For you who keep maintaining your look on a daily basis, ironing is one of the mandatory things to do. Just like the other appliances, the more you use your iron, the more it requires some regular maintenance. You can’t expect to have an iron that you can use smoothly without some regular care.
Regular cleaning is necessary to prevent difficult stains, sticky substances, and mineral build-ups. Of course, you cannot iron your favorite garments with a dirty iron.
Luckily, you can use some easy home supplies to clean up your iron so it can work smoothly to bring your garments at their best. Check out our simple DIY tutorial on how to clean an iron that you can add to your home care list right away.
First, you can use baking soda to clean up your dirty iron. Just follow the steps below:
Alternatively, you can also use your regular dish soap to replace the baking soda but it’s only applicable for the non-stick soleplate.
The baking soda or dish soap may not really handle the stubborn stains like the scorch marks. No worries, you can use other easy home supplies to deal with them.
Here’s what you can do:
Before you start, read your care manual to determine whether it’s safe or not to use white vinegar to clean up the iron’s reservoir. If so, then continue to the steps below:
If it’s not safe for you to use distilled white vinegar for this step, you can eliminate it and just use distilled water instead.
The cleaning steps above may not really clean sticky substances like melted plastic and rubber. They will create smudges that are so hard to get cleaned, so you need to do further steps to deal with them.
Luckily, you can simply grab some ice cubes straight from your freezer to clean sticky substances which can’t get away from your iron. Why ice cubes? They work by hardening the sticky substances so you can easily remove them.
Fill your banking pan with some ice cubes and place the iron onto the surface of the ice. Keep in mind to only treat the stained area of the soleplate and don’t submerge the whole iron.
Once you are sure that the sticky substances get hardened, you can scrape them off with a plastic scraper gently. You can also use your fingernails if you don’t have a scraper in hand.
After you have removed them completely, wipe the surface of the soleplate with a washcloth.
(You may also like: How to Care for Leather Decor Items Safely All by Yourself)
There’s no specific rule, actually. You need to clean your iron once you notice any stains or discoloration on its soleplate. You can also check your garments after each ironing to determine whether you need to clean the iron or not.
However, if you don’t frequently use your iron, you can clean it every two or three months. For those who use the iron on a daily basis, you may need to clean it at least once a month. It’s to ensure that your iron provides good convenience for you.
There are some tips that you can do to ensure the soleplate of your iron and steam holes works great over time.