How-To: Clean Your Blinds

My new yearly commitment to cleaning meant that I had to tackle something that I hadn't touched since we moved in nearly five years ago - our blinds:

You can enlarge that photo to see just how dirty our blinds are. But do yourself a favor (or perhaps I should say do me a favor!) and trust me. They.Are.Dirty.

I was pondering how to clean my blinds without killing myself or ripping the blinds out and throwing them away when I found a tutorial online for a simpler way to get them clean.

All I needed were old socks, vinegar and water. I am married to a boy, which means old socks are easy to find and sneak out of the drawer. (Just don't think you can do that without them noticing that their old "favorite" socks are being used in a non-boy approved way.)

Mix equal parts water and vinegar. Slip a sock over your hand, dip into the vinegar water mixture and scrub away.

The sock makes cleaning go quickly because you have a lot of control over where you're focusing your efforts. If you want to get really fancy, you can slip the sock's mate on your other hand and use it to dry as you go.

Pretty soon you'll find yourself with nice, clean blinds:

No matter what, cleaning blinds isn't a fast process - at least, not if you have 19 sets of blinds. Yes, I counted. I have 19 sets of blinds - 11 downstairs, 8 upstairs.

But it's faster and easier than using a rag. It's also less expensive than ripping down the blinds and having to replace them all. So that's something.