housethingsgoing
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat
Our favourite home cleaning finds for our 4RM flat
31
Who knew cleaning the house could be so complicated? We had only 3 household cleaning products when we first moved in - an all purpose spray, a floor cleaner, and a toilet bowl cleaning solution. We thought minimalist house design = minimalist cleaning effort LOL #famouslastwords It didn't take us too long to realise that those were not enough LOL - our house was unfortunately not too clean (oops!) for the first few weeks until we started getting more products. So here's our little guide to first time homeowners and house cleaners who are about to move in - you might need some of these products too! 
We started noticing that our bathroom sink was draining slower and slower a few months after we moved in - but we could never find out what was wrong with it, even after removing the stopper and staring into the deep unknown of the pipe (not recommended, smell was bad) This solved the problem! Whenever we feel like our sink is draining slower (or if we just feel like it), we put a capful of this into the drain, let it sit and then flush it down with hot water. WORKS EVERYTIME. (and is cheaper than hiring a plumber) So yes, 'bustering' our sink and toilet drains are now part of our regular house maintenance routine. 
This didn't come cheap so we use it sparing BUT it's really good for removing stains in the kitchen - we use it everywhere from pots to plates and even countertops and other surfaces. We use baking soda (it's more affordable) for the everyday stains and burns, but when baking soda fails, this is when we bring out the MIGHTY BUBBLE POWDER. It works with hot water and has been such a lifesaver - can't count how many burnt pots it has saved oops. We also heard it can be used with clothes but we haven't tried that function out yet :p 
We're embarrassed to say that we once saw mould growing on the silicon grout in our master bedroom despite our... active efforts to keep the place clean and dry. And this is our solution to the mouldy grout! It's super cheap (less than $1.50 for the whole tube!), has no smell and magically removes black mold overnight. We wouldn't say it leaves the grout sparkling clean and looking new, but our grout lines always look way cleaner after we apply this. The tube comes with this nozzle application thing, but Duck has issues using it #userproblems so she prefers to apply it using a cotton bud or tiny spoon. 
If you are a short person (like Duck), a lazy person (also Duck) and prone to falling off ladders (still Duck), then you absolutely need this fan duster! The ceiling fans in our house are all very well utilised, and they get dusty very quickly. Instead of having to climb onto chairs and ladders to clean the ceiling fans in our house, which is rather troublesome and can be dangerous, we just use this fan duster to clean our fans! It's essentially a fluffy mop pad that's mounted on a long rod and can be bent to fit the shape of your fan. We paid $11.99 for this, but the convenience is worth about $11,999 to us HAHA. 
Shower screen owners - if you're tired of scrubbing water marks like us, then spraying this after your shower helps to reduce the formation of the marks and stains on your shower screen. This works great and really does make our shower screen look cleaner (although there will still be marks around the corners/edges unless you are super diligent making sure every part of the screen is covered with the spray) (Helps that it smells good too!) 
Your dishwasher cleans the dishes for you - but do you clean your dishwasher? We never knew dishwashers needed to be cleaned until we got one and started reading up on dishwasher maintenance oops. Apart from just checking the dishwaher chute to make sure nothing's stuck inside, we also use one of these every 3-4 months - just pop it into your empty dishwaher and run a full cycle! It apparently removes limescale and build-up on parts that may not be visible/accessible by manual cleaning. (PS. This is available at Cold Storage/on Shopee but you can buy this from Taobao or larger JB supermarkets for some extra savings) 
I feel like we're quite late to the game because we just discovered this innovation last year LOL but it's really cool! We're pretty used to the normal bottle/mug/cup cleaners - the sticks with a brush at the end that we use for cleaning bottles. BUT this one is cool because it comes with a silicon grippy brush thing at one end that allows you to scrub the RIMS of your bottle/cup. The tiny brush at the end is also great for cleaning the rubber inner seals of tupperware and vacuum bottles (iykyk). I feel like I need another one of these to clean the rubber rim on my washing machine but is that really something people do? - leave us a comment if you've been doing this!
28 August
