Easily Clean Dirty Walls With An Unexpected Item From Your Bathroom

When you look over your cleaning checklist, no doubt you've got the usual tasks marked down: scrub the toilet, change the sheets, mop the floors. You may even have some bonus tasks listed like reorganizing the pantry and fridge, or descale the showerhead. But have you taken a good hard look at your walls lately? Walls can become absolutely filthy over time. In the bathroom, makeup and body products can cake the walls, while cooking grease and food debris take up residence on the kitchen walls. And this can all be made even worse if you have pets and little ones constantly making contact with your baseboards. To clean your walls, you don't need to spring for a brand new cleaning product, or a traditional cleaning product at all. You just need a canister of foaming shaving cream! 

Shaving cream is basically like whipped soap that you can apply to remove a variety of stains without having to lather it up. It's especially well-suited to walls because it won't immediately drip down the wall, unlike regular dish soap and water, which will leave you rushing to clean areas and with a wet floor. And with many budget shaving creams around, this can be an affordable cleaning product.

To try this shaving cream hack out, you'll just need a lightly damp microfiber cloth and a can of shaving cream. It's important to ring the cloth out until it's almost completely dry because you don't want to oversaturate the area with water, as it leads to wet floors at best, and potential water damage on your paint and floorboards at worst. Basically, any foaming shaving cream you have on hand will work. Do be cautious if it has a ton of heavy moisturizers, as this can leave an oily residue, and be warned to use a lightly scented or fragrance-free option if you don't want the house to smell like shaving cream! 

Apply a bit of foamed shaving cream onto your damp cloth — start out with just a palm-sized lump to start. Gently work the product into the stains and sticky debris such as hair and dirt. Wipe away the residue with your cloth, and rinse as necessary. You may be surprised just how much grime was built up on your walls. 

You may be wondering if using shaving cream as a wall cleaner is a good choice all around, and if there are any downsides. House Digest couldn't find many cons when it comes to this hack, but there are a few things to know before you try it out. For one, it's safe to use on many surface materials, both porous and non-porous, such as wood, glass, carpet, stainless steel, and plastic, and even painted surfaces.

If you're worried about wasting too much product, look at a different foaming cleanser in your home — your hand soap. Foaming hand soap uses less product per wash when compared to liquid soap because the added air increases the volume, so you don't have to worry about throwing excess products down the drain when it comes to cleaning with shaving cream. Do be sure you're using a shaving foam rather than a gel or bubble-less shaving lotion. You want those lovely puffy clouds of shaving foams for this application.