Summertime with the humidity and heat presents different challenges to families than other seasons, especially in places like Texas. Typically families spend lots of time at the pool or the lake. We play outside and sweat profusely. Sometimes it can seem impossible to clean or restore items with our usual cleaning routines. Today we are going to look at amazing cleaning hacks by Melissa.

Melissa Maker owns a professional cleaning company and runs Clean My Space on YouTube. In this video, she tackles a variety of cleaning tasks with helpful tips and natural cleaning recipes. You might want to take notes while you watch.

I don’t want to go over every single cleaning hack by Melissa. Instead, I want to highlight tips that specifically solve summertime cleaning issues.

Stinky Shoes

Whether you sweat in your tennis shoes or walk through puddles of water left over by summer showers, athletic shoes can develop odors. Even after being washed and dried, the shoes can still stink. Melissa recommends placing a cotton ball with 10 drops of essential oil in each shoe and leaving it there while not being worn. Essential oils that are easy to find and are great for odor elimination are: lavender, eucalyptus, lemon, and tea tree. Of course, you can use more than one essential oil and make your own blend.

Additionally, if you hate the sound of your shoes tumbling around in your dryer, Melissa also share two options for this problem. You can easily enjoy fresh footwear throughout the summer with her two cleaning hacks for stinky shoes.

Tired Towels

Beach towels and bathroom towels get used all the time during the summer. Whether we swim, go tubing, or just need to shower more often from being in the summer heat, our towels can appear tired and dingy. Melissa has a simple recipe to refresh our towels and bring new life into them using simple, natural ingredients.

You will wash a load of tired towels twice. In the first wash, use a combination of hot water and one cup of white vinegar. When the cycle is finished, wash again using a combination of hot water and one cup of baking soda. Then you dry the towels as usual. Your towels should no longer be stiff or smelly.

Clean-Smelling Car

During the summer, families seem to spend more time in the car than usual. Whether we take long road trips or day trips, we end up eating, drinking, and spending a lot of time in our vehicle. As a result, there might be unpleasant odors even after you clean out the clutter, throw away the trash, and vacuum the carpet. Melissa recommends pulling out the carpeted floor mats. (This won’t work on plastic ones.) Turn them over and sprinkle an uplifting essential oil on the backside of the mats. She personally likes to use peppermint. Any evergreen, floral, or citrus essential oil lifts up mood.

Hopefully you have learned helpful cleaning hacks from Melissa that will enable you have a clean and fresh home throughout the year, but especially during the summer. She also has a hack for stained and smelly stainless steel cups as well as many more cleaning hacks for your home. Which were your favorite hacks?