DIY Stainless Steel Cleaner + Cleaning Tips To Save Time

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I’m super excited to share a few spring cleaning tips to save time and an awesome DIY Stainless Steel Cleaner that makes getting the new shine back in your stainless steel quick and easy!  Stainless steel is beautiful in the kitchen, but it can be trying to keep it looking clean and streak free!  If you have stainless steel appliances, you understand how difficult they are to keep clean. Keeping up with little fingerprints isn’t only time consuming it can cost you a small fortune if you purchase stainless steel cleaner which is why I use a natural stainless steel cleaner.
I am so picky when it comes to my house and cleaning it.  There specific products I use for certain tasks and I’m the only person that can do it right lol.  It’s horrible, but I can’t help it.  Nobody ever does it well or uses the right thing but me, and it does make a difference to me, which is why I do it lol.  I guess the control freak inside of me is the reason I’ve been so pumped about there being two kinds of Viva® – one for scrubbing, and the other is SUPER duper soft.

There is nothing worse than trying to scrub on the stainless steal to make it shine again.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spent an hour cleaning my stainless steel sink for it only to look okay. I don’t have that kind of time to spend on just the sink.  I also have an oven, dishwasher, refrigerator and hood that are stainless steel to clean, so I start trying to find something that worked better.  I started trying some of the old time cleaning remedies my grandmother taught me and came up with a winning combination.  It only takes a few minutes to get that new shine back, and there is no major scrubbing involved.

First, it’s an excellent idea to clean or spot clean your stainless steel.  However if your stainless steel item is free of grime, grease, etc. you can skip this step, but you should still wipe it off to remove any dust.

Pre-clean or Spot Clean Stainless Steel

This is perfect for pre-cleaning your stainless steel or for those times when you are running short on time and just need to get things looking their best.

• Viva® Vantage® Towels or Viva® Strong & Soft towels (I used both because I had them, but either one will work like a rockstar)
• Dish soap
• Warm water

Yuck, look at that nasty sink! Let’s make this bad boy shine; it’s a beautiful sink when it’s all clean.

This step is great to help remove grease, grime, and more from stainless steel and all it takes is a drop or two of dish soap in a bowl of hot water (you only need a little dish soap, the mixture shouldn’t be full of suds.). Get your Viva® paper towel wet with the dish soap mixture, wring out extra water and scrub area or entirely until clean. Follow-up using a clean and dry Viva® paper towel and dry stainless going with the grain. If you decide to do this to clean a large area you’ll want to work in sections, so spots don’t dry before you get to them and leave behind spots and streaks!

DIY Stainless Steel Cleaner

This is the bomb diggity way to clean stainless steel, and it doesn’t take long at all!

• White Vinegar  – Cuts grease, disinfect and deodorize
• Coconut Oil – I don’t know what I would do without it.  I love the stuff and at times use it to take off my eye makeup, clean, and of course cook.  You can use coconut oil for all sorts of things –  lip balm, moisturising bath, moisturize skin, clean makeup brushes, use in place of shaving cream, get gum out of hair, carpet and beyond, condition items made of wood (furniture, spoons, etc.), get rid of squeaks, and tons more.
• Viva®Vantage® Strong Scrubs Paper Towels/Viva® Strong & Soft Paper Towel – If you don’t have both kinds of Viva® paper towels it’s totally okay!  Either one of them will get the job done.
• Spray Bottle

Let’s make that stainless steel shine, shall we?

• Ensure that you have gone over the appliance with the soap and water mixture mentioned above.  If stainless steel is free of grease, grime, and yucky stuff, you can skip and start using the homemade stainless steel cleaner.

• Pour vinegar into the spray bottle and liberally spray your appliance with the white vinegar.

• Grab your Viva®Vantage® Strong Scrubs Paper Towels and wipe off going with the stainless steels grain.

• When you are finished, you should notice your stainless steel starting to a bit of the shine back.  Well, don’t stop now I promise it gets MUCH better than this!

• Grab the Viva® Strong & Soft paper towels, tear off a piece and fold the paper towel, so it’s easy to handle.

• Put a small amount of coconut oil in the corner of the paper towel and apply coconut oil in circular motions with a bit of pressure to work in the coconut oil.  Go to the entire sink or appliance leaving behind a light coat of the oil.

• Grab a new paper towel and polish the stainless steel going with the grain.  This will give it some extra shine and make it look fabulous!

