Did you know that cleaning your home appliances helps them run efficiently? Dust and grime on home appliances can cause them to overheat and actually make them work harder. The result is unnecessary wear and tear and expensive energy bills.
In this article, we will look at the importance of cleaning home appliances with tips from our professional home cleaning services in Toronto to help optimize performance.
Why Cleaning Appliances Is Important
There are several benefits to keeping your appliances clean, including the following:
- Health: Clean kitchen appliances help protect your family against illness. The simple act of wiping down oven handles and knobs, for example, removes germs transferred after handling raw meat.
- Efficiency: Clean appliances operate more smoothly without dust and grime interfering with the parts or blocking proper air circulation. As a result, you reduce the amount of energy needed.
- Longer life: When appliances are dirty, the dirt causes appliances to work harder, which puts unnecessary stress on the parts. Thus, your appliances are more likely to require frequent repairs.
- Fire risk: Exertion can lead to overheating, which can sometimes increase the risk of fires. This is especially true for greasy ovens and stovetops, as well as dryers with clogged lint trays.
Because clean appliances operate smoothly, they require less effort. Therefore, you spare the parts from extensive wear and tear while ensuring your appliances remain energy efficient.
10 Ways to Keep Appliances Clean
You can keep your appliances clean using these ten helpful tips from the experts at our home cleaning services in Toronto:
1. Change or clean filters based on the manufacturer’s recommendations
Appliance filters are designed to capture dust and debris that can interfere with appliance operation. Your user’s manual will tell you whether the filters are replaceable or can be cleaned, and how often to do so.
For example, if you have a range hood in your kitchen to remove odours and smoke, the filters can become pretty greasy. Most have reusable filters that have to be cleaned every three to six months.
Your fridge water dispenser also has filters that usually need to be changed every six months. Meanwhile, your dryer lint trays should be cleaned after every use. Always refer to your user manual to learn about the filters in your appliances and follow the instructions to a tee.
2. Clean charging docks
Some appliances have batteries or chargers. As the batteries weaken, so does the operation, forcing the machine to work harder. Always be sure that appliances like handheld or stick vacuums are fully charged before use.
Put them back on their charging docks when finished to help keep them operating efficiently. Also, wipe down the charger contacts every once in a while to remove debris that can interfere with the charging process.
3. Avoid overfilling appliances
Appliances like dishwashers and washers/dryers have load limits to avoid damaging the machinery. When overloaded, appliances are overworked, potentially harming your goods and wearing down parts.
4. Clean limescale off appliances
Small appliances that use water (like kettles, steam irons, steam cleaners, coffee machines, and large appliances like washing machines and dishwashers) are prone to something called limescale.
Limescale appears as a white, crumbly substance, usually on areas where the water comes into contact with metal parts of the appliance. These deposits can gum up the works and reduce efficiency. Check your user’s manual to learn how to remove limescale in order to keep things operating properly.
5. Defrost freezers
Whether you have a freezer or fridge-and-freezer combination, older appliances often don’t have a defrost feature to keep the storage area ice-free. Icy build-up takes up prime real estate in your freezer and causes your appliance to work overtime.
This very messy job requires you to empty the contents, turn the freezer off, and allow the ice to melt. Placing towels on the floor helps keep the mess to a minimum.
You can also use a scraper to remove the ice once it begins to melt to make the job easier. Just be sure to use a scraper designed for defrosting to avoid damaging the walls of your freezer.
Another tip is to use your steam cleaner to help melt the ice faster and have more control over where the water goes.
6. Keep door seals clean
Door seals are rubber strips on the doors of some large appliances. Their job is to prevent leaks in appliances like washers and dishwashers, and create the proper seal to keep cold or heat in.
When the seals become dirty, the dirt can prevent the seal from forming a tight contact, thus interfering with operation. Wiping the seals down every month will help keep them free of debris.
7. Check appliance alerts
Today, most large and small appliances have alerts and messages that tell you when there’s an issue.
For example, your fridge will notify you when it needs a new filter. Paying attention to error codes and acting quickly will help ensure your appliances receive the attention they need to operate efficiently.
The longer you ignore the messages, the more harm it can cause to the appliance, leading to damage to other parts and improper function. If the appliance beeps, rings, or displays an error code, look up what it means online, so you know how to respond.
8. Keep areas around appliances clean
Dirt and dust build-up around and behind large appliances, where it tends to remain out of sight and out of mind. However, it’s worth the effort to pull out such appliances and do a thorough cleaning at least every six months to vacuum up dust, wipe down the walls, and clean the floor.
The mess can pose a problem, such as interfering with the operation of your dryer and increasing the risk of fire. In the case of kitchen appliances, those crumbs, along with grease, can actually attract pests.
9. Empty coffee makers and espresso machines
Coffee makers and espresso machines should be emptied and cleaned after each use. The residue, especially of milk products, can build up bacteria that can make you sick. Damp coffee filters filled with coffee grinds can grow mould and mildew, and coffee residue can cause coffee to taste bitter.
10. Hire professional cleaners
If all this seems like too much work, enlist the help of professional cleaners to help keep your appliances clean.
While our home cleaners may not be able to descale your coffee pot, we will take the burden off cleaning by ensuring your home or condo is free from dirt, and grime and areas such as counters and stove tops are cleaned regularly.
For more information about the home cleaning services Toronto trusts, contact Maid4Condos. You can call us at 647-822-0601 or contact us online.
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