The other morning, as I was going around trying to get just a little bit of cleaning done before Kennedy got bored of playing Minecraft, I stumbled upon something that worked really well for polishing up my stainless steel refrigerator. Like, really really well.
My fridge had about 3 weeks worth of crusty Summertime finger prints all over it and my usual glass cleaner and cloth just weren’t cutting it. The fingerprints remained.
I posted on The Creek Line House facebook page to see what thoughts some of my fantastic readers had on the issue. Also to see if I was the last person on earth to figure this little trick out and basically to find out if anyone really cared. 🙂 It turns out this is a pretty hot subject, and I even learned a ton of other neat stainless steel cleaning tips in our discussions as well! I’ll share some of those with you in a minute. But first, my own new favorite method for polishing stainless steel!
Here’s the before shot.
I know. It’s pretty much perfect. The thing is, after I discovered this trick late last week, I promised that I would share it on the blog early this week, thinking that by now I would have tons of new smudges and finger prints to show off. It turns out that this little trick also helps prevent finger prints from showing up in the first place. So there ya go! The learning continues! Of course, I completely neglected to take pictures the first time around when the fridge actually was in terrible shape, because I had no idea that I was going to find something that would actually work!
So when the glass cleaner, regular purpose cleaner, plain water, and all the other usual suspects did nothing to clean off my crusty finger prints, I got a little desperate and just started trying stuff. One of the things I tried was this:
It’s a wood and furniture polish that I applied with just a plain soft wash cloth that I use for cleaning! Bingo! That’s what you need to be reaching for next time your appliances need a bit of a shine! It cut right through those finger prints like nobody’s business. The kind of polish that I use is an eco-friendly polish from the ECOSENSE brand made with carnauba wax and other natural ingredients and it’s just awesome for all kinds of polishing around the home, including this new use! If you’d like some more information about finding this ECOSENSE furniture polish, just leave me a comment or send me an email and I’ll give you some details. I know I’ve had quite a few questions about where to find a good wax-based polish like this and they’re a bit hard to come by. 🙂
So here’s how the fridge looks now:
*Ping*! (That was the sound of extreme shine, by the way.) It’s even better than it looked on the showroom floor in the furniture store! I especially love the fact that even though we’re not careful around this fridge and get our messy hands all over it, hardly any fingerprint marks show up at all. There’s almost no maintenance to this thing now!
Wood polish. Who’d have thunk it?
And just because I love a good cleaning tip, here are some of the other great ideas that the good people of Facebook shared with me the other day!
– Windex
– Dawn, Vinegar and Hot Water mixed together
– Mr. Clean Sponges
– Coconut Oil
– Lemons
– WD40
– Hydrogen Peroxide
– Olive Oil
– Pledge
– Baby Wipes
– Baby Oil
Isn’t it interesting to see what others are using for things like this around their own homes? It’s kind of amazing to me that we’re all trying all of these very different ideas, all of us trying to conquer the battle of the stainless steel fingerprint!
Well, there you have it, my own favorite tip, and the favorite ideas of many others as well! You should now be fully prepared to have the shiniest, happiest-looking kitchen ever!
Happy Polishing!
MORE EASY CLEANING IDEAS LIKE THIS
- Simple Things I do Everyday to Make My Home Stay Clean
- Cleaning and Deodorizing Jar Lids for Re-Use
- How to Clean a White Porcelain Sink
- How to Clean Pet Beds Naturally
- The Creek Line House Cleaning Archives
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.