With most of my spring cleaning behind me, there are just a few nitty gritty details that I need to finish, like cleaning the AC vents. Here in this photo below, you can see how dusty and greasy the AC cover was and the two white rows are the ones that I wiped with the lemon essential oil.
Spring Cleaning
Do you do any spring cleaning in your household? Let us know down in the comments if you do and if yes, whether you do it all in one day or spread it out?
Even though we grew up in a household that had everything deep cleaned by Resurrection Sunday, I wasn’t able to fit in all of my spring cleaning before Easter and am slowly finishing up. I like to spread it out throughout the spring weeks and do a small amount of cleaning every day. Today I focused on wiping down all of the AC covers and vents. And boy were they dusty, dirty, and greasy!
If you would like a checklist for spring cleaning, check out our Simple Spring Deep Cleaning post. We also put together a post all about Natural Spring Cleaning Essentials.
Why Should I Deep Clean AC Vents?
If you care about the air quality in your home, then you should regularly wash all of the vents/covers in your house. This will help clear our contaminants and make sure you and your family are breathing clean air. It’s a good idea to also in invest in an air purifier, like this AirDoctor. Or a free option is to air out your house daily by opening up the windows. Spring time is a great time to get into a habit of doing that. I like to leave my windows open all day this time of year when the weather is nice. When it’s summertime and too hot or wintertime and too cold, we just crack all of our windows in the morning for like ten minutes to just circulate the air and get some fresh oxygen from the great outdoors.
As a side note, be sure to change out the AC filters every 90 days, or every 3 months, as well. This is a quarterly task that we do in our home because those filters get nasty and we care about the air quality of our home.
Another important chore to do on a weekly basis is just to wipe off any dust that accumulates on all of the surfaces and vacuum all of the floors, especially under beds and furniture to collect any dust bunnies. This all contributes to the air quality inside your home, so be sure to stay on top of wiping the dust in each room.
How to Clean AC Vents Effectively
I started off with good old fashioned soapy warm water and wiped down all of the excess dust and grime. However, there were still streaks of dirt mixed with oils that I just could not wipe off with the wet rag. I tried a cleaning spray, but it still wasn’t perfectly clean.
That’s when I remembered about my favorite magic trick to clean any oily messes with oil. The whole “like dissolves like” is a real cleaning tip to remember! I grabbed some paper towels and dripped a few drops of lemon essential oil and the dirt easily came off!
The grease stains on my AC return vent were instantly wiped off and my house smelled like freshly squeezed lemonade.
Which Essential Oils Should I Use?
My favorite essential oils to use for cleaning purposes are any citrus kind, like grapefruit, orange, or lemon essential oil. However, there are lots of different kinds of essential oils that have great cleaning properties, like tea tree oil, eucalyptus oil, peppermint oil, basil oil, myrtle oil, pine needle oil, or lavender oil.
This is the lemon essential oil that I used to wipe off all of the scum off the vents with success! I don’t think the brand necessarily matters, but I like to purchase Plant Therapy essential oils because they are affordable and actually pure.
This is the end result of cleaning my AC return vent with lemon essential oil. I was so pleased with how easily the essential oil made the vent shine in minutes, that I had to share this tip with y’all!
Before and After
There’s nothing more satisfying than a good before and after photo! Let us know if you try out this essential oil method of cleaning! We’d love to hear from you 🙂
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