• If needed you can grab a fresh paper towel and go over the sink one last time and polish and your stainless steel appliance or sink will shine like new.

So what do you think?  Here is a side by side before and after picture of the stainless steel sink?

I have always loved Viva®, and I’ll continue to keep both on hand because with seven people in my home we use a ton of paper towels and I will use both!  The Viva® Strong & Soft paper towels are super soft towels that can be used for everything from your face and hands to dusting furniture, cleaning countertops and of course polishing that stainless steel! The Viva® Vantage® scrubby towels have an excellent scrubby texture that is somewhat like a terrycloth! It worked great on my stainless steel items as well as my stovetop, bathroom counters, mirrors and more!

Spring Cleaning Tips To Save Time

Make a list and check it twice – Make sure you have everything to get your spring cleaning finished written down it will save you time, and if you are like me you’ll save money too.

Plan where you are shopping – This can also save you time.  If you plan on going somewhere like Walmart you’ll likely save a nice amount of time because you’ll only have to stop at once store rather than two, especially if you also have a few cleaners that are natural and homemade.

Keep your dishwasher clean all year – If you have ever had to clean deep your dishwasher, I’m sure you will agree it’s not a task you want to do monthly or even yearly for that matter.  You can keep up with it by running a product through it that kills nasty bacteria such as E.coli and keeping the outside and edges clean.

Disinfect your sponge – We all know how dirty sponges can get! The good news is you can clean it nightly by just placing it in the microwave for about one minute on high.  Of course, if it is stinky toss it!

Turn up the music – Music makes everything more fun!  When those good jams come on, shake your bum while you work and have a little fun while the kids are gone.  If they are home, grab one of them and make them dance with you, lol.  I love seeing the look on my kids face when I jerk them up to help “dance” which ends up being cleaning lol.

Don’t jump around – This is where I have problems. I like to jump from the Livingroom to the bathroom to the den and gosh who knows I might even end up cleaning my car and forgetting I’m supposed to be cleaning my room lol.  It does make a huge difference and is worth making yourself stay on task you’ll not only save time but do a better job!  It’s easy to forget to clean the bathtub if it takes you three trips to clean it.

Keep up with everything – I find that keeping up with things like the stainless steel makes it easier when it comes time to clean it because there is less build up which means there is often less time-consuming cleaning.

For example, fingerprints are huge in my house and something I deal with all the time.  Rather than putting it off until I can’t take it anymore, I do my best to keep up with it and take care of fingerprints and spots when I notice them.  To get rid of the fingerprints on the stainless steel I use warm water and a damp Viva® Strong & Soft paper towel.  I’ll use the damp paper towel to scrub the fingerprints and a clean paper towel to polish.

Keep Those Sink Drains Smelling Fresh In Two Steps – I ran into Washing Soda several years ago at Walmart and had to give it a try.  Washing Soda is one of my personal favorites because it’s easy to use and you can use it for just about anything – deodorizing drains, grease, stains, walls, tubs, sinks, showers, softening water to give laundry detergent a boost, tiles, and more!

Pick up some Washing Soda on your next trip to Walmart to keep drains smelling fresh.

To freshen drains run warm water for about a 30 seconds, turn water off, and pour 1/2 to 1 cup of Washing Soda down the drain and allow it to sit for 30 minutes or longer.  Then run hot water down the drain for 30 seconds to 1 minute.  If needed you can repeat.

Stock Up On Essentials – There are certain things you know you’re going to need right?  Why not stay stocked up, so you don’t run out and have to make that unplanned run for the store?  With seven people in the house, I stay stocked up on certain things, bathroom tissue being #1 on the list!  See, since my kids tend to waste bathroom tissue I buy them Scott 1000 because you can’t go wrong with Scott® 1000 bathroom tissue because you get quality, performance and, of course, that long lasting value we all want in those 1,000 sheets! Since my husband and I don’t waste bathroom tissue and we pay the bills, lol I get us Cottonelle® because it’s great and has the Cottonelle® CleanRipple.

Whether you want to stock up on Viva® paper towels, Scott® bathroom tissue, Cottonelle® bathroom tissue, products to make natural cleaners or you’d rather grab your cleaners from the store Walmart is your one stop shop and if you’re not in the mood to head to your local store there is always Walmart.com.

Do you have a spring cleaning tip or awesome natural cleaning product you’d like to share with us?  Leave us a comment down below; we’d love to hear from you!

This is a sponsored post written for Viva®.  All opinions are my own.

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