Things to clean

Things people own and clean. Each one is really several cleaning problems at once, which is why the components that need different treatment have pages of their own.

• Air fryer

  Soils like an oven at a tenth of the size — and the manufacturer is most specific about the heating element, which is the part people are most afraid to touch.

• Baby bottle

  The one object here where cleaning is explicitly not enough, and the national health service says so: a dishwasher cleans feeding equipment and does not sterilise it.

• Barbecue

  An outdoor cooker whose parts are made of different things, where the only surface food touches is the one people clean most aggressively.

• Bath

  Two baths made of different materials want opposite treatment, and they look almost identical once installed.

• Bicycle helmet

  Safety equipment that people clean like sports kit. This register can say what harms it and cannot say what is safe, because the only body it has read is not the manufacturer.

• Chopping board

  The one surface where cleaning is genuinely the control measure — and three university authorities give three different bleach dilutions for it.

• Dishwasher

  The appliance whose commonest complaint — cloudy glasses — the manufacturer identifies as permanent damage rather than dirt.

• Hair straightener

  A ceramic-coated plate that gets to 230°C and collects burnt styling product. The manufacturer's cleaning section is three lines, and the water instruction in it is not the water instruction elsewhere in the same manual.

• Household drain

  The one thing in a house you clean without being able to see, reach or test it — which is why almost every drain hack is really a guess.

• Kettle

  The appliance where limescale appears fastest, because heating hard water is precisely what deposits it.

• Kitchen sink

  Usually stainless steel, and the surface in a house most exposed to the two things that damage stainless steel: chlorides and abrasion.

• Kitchen sponge

  The cleaning tool that is itself the contamination — and the source telling you how to clean it stops short of saying it gets disinfected.

• Laptop computer

  The one object here where the cleaning question and the electrical question are the same question, and where the manufacturer's answer is mostly a list of things not to do.

• Light fitting

  The only routine dusting job in a house carried out at a live mains connection — which is why the instruction that matters is not about a cleaning product.

• Makeup brush

  A tool held together by glue and used on skin, which is why the dermatology answer is about where the water goes rather than what is in it.

• Mattress

  The manufacturer's answer is that you largely do not clean it. You protect it, vacuum it, wash the cover — and above all keep it dry.

• Microwave oven

  The appliance where a dirty door seal is a containment question rather than a cosmetic one, and where the two cleaners most people reach for are both excluded.

• Mirror

  The object whose standard household treatment its own trade body rules out. Vinegar and ammonia are both named.

• Mobile phone

  The most-handled object anyone owns, and the manufacturer's guidance stops at glass, ceramic and metal — which leaves the case and the charging port outside it.

• Oven

  Baked-on grease polymerised by heat, in an enclosure containing several materials with conflicting requirements.

• Paint brush

  The rare cleaning job where the hardest question is not how to get it clean but where the dirty water is allowed to go — and the answer is set locally.

• Patio and driveway paving

  The most-asked outdoor cleaning question in this register, and the manufacturer's own guidance spends more words on how NOT to pressure wash it than on how to clean it.

• Patio furniture

  Not one thing. A frame, a cushion and a cover made of three different materials, weathering outdoors at different rates and wanting three different answers.

• Pillow

  Whether it can be washed is decided by the filling, not by the pillow. Cotton, down and synthetic generally can; foam is wiped, never wetted.

• Refrigerator

  A cold cabinet of plastic liners, rubber gaskets and glass shelves, where the manufacturer's longest instruction is a prohibited list and the strangest is about temperature.

• Spectacles

  Cleaned more often than anything else a person owns, almost always on a shirt tail, which is the one method the lens manufacturer names as damaging.

• Toaster

  A heating element in a slot full of crumbs. The manual's cleaning section sits under an electric-shock heading and a fire heading, which is the correct framing.

• Toilet

  Glazed china that tolerates more than people think, surrounded by fittings that tolerate much less. The mistake is treating it as one surface.

• Tumble dryer

  The one appliance whose routine cleaning task is printed under a fire-hazard heading rather than under care and cleaning.

• Washing machine

  The appliance that cleans everything else, and the one whose own cleaning problem has actually been measured. The contamination is not spread evenly, which changes what to do about it.

• Wheelie bin

  Filed by readers as a cleaning problem and answered by the collection authority as a waste-handling one. The cleaning instruction is real and it is one line of a much longer answer.

• Window

  Three surfaces in one opening — glass, frame and hardware — and the manufacturer gives each of them a different answer, including one that must not meet water at all.

• Window blind

  One product name over at least three materials that want opposite treatment. The wooden ones must stay dry; some metal ones can be put in a bath of water — as long as the headrail is kept out of it.

• Wood-burning stove

  A solid-fuel appliance whose parts need genuinely different treatment: painted steel body, ceramic glass door, and a firebox that should mostly be left alone.