Steam cleaners are a powerful, non-toxic way to clean a surprising number of items around your house. Here are the top 7 uses of a steam cleaner. We’ll explain why you’d want to use the steam cleaner this way compared to the alternatives.
Best Ways to Make Use of a Steam Cleaner
1. Getting Caked in Grime Out of Surfaces
Instead of scrubbing your tile or woodwork to get the dirt, grime and other stains out, consider applying a steam cleaner to the surface. The steam mop cleaner will loosen up the dirt that you can then scrub or even wipe away. Now you don’t have to scrub as hard on tile floors or wood floors. However, you shouldn’t use this method on porous stone or unsealed wood floors, because you’ll ruin it. Note that you need to dry wood and other surfaces thoroughly after doing this. Steam cleaners can be used on carpets, but care should be taken and not used on delicate carpets.
2. Kill Mold and Mildew in the Bathroom
Do you have mold growing in the grout between the bathroom tiles? Your steam cleaning machine is a potent weapon against it. The steam treatment will kill it without toxic chemicals, and it will loosen the grip the mold has on the grout. You’ll be able to wipe it away in some cases, but you’ll always have less cleaning you need to do. Make another pass with the steam cleaner, and you’ll sterilize the area after removing most of the mold. Let it dry out, and then you can apply new grout if necessary. Note that steam cleaning should not be used on caulk. An interesting side benefit of doing this in the shower and sinks is that it makes it much easier to scrub away lime deposits and other hard water stains.
3. Clean Glass and Mirrors
You probably hate the streaks left by conventional glass cleaning chemicals, but you may be trying to avoid using cleaning chemicals in general. You can use steam cleaning to clean the glass. A dry steam cleaning machine is ideal in these situations. Run the steam cleaner with a gentle window attachment from top to bottom in stripes as if you’re washing the window with a conventional roller brush. Just lay a towel below the surface to catch the condensate.
4. Sterilize Key Kitchen Surfaces
This task is best done with a handheld dry steam cleaner. You can use the dry steam cleaner to sterilize the inside of your trash bin. This will eliminate the mold and bacteria that make it smell so bad. You can also use the same steam cleaning machine to sterilize cutting boards and work surfaces. This is almost the only method that will kill bacteria in the gashes in the cutting board. Note that you can do the same with the grate on your grill. Take the grate off the grill, lay it over the kitchen sink, and blast it with the steam cleaner. You’ll get the caked on grease and grime off the thing in no time.
5. Clean Your Fridge and Freezer
If you need to defrost your freezer, a steam cleaner is a great tool to do so. This is an excellent solution if the freezer is overflowing because the condensate drain in the freezer is frozen over. You can also use the steam cleaner to kill mold growing in the evaporation tray or storage bins in the fridge. And again, you do so safely without chemicals in the appliance where you’re storing food and drink.
6. Dust Your Fans
If your steam cleaner has a long arm attachment, the steam cleaner is a greater way to dust the ceiling fan. You won’t need a ladder, and you’ll clean the dirt and grime off the fans that tend to collect it. Note that you can do the same thing to dust your baseboards as long as they don’t have water-based paint. Nor should you touch the baseboards with steam cleaner if the wallpaper reaches that point.
7. Disinfect Everything You Don’t Want to Touch
Did someone in the family get sick? You want to sterilize everything they touched so that you don’t touch it and then pick up their germs. The hard part is quickly sterilizing every suspect surface. The solution is your steam cleaning machine. A steam cleaner can sterilize light switches and door knobs quickly. A blast of a steam cleaner in a dirty toilet will sterilize it rather quickly, and it will be much easier to scrape away any human waste stains that remain. Make a pass over the diaper changing table to sterilize it without toxic chemicals.
You can use the same strategy we described for barbecue grills to clean the grime off wire pet cages. It will be both healthier and more effective than spraying it with a water hose. However, you will need to sterilize the nozzles or cloth covers on the steam cleaner before it touches anything else. Conversely, the steam cleaner lets you get bird poop and grime off your patio furniture, too. We aren’t going to recommend blasting clothing with the steam cleaner, because many materials shouldn’t be hit with steam. You’d ruin delicate fabrics, including items that are labeled dry clean only.
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