How To Deep Clean Your Home
You clean the counters. You mop the floor. You scrub the toilet. But some of the dirtiest places in your home may be the ones you’re cleaning right past.
When NSF International swabbed 30 household surfaces across 22 families, the kitchen—not the bathroom—emerged as one of the biggest germ spots. The toilet seat, meanwhile, was among the cleaner surfaces tested. The real trouble spots are less obvious. They’re the edges, gaps, damp corners and awkward surfaces that are easy to clean around but harder to actually reach.
Here are 10 worth checking:
1. Around and Behind the Toilet
The toilet seat gets a bad reputation, but flushing can send microscopic droplets into the surrounding area, where they settle on nearby floors and surfaces. The narrow space behind the toilet is also exactly the kind of spot that’s easy to skip with a standard mop.
2. Baseboards and Floor Edges
Dust, pet hair, dander and allergens naturally collect where floors meet walls. Even after the middle of the floor looks spotless, edges and corners can tell another story. Baseboards present another challenge: they’re just above floor level, where most vacuums and mops aren’t designed to clean.
3. Around the Kitchen Sink
According to the NSF, kitchen sinks and faucet handles are some of the most bacteria-laden surfaces in your home — far worse than anything in the bathroom. Think about what passes through one: raw food, dirty dishes, food scraps and standing water—and it makes sense. And the mess doesn’t stay in the basin. Splashes can carry water, food particles and resident onto the countertops and floors around it.
4. Around the Trash Can
This one's obvious. Drips run down the side of the bag, liquids pool underneath and because the bin usually sits flush against a wall or tucked into a cabinet, whatever collects behind it stays there. It's also where wet and dry messes overlap — sticky residue right next to dust and crumbs — which makes it hard to clean in one pass with most tools.
5. Cabinet Fronts and Around the Stove
Think about everything you touch while making dinner: raw chicken, drawers, cabinet handles, the refrigerator, the stove. Grease, fingerprints, and food residue build on those vertical services, but they’re neither the floors nor countertops, so they often fall between the cracks of a normal cleaning routine.
6. Around Your Pet’s Bowl
NSF ranked pet bowls among the germiest household items tested. The floor around them gets its share too: spilled water, scattered food, fur, and drool often collect against walls and in corners. And because water bowls keep the area regularly damp, it’s one spot worth cleaning beyond the obvious crumbs.
7. Bathtub Ledges and Shower Curbs
Soap residue, skin oils, and constant moisture can create stubborn buildups on shower curbs and bathtub ledges. They’re also awkward to clean: too high for a floor cleaner, too low for a quick wipe with a paper towel.
8. Windowsills and Window Tracks
Condensation, dead bugs, pollen, mold spores and dust settle into narrow window tracks. Add condensation, and what starts as loose debris can turn into stubborn grime.
9. Under Low Furniture
Out of sight really can mean out of mind. Dust, hair, crumbs and allergens continue accumulating underneath sofas, beds, and cabinets even when the visible floor gets cleaned regularly.
10. Your Floor Cleaner
The last dirty place might be the thing doing all the cleaning.
Wet floor cleaners pick up dirty water, food, hair and debris as they work. If clean and dirty water aren’t kept separate—or the brushroll itself stays dirty or wet – the tool you’re relying on to clean can become part of the problem.
What If the Problem Isn’t How You Clean – But Where Your Cleaner Can Reach?
Behind the toilet, along baseboards, under furniture, cabinet fronts, inside tight corners. There’s a pattern. These are places many of the tools we clean with weren’t designed to reach.
That’s the problem Shark® AquaReach™ was built to solve.
It vacuums and mops everyday hard-floor messes, then transforms with an extendable wand to take that same cleaning power beyond the floor. With attachments designed for scrubbing stains and reaching tight spaces, it can tackle everything from baseboards and cabinet fronts to bathroom ledges and the spaces under furniture or around toilets.
It keeps clean and dirty water in separate tanks and continuously refreshes its brushroll while you clean. AquaReach Pro takes it further with a Total Self-Cleaning and Drying System that rinses the brushroll and dries it with heated air up to 160°F, removing up to 99.9% of bacteria from the brushroll.* Shark® AquaReach™ ($399.99) and AquaReach™ Pro ($529.99) are available now at SharkNinja.com and TikTok Shop.
*Based on IEC 62885-6 5.1, AquaReach wand vs. nozzle. Bacterial reduction on brushroll tested in external lab under controlled conditions. In-home results may vary. When used as directed.
Sources: NSF International Household Germ Study; Hygiene Council (2008); University of Colorado Boulder, Scientific Reports (2022); American Journal of Infection Control (2024); Applied and Environmental Microbiology; University of Arizona (Dr. Charles Gerba); Dr. Philip Tierno, NYU Langone; EPA indoor air quality guidance; Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America; BMC Infectious Diseases.