Why You Should Keep A Pack Of Toothpicks In Your Cleaning Cabinet

If you strive for a clean home, you know that there are certain places that are harder to reach than others. For instance, there are the spaces that are physically difficult to access, like behind the toilet or stove. However, there are also the areas that are simply too tiny to get into with traditional cleaning tools like a sponge or cloth. The good news is that a simple household staple can be turned into a versatile cleaning ally, which will help you reach those infinitesimally small spots: the toothpick. These tiny skewers can be used to fully detail your kitchen and bathroom, so make sure you keep some in your cleaning cabinet.

Toothpicks may be repurposed around your home and garden for a number of purposes, but you may not have yet discovered that they are the perfect cleaning tool. Since they have a tiny point and some length to them, they can reach into spots that your fingers or a larger cleaning brush (even an old toothbrush) cannot access. There are probably countless spaces in your home that come to mind as small enough to need a toothpick's intercession — details on your oven, faucet heads, nooks and crannies in the dishwasher, and around your bathroom sinks. Fortunately, these cleaning tools are affordable enough to use on the regular without breaking your budget. If you don't already have toothpicks in your home, you can buy a pack of 800 for less than $2.50 at Walmart.

Given that the kitchen is the heart of the home and, for many families, facilitates multiple meals a day, it's only natural that it will get grubby and grimey pretty quickly. A toothpick, however, comes in handy for cleaning the crevices that are too small to clean with a scrubbing pad or sponge. If you have noticed that the sides of your oven or the stovetop knobs are looking a little less than pristine, you may need to grab a toothpick. Begin by spraying down the surface with something to loosen the baked on grease and debris, such as vinegar, and then angle the toothpick so that it can scrape away the grime. Keep a paper towel handy, too, so that you can wipe off the toothpick after a few minutes and avoid transferring the debris to another spot. You could also wrap the toothpick in a piece of paper towel.

A toothpick can also be highly useful for detailing the inside of your dishwasher to keep it working like new. Work carefully to avoid damaging any components, but you can safely use the pointy tip to gingerly clean out any blocked holes on the spray arms or nozzles that have become gunked up with food over the weeks. In fact, Bosch specifically recommends removing the spray arms, using toothpicks to clean out where the jets spray from, and then rinsing them with water.

Other than the kitchen, the bathroom requires the most dedication to keep clean. Since it is exposed to so much water and is the area in the home where we clean ourselves, it is to be expected that these rooms can quickly get gross. Shower heads are notorious for getting blocked with hard water deposits as well as mold. Luckily, these are easy problems to solve with a toothpick. Begin by soaking the showerhead in vinegar. You can either remove the head and soak it in a bowl, or fill a plastic bag with the vinegar and tie it around the component for several hours. Once the buildup has become loosened, you can carefully use this kitchen staple to clean your shower head by pushing it into the grime-filled holes before rinsing it thoroughly. Be careful to not puncture or tear the silicone that surrounds each hole.

Just like in the kitchen, using a paper towel-wrapped toothpick is an ideal way to clean around the bathroom faucets or in other corners that are difficult to reach like around shower tiles. One commonly forgotten area is the uppermost portion of the sink, which in some bathrooms is shrouded from view, where the countertop extends over the sink basin. A toothpick wedged up in this space and diligently scraped should remove a huge amount of debris. Remember to spray the area with a cleaner first and rinse well with water afterward.