Housecleaning Tips - Grab Dust Hiding in the Kitchen
By Karen Porter

Housecleaning tips usually discuss the importance of dusting your home. But this one gives you the inside scoop about a place you often don't think to include on your dusting route. That's the kitchen.

When you think of cleaning the kitchen you think of grease and food. But you'll find a lot of dust and grime settling in the kitchen on top of the stove hood. Clean this frequently. The easiest way is with a paper towel and some window cleaner or all purpose cleaner. Just make sure you don't have any food sitting on the stovetop or closest countertops while doing this job because some dust will fall there. So after you clean the stove hood, you'll need to clean the stovetop and countertop, also using paper towels and some spray cleaner.

Use a stool to climb up high enough to see and dust the top of the refrigerator. Using your dust cloth, pull the dust in a forward motion to start so that more of it doesn't fall behind the fridge. You want to pull out the fridge to clean behind it, including its coils, and the floor but not as often as you generally just dust the top of the fridge.

Every now and then you'll also want to dust the tops of the top kitchen cabinets, another favorite concealed place for dust to settle. This also calls for a sturdy step ladder. If you have a hand vaccum, you can plug it into the socket on the kitchen counter and just suck up the dirt with the attachments. Otherwise, you can still do it by hand with a just slightly damp cloth to grab the dust.

The tops of the curtains, drapes or valances in the kitchen also catch a lot of dust, especially if you have a ceiling vent blowing near them. Fortunately, a lot of kitchen curtains are easy machine washable styles that also are easy and quick to take down and hang back up. But that doesn't necessarily mean yours are so. You should wash or dryclean your curtains, drapes or valances periodically following their individual care instructions. Consider using the vacuum cleaner dust attachment along with a step ladder for in-between quick dust jobs at the top of the curtains or valance. Or knock the dust to the floor or counter with a hand-held professional feather duster and then vacuum it up.

Another place in the kitchen that cobwebs hide is at the base of the lower kitchen cabinets---like that indented spot where your feet settle when you're using the sink. This is the small inset part usually where the cabinets meet the floor. Reach under there with a broom to knock those cobwebs and debris to the floor. And then sweep the floor.

These housecleaning tips don't cover all the dusty spots you'll find in your home or kitchen, but it's a start. And these are some of the most unobvious places that will keep your dust allergic friends sneezing and itching if you don't tend to these dust hideaways.