Last Night’s Party: 8 Hacks to Make Morning-After Clean Up a Breeze
You had a rager, and it was amazing! Everyone had an amazing time (you think?) and while your home isn’t horribly trashed, there are definitely some lingering smells and stains that need to be handled, stat. We turned to DIY host of morning show FABLife, Leah Ashley, to find out how to fix those post-party problems without forking over a fortune.
For some reason, the table in the dining room looks as though the cat went on a skating session, claws out. Before you calculate the cost of a professional refinish, Leah suggests using a walnut—yes, the kind you eat—to remove scratches in wood. “Just rub the raw walnut over the scratches a few times and they will magically disappear.”
You’ve had the windows open for hours now but the whole place still smells like a brewery. “Put chopped up lemons or limes (maybe leftover from the drinks the night before) and drop down the garbage disposal,” says Leah. “Turn on the garbage disposal with the citrus inside to quickly freshen the smell of your kitchen.”
Before you throw away all that vodka muttering to yourself ‘never drinking again’, you may want to utilize the booze for something completely surprising! Ashley says you can get rid of lingering cigarette smells by “spraying leftover vodka on your clothes and throwing them in the dryer.” Crazy, but true!
Instead of pouring all that flat cola down the drain, you can actually put it to good use, says Leah. For example, cleaning the toilet: “Just pour it in, wait an hour or so. Then flush.”
Why even have coasters if no one bothers to use them? It may seem like too little too late, but Leah says you can actually get rid of water marks on your wood tables by holding a hair dryer on the ring on high for about 30 minutes. “The stain disappears in front of your eyes,” she says.
Red wine is the absolute worst in terms of stains, but all is not lost if someone’s Malbec goes all over your fancy rug. “Just mix equal parts dish washing liquid and hydrogen peroxide,” Leah says. “Pour mixture directly onto the stain and watch it vanish.”
Well, it’s a process, but it works, according to Leah. “You can remove chewing gum and the resulting stain by first using a knife and an ice cube in a plastic bag (to harden the gum) to scrape off the excess gum from the upholstery. The ice cube freezes the gum which will make it easier for the majority of it come off.” And if this doesn’t fully work? Don’t freak out. “If there is a stain left behind, spray it with an upholstery cleaner and rub it with a lint free cloth,” she says.
You can apply the same principles for wax spillages, and it works particularly well for smaller items that you can pop in the freezer because the wax hardens and chips right off. “I’ve done this a lot and it works great for candle holders that have melted wax running down the sides,” says Leah.
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