This Common Household Product Cleans Baseboards Like A Dream
Your baseboards might be an afterthought most of the time, but these pieces can make or break your home's overall cleanliness rating. You can spend all day dusting, mopping, sweeping, and wiping down surfaces, only to look at the finished product and feel like something's off. Do the walls look dingier, or is it the floors? It might not be either, but instead your baseboards, covered in dirt and grime, collected over time.
While you might not want to wipe down your baseboards on the regular, Pro Housekeepers recommend cleaning these wall trims at least once every month. Though it might be your least favorite household task, a TikTok hack could make it a little easier. Known as @vicsauce on the platform, TikToker Victoria E. consistently offers homeowners tips and tricks to make their chores a little less daunting. Her solution for scrubbing baseboards won't only leave them looking fresh, but could help keep dust and grime away for longer.
The fabric softener cleaning hack
In TikToker Victoria E.'s video, she lays out a bowl of warm water and a cloth, then adds fabric softener. Her voiceover notes, "I know none of us like cleaning baseboards but sometimes it has to happen — sometimes, not often." She uses the cloth to dip into the mixture before applying it to the baseboards, working her way across to remove dirt, dust, and grime. According to @vicsauce, "fabric softener has an anti-static effect so it keeps away pet hair and dust." By using this concoction, you're preserving your baseboards a little longer, keeping detritus from collecting as quickly.
In order to get the ideal mixture, Start with the Bed suggests adding 4 ounces of fabric softener to a spray bottle. In Victoria E.'s video, she adds some to a bowl of warm water, but you can also opt for a spray nozzle to help with a more targeted application. If you're sticking with this option, add 20 ounces of water to the softener, then shake. Select a clean, dry cloth to wipe away the mixture, and enjoy the fresh scent.
How to elevate this hack
This TikTok hack makes cleaning your baseboards easier and more effective, but there are other things you can do to help speed up the process. The Maids recommends saving the cleaning of baseboards until last, because dirt and dust from the walls, shelves, ceiling, fans, and surrounding floors will all accumulate on them. If you clean them first, you might end up having to do it again thanks to gravity and any fans or breeze that blows around detritus. If you own a vacuum cleaner with a brush attachment, you can use this to pick up excess hair and dust first.
You can start with the scrubbing once the sweeping or mopping is done, and focus on baseboard stains, scuffs, and marks next. Once those are removed, you can also use a Q-tip to access the corners and harder-to-reach spots along the boards. Lastly, use the mixture and cloth to wipe everything down and prevent further buildup coming back too soon. This hack should make one chore a lot less stressful and a lot more conducive.