8 Terrible Cleaning Mistakes People Had No Idea They Were Making

Let’s talk about all the terrible cleaning mistakes people had no idea they were making!

When you think about making your home pretty and magazine-worthy, you don’t have in mind the potential mistakes you could make while tidying up, right? Are there such things as cleaning mistakes? Well, while this activity seems pretty straightforward, it is not that simple.

Let me tell you a story. I studied abroad, and when I was in middle school, I had to stay in a dorm because the school was far away from my parents.

It’s safe to say that the pedagogue wasn’t a fan of mine. Whatever the girls in the room were doing, and although she saw me reading when she entered the room, she would scream at me that I was too loud.

I’m not proud of what I’m about to say, but the girls and I were so sick of her annoying comments that we moped the floor with
a furniture cleaning solution (Pledge). Oh, yes, the floor was extremely slippery, and she was always wearing tights, so it was pretty hard for her to keep her balance.

We didn’t want to hurt her, but we wanted to see her struggling to walk, and we succeeded. When she once came to check on us and took her shoes off, she couldn’t walk straight. When she asked us what was wrong, we told her we had made some cleaning mistakes and the floor was now slippery.

Well, many decades later, I don’t think someone would love to make the same “cleaning mistakes” we did, which is why I decided to write this article now. Besides injuring someone, these cleaning mistakes could also lead to damage to your home, and that’s going to take time and effort for repairs.

Without further ado, let’s kick these missteps out of our lives, and let’s learn more about these cleaning mistakes. Your home will look and feel a lot nicer after this!

1. Painted surface and oven cleaner

If you don’t have an oven cleaner at home, then what are you doing? It’s way harder to get rid of the grime and burnt-out food in the oven without the proper cleaning solution, and with a generic one that works for your cook or any other things, you’ll spend more time scrubbing.

If you want to make your oven sparkle, this is the best cleaning solution you’ll ever need! Click here to get the real deal, because it works wonders! However, don’t use it to clean something that’s painted with it, because this is so strong that it is going to remove all the paint.

2. Using bleach wrong

Using bleach works wonders for a clean and fresh home, but you should use it carefully because you risk hurting yourself otherwise. As CDC experts say, proper ventilation is mandatory when you clean something with bleach.

I forgot about it once, and I didn’t open my window when I was cleaning the bathroom. I felt like I had a chemical irritation in my nose and throat, and it felt like a terrible cold for a few days. It was one of the worst cleaning mistakes I’ve ever made!

So the next time you use bleach, make sure you’re safe first, so if it’s possible, open the windows or run a fan, and wear a mask and a pair of rubber gloves for extra safety. Other than that, don’t forget to wash your hands after you’re done using it!

3. Using lemon oil on vinyl

The lemon essential oil has a fantastic scent that can freshen up every room, and it works wonderfully when it comes to getting rid of grime, thanks to its impressive acidic properties.

However, if you’re not careful with this, it can damage your surfaces. One time, my sister-in-law wanted to surprise her husband with a nice-smelling kitchen, and she dripped lemongrass essential oils on her gorgeous checkerboard laminate floors right before mopping.

As you can imagine, she didn’t get the desired effect. Her partner was indeed surprised, but not the way she was expecting him to be because the strong oil burned through the finish and left some terrible drip marks all over. Bad, bad cleaning mistakes—what can we say?

4. Drying wet upholstery with a hair dryer

Some people were disappointed to discover that drying a wet spot on their mattress or upholstery using a hot hair dryer is one of the worst cleaning mistakes they could make.

Whether you clean your upholstery and now it is wet or you spilled something on it, the hot setting isn’t going to be much help because it can burn a hole if you’re not careful.

Avoid the damage by letting your things air dry and sticking a fan in the room to speed up the process, and if you want to use your hair dryer, make sure it’s not set on the hottest option.

5. Nonstick pans and the dishwasher

Do you have any nonstick pans and pots in your kitchen? Then do yourself a favor and hand-wash them. You might love your dishwasher because it saves you the trouble of doing the job yourself, but it can remove the nonstick coating. If you’re not sure how it’s best to wash your kitchen utensils, you’d better read the manufacturer’s instructions.

Keep reading, because we have many other cleaning mistakes to discuss!

6. Vinegar and stone surfaces

If you have used vinegar before, you already know how acidic it is, but thanks to these properties, it can help get rid of mineral deposits from hard water. However, don’t even think about using it on floors, tiles, and stone counters because you might ruin them.

Some people left vinegar on a stone shower floor while trying to remove lime deposits, but they ended up ruining the stone. If you don’t want etching stones in your home, you’d better stick to special products made for this material.

7. Bleach and toilet tank

As helpful as bleach can be when it comes to making your home sparkle, it is also one of the main causes of several cleaning mistakes. We already talked about its magical powers, especially for getting rid of germs and bacteria in the bathroom, but if you’re not extra cautious with it, you can cause serious damage.

I talked to different people about the cleaning mistakes they made so I can share with you multiple experiences and someone told me that they put bleach into their toilet tank and then left home for a month.

Maybe they expected that the toilet tank would be shiny and fresh when they got back, but the situation was completely terrible. The bleach was so powerful that it ate parts of the toilet, and it ran constantly for a month.

And that’s why, my friends, it’s important to read and follow the instructions on your bleach-based cleaners and avoid using these products on surfaces that could suffer major damage.

8. Dish soap and the dishwasher

If you have a dishwasher at home, you already know that it requires dishwasher-specific soap. Well, someone forgot about that and thought that adding regular dish soap to their gadget wasn’t going to cause a problem.

Wrong! They didn’t know what was coming! That normal dish soap leaked out of the appliance straight onto the kitchen floor and made a foamy and thick mess. It sounds like an episode from “Tom & Jerry”, don’t you think?

There are many other cleaning mistakes you could make without even knowing, so if you’d like to read part. II, leave a comment down below and I’ll take care of it! Until next time, here’s another fantastic post for you to check out: 9 Effective Steps to Having a Moth-Free Wardrobe