Oddball tips for tackling your apartment's dirty little secrets

Did you know that vodka can remove ball-point pen stains from white leather upholstery? We did not, and there are a number of other cleaning ideas that caught us by surprise in ApartmentTherapy.com's collection of readers' cleaning tips.  Use rubbing alcohol to keep your butcher block shiny and grime free. Flour will apparently make your stainless steel surfaces gleam (as will olive oil with a subsequent buffing). Toothpaste can be used to remove marks from hard surfaces. And a paste of baking soda and water applied to the grout on your kitchen floors can work wonders. Happy cleaning. (ApartmentTherapy.com)