A recent survey has found that many of us don’t regularly clean our home appliances and have to replace them more frequently as a result. Are you guilty?
A friend was all set to buy a new washing machine because it was leaking, when someone suggested she clean out the detergent drawer – a job she’d never thought to do before. After wiping away the soap residue, the washing machine was as good as new and she saved herself hundreds of pounds in the process.
Similarly, my housemates and I recently had to throw out our microwave due to rust forming inside the cooking cavity. This could have been prevented by cleaning it out every time we used it (or at least more regularly than the odd time something spilled inside).
This got me thinking: do we even know, let alone do, all the maintenance jobs our appliances need to function at their best?
Clean living
We all expect to just plug in our expensive household appliances and for them to work for years without any problems.
Manufacturers will often tell you how to best look after your new product, with details buried in a lengthy instruction manual. However, many of us don’t ever bother to read these and it just doesn’t occur to us that our appliances might need a bit of TLC from time to time.
Then there are the products where you know full well that you have to do certain tasks to ensure they keep working. Despite your best intentions, you never find time to actually do these, then wonder why it packs up prematurely.
A good example here is with the filters on a vacuum cleaner – you might put it off until you notice your machine slowing down or failing to work properly, rather than doing it regularly to prevent problems in the first place.
Of course, there are those who make a habit of checking, cleaning and otherwise maintaining all their appliances, preventing most of the common faults that cost money.
But as a recent survey of more than 1,000 UK adults revealed, 71% of Brits admit they don’t regularly clean their home appliances. And nearly a quarter admitted they replaced their appliances more frequently as a result.
How would you sum up your approach to maintaining and cleaning your household appliances? Are you fastidious about it or somewhat lackadaisical?
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