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Two years ago, I discovered that clean smarties around the Internet were using their handheld steamers to clean their homes and I thought that was brilliant, so I started doing it right away, too. Professional steam cleaners are awesome because they heat up so much that they can even disinfect surfaces—and while I’ve never been totally convinced my little garment steamer from Amazon is quite as powerful as all that, I’ve still found a lot of ways to use it around the house.
Here is the steamer I have, which retails for about $26 and comes with a brush you can stick on the front. I try to avoid using the brush when I’m cleaning, just so I don’t accidentally transfer any messy gunk onto my clothes when I use the steamer for its intended purpose, but in a pinch, it does come in handy.
I steam any stain of dubious origin
First up, if I find a stain anywhere and I don’t know exactly what it is, I steam it. Granted, you can steam any kind of stain, since the heat loosens it and the little bit of moisture helps draw it out, but I especially like this technique for messes that I can’t quite explain, since I feel better knowing my first line of attack against them is germ-killing heat.
Today, I moved a bunch of stuff near my sink and discovered some marks underneath it all. I couldn’t be sure what caused the streaks, but I could be sure that I was attacking them with heat and power. Besides its potential for germ-destroying, steam is fantastic for quickly loosening any stuck-on grime. I’ve used my steamer to get baked-on food off of oven racks, for instance. Of course, you can use oven cleaner or hot, soapy water, but that takes a lot longer. Blasting caked-on goo with steam loosens it fast and lets you move on to the soapy, more serious disinfecting quicker.
The steamer blasting through some streaks by my sink.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
Just a few seconds into the steaming of the streaks by my sink, they disappeared. Of course, I went back in with cleaning solution after that, but I was feeling pretty smug by that point. They came right up and off without me having to do so much as scrub (plus I never had to touch anything gross).
I steam my dirty dishes
If you do your dishes right away, food doesn’t have time to get stuck on them. Blah, blah, I know. But sometimes I’m busy. Sometimes I’m lazy. What I’m saying is that food gets stuck on my dishes and I hate scrubbing it off with a sponge, but not enough to ever learn a lesson about washing them in a speedier fashion. This is where my steamer comes in. I don’t have a dishwasher because I live in a small apartment, so I can’t toss them in there and let the heat do its job. What I can do is blast those bad boys with the steamer for a second or two, which makes the task of cleaning them off so much faster than if I let them sit in hot water or, God forbid, just got to work scrubbing.
Stuck-on food besmirching my spoon before getting annihilated by the steamer.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
I like making quick work of the dishes and, of course, that the heat tackles some germs even before I get at them with the dish soap. Today, there was a spoon in the sink that had a very stuck-on line of food in its bowl (likely from a cheap microwavable soup, I’m sorry to say) but the steamer dislodged it like it was nothing. I did try a little with my fingernail and a sponge before blasting it, just to see how bad it was, and neither made any impact—but the steamer sure did. From there, I soaped the whole thing up, dried it, and went on with my day.
I steam my mirrors, too
While on my steam-cleaning mission today, I did not need to clean my mirrors (humble brag) because I already did that recently. What I can’t provide in photographic evidence I’ll make up for in testimony: I love steaming my mirrors because it works so fast and leaves them streak-free. Windex is fine and all, but you have to really wipe to clear out those streaks. Steam is much easier to wipe off and leaves behind no chemicals. I also really like it because one of the main mirrors in my apartment is backlit and relies on electricity. I try to avoid getting it wet, to the extent possible, so the minimal amount of moisture provided by the steam machine is far preferable to the direct wetness of a spritz of window cleaner.
The steam quickly destroys water stains and other splotches, although I caution that you may need to go two or three rounds with hairspray that’s stuck to your glass. It takes me a few passes to break all the way through setting spray, hair spray, and other sticky chemicals the likes of which you use in front of the mirror. Other than that, this technique works great on shower glass, tile, ceramic, or any other smooth surface where you have water stains or other buildups. You don’t need chemicals or a bunch of tools as long as you have your steamer and a rag to wipe everything down with.
