8 Surprising Uses For Your Vacuum Cleaner

If you are only using your vacuum cleaner to suck up the crud your family leaves around the house, you’re not getting the most out of it.

The humble vacuum cleaner can be used for much more than getting rid of crumbs, dirt and unwanted My Little Pony accessories.  Try some of these hacks to help with other things you need to do around the house!

1. Make your house smell good

If you have a vacuum cleaner that uses a bag, drop a cotton ball soaked in your favourite essential oil into it.

When you vacuum, the scent will be slowly released into the air, making your house smell great. According to Spotless Vacuum, some cylinder vacuums have a charcoal filter to prevent bad odors from escaping. This is great for homes with smelly pets, but may reduce the effectiveness of this tip.

2. Find something tiny that you’ve lost

If you pop a pair of old tights over the hose of the vacuum cleaner and secure it with a rubber band, you’ll be able to run it under couch cushions and other tricky places to find things like lost earrings.

3. Get rid of carpet dents

If you’ve rearranged the furniture, you often find dents on your carpets where the furniture used to be. Place ice cubes on the carpet dents and wait for them to melt. The ice water will encourage the carpet fibres to return to their original shapes. Next, vacuum over the wet spots, which will bring the fibres back to their upright positions.

4. Inflate an air mattress

If you’ve lost or broken your air mattress’ inflation pump, you can actually use a vacuum cleaner to pump it up. You need to remove the vacuum cleaner’s bag and connect a long, narrow cleaning nozzle which will cause air to shoot out of it and inflate the mattress.

5. Deodorise cushions, mattresses and carpets

Some things just won’t fit in your washing machine, like bulky cushions, carpets and rugs and mattresses. If they’re getting a bit whiffy, sprinkle baking soda on them. Let it sit for about 30 minutes, then vacuum it up.

6. Stop a baby from crying

No, you don’t vacuum the baby! Sometimes, babies can’t deal with rooms that are too quiet and won’t go to sleep. This is because they’ve been inside your womb for 9 months, where it’s actually quite noisy, listening to their amniotic fluid gurgle and the sounds of your body, such as your heart beat. “White noise” has been shown to work a treat for some of these bubs. You can buy white noise machines and apps for your phone, but if none of these things are handy, leaving the vacuum cleaner on will often help them go off to sleep. Not a really good long-term solution of course, but it can help you out if you are in a bind.

7. Vacuum bed sheets and quilts between washes to get rid of pet fur

If you let pets sleep on your bed, and they shed everywhere, run the vac over it to get rid of any excess fur between washes.

8. Use it for dusting

If your vacuum cleaner has a dusting attachment, use it to dust furniture, shelves, books, mirrors, and just about anything else that gathers dust in your house.

Have you ever used your vacuum cleaner in a creative way?