Cleaning for the holidays can really be a chore. Between shopping and cooking, you don’t have time to spend countless hours scrubbing to get your home presentable for guests. The key to easier cleaning with fewer chemicals this holiday season? A water softener.

Installing a water softener removes hard water minerals from your water before it flows to your pipes and fixtures, reducing scale buildup and cleaning stress prior to friends and family visiting. Here are some areas of your home that can benefit from soft water:

Spotty Dishes

Do you pull spotty, filmy glasses, pots and pans from the dishwasher or drying rack? Although the dishes are clean, the spots can be embarrassing, especially if guests think they are being served with dirty dishes. Soft water keeps dishes and glassware sparkling, because hard water minerals are removed before water flows through the faucet and dishwasher. Your detergents can work more efficiently, and you’ll need less soap to get the job done.

Filmy Showers and Faucets

One of the most frustrating places to clean in the home is the bathroom. Not only do you have to scrub the white scale buildup from faucets, but you also have to deal with the dreaded spots on shower walls and doors and staining in the toilet bowl. While there are great temporary fixes for this buildup, including vinegar, chemicals, and fabric softener sheets, you’ll spend less time and money on chemicals by solving the core problem with a water softener.

Stiff Laundry

If you have guests spending the night, you don’t want to offer them scratchy sheets, blankets and towels. The stiffness of these fabrics is likely a result of your water, not the laundry detergent you use. If you have hard water, minerals deposit themselves onto your fabrics, making it difficult for your detergent to activate and do its job. Having to use more detergent than needed quickly becomes costly and wasteful.

If you are frustrated with the effort and money it takes to address the effects of hard water in your home, try installing a water softener to prevent hard water problems. You can easily find the best solution for your home before the holidays with our shopping checklist. Spend that time with family and friends instead of cleaning!

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Spotty Stemware

Holiday dinner tables gleam when you set out your best stemware—as long as they’re spot-free. To remove hard water deposits, soak your glasses in two cups of warm vinegar (preferably white vinegar) for approximately three minutes. Give them a quick rinse and dry with a lint-free towel to eliminate the potential for the spots and streaks to return.

Clogged Showerhead

Frustrated that instead of a steady, powerful spray, your guests will shower under a slow drip? One of the best defenses in your war on mineral deposits may be sitting in your kitchen cupboard. Pour white vinegar into a small, plastic bag or a shower cap. Pull the bag over the showerhead, secure with a rubber band and leave on overnight. Your showerhead will be clean and look like new—with no scrubbing needed.

Rust Stains

Want to tackle rust before it becomes a major problem? The chemicals in commercial products provide a powerful solution for eliminating scale buildup and rust stains left behind by hard water. Although this solution may be more expensive and contain harsh chemicals, commercial products offer a ready-made, powerful solution for temporarily removing rust stains.

Faucets

If you want to maintain a sparkling, spot-free faucet, squeegee or wipe down the surface after you’re done using it with a squeeze of lemon. Like vinegar, the acidity of lemon juice dissolves the hard water minerals deposited on water fixtures. Let the lemon juice sit for 10 minutes, then simply rinse and wipe dry.

Bathtubs

There’s nothing worse than stubborn spots in your tub. A homemade remedy can temporarily cut through the minerals left behind by hard water. Create this easy remedy by mixing a 50-50 solution of distilled water and vinegar to spot-treat scale. After you apply the solution with a spray bottle, let it sit a couple minutes before wiping clean. To create an even more powerful scrub, combine vinegar with baking soda and smear it on the spots. Let it sit for 15 minutes, add a little elbow grease if necessary and rinse with water.

Shower Doors

If it’s spot-free shower doors you long for, try rubbing a dryer sheet over the water spots. This solution won’t reverse years of spots, but it may be the perfect fix to reverse a few days of buildup. Since you can use a new or used dryer sheet, get into the habit of wiping down your shower door before you throw the dryer sheet in the trash.

The Permanent Fix

The above tips provide temporary solutions to hard water spots, but won’t fix your hard water problems for good. If you are frustrated with the regular maintenance associated with hard water spots, try installing a water softener before your first guests arrive this holiday season. Installing a water softener is a permanent solution because it filters out the hard water minerals before water flows through faucets and showerheads. The only maintenance required is to replenish the salt supply and conduct regular maintenance checks.

Your holiday to-do list can be overwhelming, but following these tips will keep your home sparkling this season, giving you one less thing to stress about.

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