. Use one more pot of hot or boiling water to remove the rest of the debris. 

5. Cleaning Inside the Oven 

This is another frustrating task. If you’ve ignored this job for a while, it doesn’t get any better. The accumulation of many days and even months of spills in your oven can look like the thickest and most wicked sludge imaginable. Kneeling on the floor and scrubbing with your head in the oven doesn’t sound like fun, so what else can you do? 

Home Hacks:

If your oven isn’t self-cleaning or if that self-cleaning function doesn’t really do the trick, place one part water, one part vinegar, and one part baking soda in an oven-safe container. Place some of it on the bottom of the oven, and put the rest on an oven rack. Put your oven on the lowest setting for 45 minutes. The goo at the bottom of your oven will be loose and easy to remove.

6. Polishing the Silver

It was your grandma’s most dreaded job, and now you’ve taken it over. If you are hosting Thanksgiving dinner, you’ll need to get out the good china and the silver. These family heirlooms need a lot of care, and sometimes that care can seem onerous.

Home Hacks: 

Who needs silver, anyway? Look for a high quality set of stainless steel flatware. Steel doesn’t need to be flimsy.

If you’d really like to spruce up the family silver for a party, according to Reader’s Digest, you don’t need to sit there with a jar of paste and scrub. “Bring one liter of water, one tablespoon of baking soda and one piece of aluminum foil to a boil. Drop silverware in the pot for 10 seconds,” and you should have clean silver. Create a paste of baking soda and water if it’s too difficult to get off all of the stains. 

7. Cleaning the Blinds 

Cleaning the blinds: it’s on nobody’s list of fun things to do on the weekend. However, blinds get everything from dust to oil on them, and they can be very difficult to clean, especially if they’ve become stained over time. 

Home Hacks: 

If you need to dust your blinds and you can’t get to both sides at the same time, get a pair of tongs and place socks on them. Use them to clamp down on the blinds and clean them as you go.

8. Cleaning Off Mildew and Mold 

Wherever it gathers, mildew and mold are unwelcome visitors. If you live in a damp climate or you don’t have great air flow in your home, mold could form in a lot of different locations, including the bottom of your windows.

Home Hacks:

Make sure that you have high-quality windows without two sliding panels, because panels trap moisture. Check the outside and the inside of the windows regularly for softening areas that can not only let moisture in but also attract pests who chew on the interior of your home. 

If you have high humidity levels in your home, install a dehumidifier as well as a fan system, so that you’re removing moisture and not just blowing it around.

Ensure that your gutters, house overhangs, and awnings are working well, so that you don’t get excess moisture coming in from the outside.

9. Pavement Problems 

This problem just seems too big to fix. Your driveway or your pathway starts to crack. Plants grow into the cracks. Oily stains sit on the ground. Your entryways are some of the first things that people see when they visit your home, and if you’re selling your home the state of repair of your entryway can be a turnoff for people who are thinking of buying. You can’t get down on your hands and knees and scrub the driveway, so what can you do to keep it clean? 

Home Hacks: 

According to This Old House, “superabsorbent clay helps soak up oily patches from asphalt.” That’s right: use kitty litter on those little spills of oil from your car.

Driveway cracks and the weeds that grow in them are often caused by water and ice that damage your driveway or pathways over time. Landscape your garden so that water drains away from driveways and pathways, and make sure that there is no water running underneath those areas as well.

10. Cleaning the Gutters 

Ah, the delights of removing sludge from your gutters, with pieces of rusted metal sticking into your hands. You stand on the ladder in the rain as the water pours out of your blocked gutters, cursing the invention of the gutter and whoever decided to plant a tree in your yard. 

Home Hacks: 

If you’d like to lose this onerous task, you can add a gutter cover system to your gutters. Gutter covers work to protect the gutter underneath. They allow water to move into the gutter while sending leaves and other debris off to the ground below. This means that with some systems, you’ll never need to clean your gutters again. Look for a gutter cover system with a proven track record and a lifetime transferable warranty.

At Harry Helmet, we work to make your home life easier. That’s why we provide awnings, roofing, gutter replacement, and gutter cover products to simplify your life and ease your mind. Would you like to learn more about gutter guards?  Schedule a free estimate today.

Written by Del Thebaud