I'm enjoying sharing little things that are fast and easy to improve the space around you in my periodic "Just One Thing" series. You can see a few other installments from the series here and here.
If you follow me on Instagram, you caught a little glimpse of the cleaning rampage I was on yesterday. It doesn't happen often enough, but when it does, watch out! I focused on the kitchen and sprayed, wiped, vacuumed, and shined every inch! Which leads us to my "Just One Thing" for this week...
Clean your light fixtures!
They're hard to get to and easy to overlook, but don't forget that they need a cleaning periodically too. Yesterday I focused on the kitchen lanterns and the chandy in the breakfast nook. I wiped them down with a swiffer cloth first to remove the dust and spiderwebs. If your light has cloth shades, be sure to give them a good vacuuming off. Then, if you have a fixture with prisms, there's not much more satisfying than shining those beauties up!
The easiest way I've found to clean the prisms is with a thin cotton lint free towel and Windex.
I spray a few squirts of Windex on the towel and then rub the prism off, surrounding it with the towel and wiping all parts. I like to work my way around the towel and use a fresh section every other prism or so. I've also heard of wearing white cotton gloves that are sprayed with cleaner and wiping with those, but I like being able to move the towel around.
All ready for her close-up!
It's a little tedious but almost therapeutic, and that sparkle when you're finished is worth the work. Remind me of that when I get to the Dining Room light...it has about 4 times as many prisms as this one!
Clean light fixtures - Just One Thing that makes a big difference!
Just did that too after I removed all my Christmas bulbs from my linear chandelier. Windex is my best friend…I use it everywhere!
ReplyDeleteIt's the little things that make me happy too!
ReplyDeleteI have been doing that as I de-Christmas my house. Makes such a huge difference! xo Kristin
ReplyDeleteI did mine before having everyone over for the holidays, love the new :) sparkle!
ReplyDeleteI have to get to this! Just finished cleaning my whole house after all the holiday decorations went back to storage! Thanks for the tip dear. And by the way the bar handles in my kitchen are from here...http://www.coolknobsandpulls.com/?ref=adwords&gclid=CPOjn5fy7rsCFa4-Mgoddz0A6A I used nickel and Amber gold in my kitchen. :-)
ReplyDeleteThat light fixture is so, so pretty! This post and the cleaning of your crystals reminds me of being a kid. My mom would remove alllllll crystals from our dining room chandelier before the holidays, soak them in water & ammonia and then we'd sit at the kitchen table and shine them all. It took forever to put them all back on, but WOW went the light went on! So beautiful!!
ReplyDeleteI definitely have to do this to our dining room fixture! And that last photo you took is BEAUTIFUL!
ReplyDeleteoh i have got to do this- the fan blades in our house NEED me.
ReplyDeleteLove this series - you're right that doing just one little thing like that can make such a difference. I definitely need to do some cleaning of our dining room chandy!
ReplyDeleteOh dear...just unwrapped a new dining room chandy with about a million crystals. I am not the best at keeping up with the household deep cleaning, but your shiny prisms have me resolving to get that baby cleaned regularly so it doesn't lose its shine!
ReplyDeleteGreat advice! I recently read an article with research about the human behaviour when someone arrive at unknown house or apartment. It was said that 90% of the people look up, so one of the first things they notice is the type of light fixtures and if they shine and sparkle helps them to create a faster opinion about the place.
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