Cleaning around the home or or office can be frustrating, and cleaning supplies are often expensive. I want to share some super cheap, effective, and convenient fixes for cleaning up.
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Signing UpStep 1: Fix that annoying sprayer
This is such a no-brainer that I was astounded that I'd never seen it done before. Every spray bottle is made with the same simple flaw. If you try to spray downward onto a horizontal surface, you soon find yourself sucking air. As the pictures illustrate, the only thing you need to do to never experience this again (unless the bottle is nearly empty) is to bend the straw. Simple. Frustration over.
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One of my lifesavers is a mix of 1/10 rubbing alcohol, 1/10 ammonia, and water. This dissolves the grease in your kitchen like mad, and is infinitely cheaper than the brands that market themselves as the ultimate thing but then keep you rubbing for ages. If you use a microfibre cloth soaked in this you can get rid of almost everything I can think of. I even got spray paint stains out of some shoes!
If one has hard water deposits in the toilet bowl, one can use (not sure of the proper name) sheet rock sanding paper. It isn't traditional sand paper. It looks like a screen. Get the softest strength. Get it at the local home improvement store. It comes in a long rectangle. I cut them in half for ease of use for this purpose. I also drain the toilet bowl but you wouldn't have to, it's just a bit easier not having to worry about the water splashing. To drain as much of the water as possible out of the toilet bowl, turn off the water supply to the bowl. Flush the toilet and keep holding the handle down until the water stops draining. You are draining the water from the bowl and the tank. Then, get a large bucket, 5 gallon size and fill it as much as possible. Pour that into the bowl quickly and it should drain most of the water out. The small section at the bottom of the bowl will still have water. Then, wearing cleaning gloves, wet the sand paper screen and scrub away. The water here is very hard and I suck at cleaning. I wasn't able to get all of the hard water deposits off on the first try but it made a big difference. Unlike bleaching the hard water stain, the stain did not come back in as little as a week. It's not come back at all and I use that method periodically just to maintain the bowl.
I was going to pour a gallon of hot vinegar into the toilet bowl once to clean it but a good friend pointed out that the seal between the toilet and the floor is made of wax and adding anything warm or hot to the toilet bowl isn't a good idea.
Please see video here on how to drain a toilet bowl for cleaning or repairing:
http://www.dannylipford.com/home-improvement-video/how-to-drain-a-toilet/