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Though it’s easy to overlook, you should clean behind your large appliances on a regular basis. It’s common for lint to fall behind dryers and crumbs and other debris to end up behind stoves, so a good cleaning is more than necessary. If you find this task difficult due to the struggle of having to move such heavy and unwieldy appliances, you’re in luck. There are some handy and pretty simple tools that will help you gain access into these hard-to-reach areas, giving them a good cleaning without straining yourself.
You have a few viable options to get behind and clean your large appliances. One is a basic attachment for your vacuum cleaner’s hose, a vacuum cleaner crevice nozzle like this one on Amazon. These long, slender hose heads are excellent for slipping behind fridges, stoves, and more to suck out all kinds of long-sitting debris. Alternatively, there’s the easy cloth-on-a-stick method. Take a broom handle or similar long, slim object, put a rag on the end, and pull the debris out from behind the appliance. Once it’s out, sweep or vacuum it up and you’re good to go. Speaking of sweeping, sticking a flat broom back there to pull out debris works as well if you’re in a pinch.
Once you get the back of your appliance cleaned up, your work in tight spaces isn’t quite done. Don’t forget to get underneath, which is also easily accomplished without moving anything.
There are tools for underneath too!
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While you’re clearing out behind your fridge, washer, dryer, and other similarly large appliances, it’s worth getting underneath them as well. This is another hotbed for dust and debris build-up, so it’s worth cleaning it out on a regular basis. If you’re interested in a tool for this specific job, there are options like the Shark under-appliance wand attachment. Much like the aforementioned crevice nozzle, this is a thin vacuum hose attachment meant to reach in the tight space between your appliance and the floor. It should suck out everything you can’t see.
If you’re looking for something a little simpler that doesn’t demand a vacuum to attach it to, there are manual under-appliance cleaning tools out there. There’s the retractable gap dust cleaner – one of many great gadgets on Amazon for spring cleaning – and other similarly designed tools. This is essentially a long, flat cleaning cloth on an extendable handle that makes it possible to sweep out debris from underneath your immobile appliances. Once you use it to bring everything out, you can sweep it all up with a regular broom.
No one likes adding to their chore list, but all of these tools make it a bit easier and quicker to clean beneath and behind your largest appliances. After all, these aren’t jobs to overlook given the consequences of allowing build-up around them.
Why you need to clean around large appliances
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Out of sight, out of mind can become the motto when it comes to things being kicked under and left behind appliances. In reality, the last thing you want to do is forget to clean these areas with regularity. For one, it’s just sanitary. Around stoves and refrigerators, foodstuffs can build up and start to smell, worse yet attracting bugs if left alone for too long. There are also possible safety concerns, like in the case of dryers. Lint and hair build-up can present a fire hazard, as the heat the machine gives off can set these flammable materials ablaze.
Equally seriously, there’s a real risk of harming how your appliances function. For instance, many fridge models have their condenser coils situated in the back toward the ground. These are responsible for taking heat pulled from the fridge and sending it out and away from the unit. You don’t want these to fill with dust and debris or else the fridge will have to work harder to remove that heat thanks to the restricted air flow. This leads to higher energy consumption, a larger energy bill, and possibly damage to the unit if the coils are left clogged for too long. You should do your best to prevent clogging in the first place with regular behind-fridge cleaning.
Even products from the most reliable home appliance brands need to be taken care of and cleaned properly. Thankfully, getting areas like the floor beneath and the space behind them cleaned up is indeed possible, even if you can’t move them by yourself.