Cleaning and Maintenance Tips for Your Laundry Room
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Laundry rooms are supposedly the cleanest rooms in the house. They have to be, right? It’s where you wash all your clothes after all. But your laundry room also needs to be cleaned. Neglecting it not only makes for an unpleasant laundry day, but also poses health and safety hazards to you and your family. So, here are three tips to help keep your laundry room clean:
1. Check on and clean out your laundry appliances
Sink
Sinks are easy to maintain. Just clean the surface with a sponge and soapy water. Make sure to get all the stains and residue out, then rinse.
Dryer
Without proper maintenance dryers can pose a danger to your home. KY3’s Leah Hill reports that more than 3,000 house fires in the US are caused by dryers. This is due to lint build-up in the system. If it isn’t cleaned out regularly, it becomes a fire hazard. To get rid of the lint, empty the lint trap and make sure all the fuzz is gone before putting it back. Clean the interior walls as well, to ensure that no lint is left.
Washing machine
Washing machines are easier to maintain since most of them have an auto-clean feature that you run once a month. But make sure to also check its condition, as defects in the appliance can affect how well it washes your clothes. HomeServe’s Laura Rudd lists a few tell-tale signs that your machine needs some TLC, such as leaks, odd smells, and a faulty door. Leaks can be caused by damage or clogging in the pipes, while odd smells could be from bacteria build-up in the main cabinet. Faulty doors are harder to fix as it could signal anything from drainage issues to damage in the mechanism. If you’re having trouble with any of these, it would be best to contact a professional to have it fixed. Don’t leave these issues for too long! Better to keep your washing machine in good shape than to deal with more problems down the road.
2. Clean the walls and surfaces
Don’t neglect to clean the rest of the laundry room! Make sure to wipe the countertops and windows, then vacuum the floor. The Spruce’s Mary Marlowe Leverette warns that laundry rooms are susceptible to mold growth since the presence of damp clothes leads to humidity. Mold is dangerous because it can cause wood to rot and decay, damaging your house’s structural integrity. It’s also a health hazard, so it’s best to keep your laundry room clean to prevent mold from growing at all.
3. Organize your cleaning supplies
Laundry day isn’t fun when you can’t remember where you put your detergent. And it doesn’t help that the last three bottles you checked are already empty. So, throw out or recycle those empty detergent bottles. Once they’re gone, dedicate one part of your laundry room to your cleaning supplies. It could be a corner where your detergent, fabric softener, and bleach are in a neat little line or a cupboard where they’re stowed away when not in use. Either way, once your cleaning products have been organized, it’ll be easier to do the laundry.
We hope these tips are helpful! It’s important to keep your laundry room clean to avoid health and safety hazards in the long run. Plus, it makes laundry day a little bit easier, and who doesn’t want that? Need some more laundry room ideas? Our post titled a ‘Small Farmhouse Laundry Room Organization Makeover’ has more tips you can use.
