The kitchen is probably the most frequented room in your house, which means the countertop is the place where everything happens. That means you should have a good idea of how to keep yours clean.
Cleaning Your Countertop: The Supplies
Here’s what you need to keep your kitchen countertops shiny and sparkling:
Cleaning cloths
The best kind of cloth to use is a microfiber cloth, but you can also use paper towels or a simple kitchen towel. For the job, you’ll want at least two towels because you’ll need one to apply the soap and rinse off the suds and one to dry the surface after you’ve scrubbed it.
Dish soap
Usually, the type of dish soap you have sitting by your sink will work just fine for this task.
Disinfectant
Cleaning and disinfecting are two different tasks. Since your kitchen countertops are such a high-touch area, regular disinfecting is wise—especially if you handle raw meat often. Just be careful: if you’ve got countertops that are made of natural stone, you’ll want to avoid disinfectants that include acidic substances like bleach, vinegar, or citrus.
Sealer
Natural stone countertops are porous materials, which means they require sealant—and that sealant requires refreshing every so often to maintain a protective layer for your stone.
Cleaning Duration
How long your countertops take to clean depends on how big they are, the material that they’re made of, and how often you clean them. A good deep clean takes somewhere around a half hour. A regular, once-a-day wipe-down shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. But if you’ve got especially stubborn stains, you might expect to be there for a bit longer.
How to Clean Your Countertop
The first thing you’ll want to do to get the cleanest countertop possible is to wipe it free of any stray dirt and crumbs.
After the crumbs are gone, find the cloth you want to use and add some dish soap to it, then get the cloth damp. Then, wipe down the counter! You can always reapply dish soap if you run out before you’re done cleaning.
Once you’ve scrubbed the counter, rinse out your cloth until all soap residue is gone, then get it wet again with warm water. Rinse all the suds off the countertop and wipe it dry immediately after with your dry cloth.
After the countertop is dry, you can take that time to disinfect it. Leave the sanitizer on for as long as it needs in order to do its job (somewhere around two minutes or so), then wipe it off. And remember—if you’re working with a natural stone countertop, don’t sanitize with anything that contains heavy acids because that can damage the sealer on your stone or even the stone itself. If you’re worried, do a spot test before wiping down the entire countertop.
Your Bright and Shiny Countertop
At Wallstone Stone Countertops, we know that your countertops are important to you—and that means you should know how to keep them as beautiful as possible. If you have any further questions about your countertop’s cleaning routine, be sure to reach out to us.
