Keep Fingerprints Off Appliances With One Common Bathroom Item

If you've got kids running around that are highly mobile, they're getting their paw prints and fingerprints all over the house. Little children no taller than the oven will touch that, the fridge, and anything else they can reach, leaving evidence of their playfulness on a near-daily basis all over the surfaces throughout your kitchen. But even without kids nearby, we frequently handle refrigerators, toasters, stand mixers, and stainless steel appliances, and they reveal their unmistakable smear marks through normal use. Luckily, you most likely already have on hand a common bathroom item that quickly removes oily smudges: shaving cream. Remember this as a helpful resource when you've run out of a more "standard" kitchen cleaning product.

We're not sure how effective it will be to try to stop the smudging at the source. Our everyday handling of these objects means we naturally smear and mark them, and kids will be kids. The good news is it's okay to use this hack frequently because it's very gentle. 

You won't need water or a sponge, only a can of shaving cream and two clean microfiber cloths, one to distribute the cream and another to buff the appliance dry. When you've noticed marks, spray on a dollop of shaving cream, then use your first cloth and spend a minute or two cleansing the area. Use a dry cloth to remove all traces of cream and rub it to a sparkly shine.

Part of what makes this work is that shaving cream typically contains ingredients that are similar to soap. We don't think of it this way, but it is, in fact, a gentle cleanser fortified with moisturizers. Specifically, it's packed with stearic acid, which is used to make soap, and a surfactant called triethanolamine, a compound that's also used in soaps that helps with wetting and foaming. Shaving cream is safe for glass, so freely use it on a microwave door or oven door. In addition to appliances, it's perfect to shine up a stainless steel sink, too.