Cleaning stainless steel/aluminum finishes

plumeriapal

Just curious if others experience this as well: I feel like I am constantly wiping appliances, the kitchen sink, and our flip top garbage can and no matter how often I clean them or what I use to clean them, they still have spots. Like water spots and hand prints and sometimes even a little rust, which I assume is because some things like our garbage can and soap dispenser are cheapies from Wal-Mart. How do you clean your stainless steel and/or aluminum finshes? TIA!

inamra

For our faucet handle/spouts, just hot water itself will remove the water spots. We don't own much else with similar finishes but when I lived in a different apt, I used Windex too and it seemed to work as well.

Amy4773

I use the Pledge Multi-Purpose wipes.

redshoegirl

I've used Windex and that usually seems to help.

MauiBride2008

I have a stainless steel cleaner that I picked up at Target which works great, but for aluminum finishes Windex works great!

MauiWedding08

I use method stainless steel cleaner for our appliances and it seems to work well.  Sometimes I have to use a kitchen cleaner first on places that get grimy (the back portion of the stove top) but then I still buff it with a SS cleaner.

For the garbage can (which must be aluminum or a cheap stainless steel) the cleaner doesn't do much.  For that I use Barkeepers Friend - liquid.  It originally bought it when I was moving out of our rental condo - the water dispenser in the fridge door made horrible water spots down the front.  I didn't want to get a charge so I used that.  I don't think it's really suppose to be used on appliances although the bottle says it's for stainless steel and it's snot suppose to be corrosive.  It works really really great - it polishes up my porclain sink too, I just wouldn't use it as my every time cleaner.

mrs.winter

i used special cleaner on the brushed steel that help keep fingerprints off. You could always use a steel brush to get rid of the rust (as long as you are using it on brushed steel...google it first...my dad did it for me).