Take it from someone who spends most of her waking hours getting intimate with every conceivable inch of people’s homes: there’s a lot of dirty happening under your nose.

Even in homes that are cleaned regularly, there are areas and objects that manage to fall under the cleaning radar, whether because they require that extra bit of effort that doesn’t feel necessary on a daily or weekly basis, or because they’re just slightly out of reach or sight.

If you knew it was there, though, if you could see what I see, you’d be in a hurry to slap on a pair of gloves and get to scrubbing. Trust me.

This is a judgement free space, of course. No one in this Simply family is going to shame you for your dust bunnies. Just, you know, provide some useful encouragement is all.

With that said, here are four things and places, in no particular order, I find coated in filth with a frequency that suggests they may be relevant to you.

1. Your uppermost kitchen cabinets, backsplash and any other areas in your stove’s firing range

Grease, guys. Not like lightning, but like years of sautéd green beans and patties in oil. Cooking grease travels, and where it lands it stays. Until, that is, you bust in with a powerful degreaser and alleviate that would-be fly-paper coating.

Pass the task on to someone else, if you please. I’m not saying you, yourself, have to do it. Just, do it is all.

2. Your rugs

Rugs and carpets get dirty just like floors. And just like floors, they need something beyond sweeping and vacuuming to get them clean. But let me ask you a question: who among you regularly deep cleans your floor fabrics? (Someone is going to pipe in all, “ME, ME, I DO!” and to you I say: you go, you. Way to set an example.)

Most people, I find, pretty much forget about this task, altogether. But when you combine all those times someone in the family spilled their bowl of cheerios, walked inside with dirty feet, the dog peed, the pen bled…those things are not clean. They may be harboring odors (dread!) or festering germs (Not those!), and nobody wants that.

If you’re in doubt about how to accomplish the job, call in the pros. There are plenty of services that come out to your home to clean and treat both carpets and area rugs, and others where you can take area rugs in to be professionally cleaned.

Plenty of rugs can be DIY cleaned, and some even machine-washed. Check for care tags, or hit up the google for instructions on how best to clean the type of rug you own.

3. Your trash-land

I realize I’m not going to successfully enroll everyone in this, because they don’t have time to be so obsessive. This is completely fair. I am merely making suggestions, you understand.

That said, the vicinity surrounding your trash can is likely in need of a good cleaning. It figures that if you’re throwing garbage in that direction constantly, some garbage is going to land elsewhere besides in the can. The dirty in question might range from crumbs to goopy residue to stray wrappers or bits of trash. Either way, a sanitizing cleanser can work wonders to restore the area surrounding the garbage to the area surrounding the garbage and not an extension of the garbage.

4. Your hairbrushes

I owe my hairbrush meticulousness to my sis, who, I realize now, was the person who modeled for me the compulsive need to relieve those bristles of many stray locks. And since we all know that once you’ve seen something you can’t un-see it, I now find brushes filled with whole wigs wherever I go.

I know; it’s a little disconcerting to see all that hair you or your child or family member has shed all at once, but if you can get past that, you’ll find yourself the proud owner of a hair brush that works as well now as it originally did!

* If digging your digits in between bristles isn’t your jam, try using a comb; comb through the hair brush in either direction and watch as all that hair gets pulled up for you. For more of an in-depth tutorial, check out this post from Tidy Mom.