Don’t forget appliances in your cleaning regime

When it comes to keeping our home appliances clean, there are a few general principles, and a few things that are specific to particular appliances.

Firstly, to keep whitegoods looking white, virtually anything goes. That is, the white paint on our fridges and washing machines is a modern baked enamel or two-pack that is resistant to virtually any chemical cleaner you buy from the hardware store. So any hard-surface cleaner is fair game.

One good option is metho — it’s cheap and effective, and very good at removing general grime. For grubby fingermarks, nothing works better than an oven cleaner. My favourite is Easy-Off, as it dispenses a fine mist that gives very good coverage. It’s also good for getting fingermarks off light switches.

For the inside of the fridge (crisper trays and so on), an excellent choice is the Orange Power range of cleaners. They use d-limonene as the cleaning agent, which is a natural extract from orange peel that has remarkable cleaning properties. Also, it leaves behind a fresh citrus-type smell, which is so much better in a food-storage area than the smell of bleach.

As far as washing machines go, people sometimes complain of a build-up of grime in the bowl that can stain their clothes. In my experience this is exclusively a problem caused by the use of either cheap brands of washing detergent or the use of cold water.

The reason for this is that washing powders are very sophisticated products that can contain up to 10 different components. One of these is an anti-redeposition agent, whose job is to stop grime that has been removed from clothes depositing somewhere else in the system — either on to clothes or the bowl. Cheaper detergents don’t tend to have these, and as well as that, hot water is better at keeping this grime in suspension and removing it from the system.

So the bottom line is that to remove grime from your washing machine, give it a hot cycle with Omo and the problem will be solved.

What about grime build-up on irons? Your best friend here is good old soda ash (washing soda), which is available from the supermarket.

To clean your iron, moisten a nylon scourer, dip it into a bowl of washing soda and rub it on to the ironing surface.

The trick is to have enough water to make it into a paste, and you get the combined effect of the chemical cleaning as well as its scouring abilities as a powder.

You’ll see all the grime appear in a trice, then all you need to do is rinse off the washing soda.

Always iron a rag or towel afterwards and blast the steam a few times, as washing soda can sneak up into the steam holes.

For more of Dr Chemical’s advice, visit drchemical.com.au.