Property Maintenance: Top Tips

We require a property to be cleaned to a professional standard at the end of a tenancy, but as furnished flats of ours can include things like saucepans, cutlery and a kettle, we sometimes find that these objects are often forgotten about in the haste to clean more obvious kitchen heavyweights like the fridge and oven.

So here are a few tips on how to clean things up (not just at the end of a tenancy!) and a couple of general household maintenance pointers that the Young London office found quite surprising…

Saucepans
Burnt your dinner slightly? Most people put the food on the plate and stick the burnt pan in hot soapy water. Instead you should fill it with cold water to stop it burning, then once it has cooled down you can let the hot water work its magic.

If it has burnt severely and leaves a stain, pour a can of regular coke into the pan. Let it stand for an hour or two, and with a gentle scrub it should be gone. Your dentist will love you – once you see what a tin of coke can remove you won’t want to drink it ever again!

Kettles
Descaling a kettle is simple. Put in enough white wine vinegar to cover the scaling, and leave overnight. In the morning, empty the vinegar into the sink and fill the kettle with water and boil, discarding the water when done. Repeat.

Mugs
Lots of mugs and teacups are white, but the continued presence of tea and coffee often means stains appear and are hard to remove. If this is the case, wash the mug in question and make a paste from equal parts water and baking soda. Ensure the stains are still wet, and using a cloth rub some of the paste onto the stains and scrub until they disappear. Wash again to remove the paste.

Wooden Kitchenware
Even if your kitchen doesn’t run on a stylistically ‘natural’ theme, wooden spoons are one utensil we all have. They maintain odours, so will smell like whatever you cooked last! Removing the odour is simple – slice a lemon in half and using the cut side rub away and the odour will soon disappear.

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