A friend posed a house-cleaning question on Facebook – how often should one clean baseboards.

Most people posted once a month.

Some dusted every time they mopped the floor.

I posted that the baseboards were clean when we moved in eight years ago. Nothing much has changed since then so I figure leave well enough alone.

Maybe people are staying home due to covid or they’ve got spring cleaning fever, but I’m seeing a high number of posts asking for help in cleaning out closets and general housekeeping.

Some writers have easy advice. Others go full commando on dirt.

One video showed how to remove the toilet seat so you could take a toothbrush and scrub underneath the hinges.

If someone is looking underneath the hinges on your toilet to check for residual soap scum, that person has a lot more lacking in their life than you can fix with shiny porcelain.

Another hack was to take the oven door off so you could get your head in there to get the oven really clean.

This hack fails on so many levels.

An oven door probably weighs 50 pounds, so who wants to remove that oversized hunk of metal to clean something no one will ever see?

Besides, when you take the door off, the chances of dropping it on the floor and cracking the tile or ripping a hole in the vinyl becomes a reality. Then you have to somehow reattach the door.

I see a broken toe in this scenario.

Baking soda and vinegar are popular cleaning champs. They’re good for unclogging a sink, getting the skunk smell off your pet and removing soap scum.

Supposedly, a paste of these two will dissolve all the baked-on muck on a cookie sheet and, a few hours later, you have a cookie sheet that looks brand new.

Sorry, but the baked-on grease on my baking sheets is decades old and there’s no way a foaming baking-soda volcano is taking off those layers.

Kitchen condiments are often mentioned as cleaning wonders from using mayonnaise to repair scratches in your furniture to using ketchup to shine a stainless steel hook.

These hackers don’t mention that your clean household items will probably turn sticky and rancid and attract ants. But your hooks will be shiny.

One hacker believes those in search of clean floors should put double-sided tape on the bottom of slippers to dust the floor while you walk around.

The amount of dog hair on my floors would clog that tape up in less than 10 steps.

Organizing closets is a big seller on the hack channels. Let me offer the disorganized some hope – no one is going to go into your closet and grade you for how organized your shirts, shoes and pants are.

If they do criticize, it’s your fault for letting them into your closet.

The only time you need to clean out that closet is if you’re totally bored, can’t find your favorite jeans or there’s a cricket in the back of the closet and you can’t fall asleep until you find that singing insect.

To ease your mind, remember – no one is going to give you a medal if the ceiling fan blades are dust-free.

No one is going to type up a positive review if the inside of your pantry is organized and no one is going to post a glowing atta-boy on social media if you roll up the T-shirts in your drawer instead of shoving them in a drawer.

However, if you feel you must jump on the housecleaning bandwagon, buy a can of WD-40.

That spray will get rings off swollen fingers, remove gum from a child’s hair and will keep spiders away if you spray some on the window sill.

I think it’s a waste of time to mop a floor you’re just going to walk on 15 minutes later, but banishing spiders makes perfect sense.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.