Stretch It: Cleaning

Cleaning supplies can seem like they cost a fortune. We actually don't use many products. We have a relatively small house. It is just the right size for our 3 person family and doesn't have much wasted space. I have reduced my cleaning time and product use a lot. I have tried to split it up into 3 different categories.

*Green Works. I love the product line. I really appreciate the environmentally friendliness of it. I use the dish soap for washing by hand. We don't have a dishwasher, except for me that is. I have since used regular dish soap and I can feel the difference in the water. When I use the green works, it still feels like water and I like that. We use the laundry soap. I generally do 2-3 loads of laundry per week. Unlike many, I don't usually separate. When the laundry basket is full (we all put our laundry in the same one) I toss it in to wash it. Part of the reason I can do this is that I use cold water to wash everything. The soap is what is supposed to clean your clothes and everything comes out just fine. I have never noticed any staining. I do sometimes pretreat nasty stains with shout advanced for set in stains. We also use the green works toilet bowl cleaner. We had been using the kind of toilet bowl brush that the end pops off and you use a new one each time. I liked them, but they make so much waste and are pretty expensive. The green works products are not always the least expensive but they are much lower than many competitors.

*Norwex. I got my norwex products 4 years ago and they are still going strong! If there is one cleaning line that I truly believe in, this is it. If you ever go to a norwex show, you can see the demonstrations yourself. They are almost unbelievable, but they are amazing. I will go down the list of what I have and why I love them. The dusting mitt gets all the dust with no product involved at all, plus Jayne loves to wear it and help me by dusting the house. The microfiber cloths use only water and kill 99% of all bacteria. They can be used on any surface and even for dusting. I use them on my mirrors with the polishing cloth and they come out crystal clear ever time with nothing but water. I have the mop system and it works the same way as the cloths, with just water. The car cloth is great too and also just uses water, that is an entire car clean with just water. I use the drier balls with the laundry too. You can get those almost anywhere now and it means not buying softener. The one downside to the Norwex products are the higher price. But if you off set the price of buying products, they aren't bad.

*The rest. Our vacuum does not use bags, so no extra cost there. We still have many products that are just used occasionally or during spring cleaning like comet, magic erasers, oven and stove top cleaners, and some others that I don't ever use. These are things that I don't have to buy more than once a year, sometimes longer. My all time favorite cleaning trick is for the very difficult to clean microwave. Microwave a bowl of water (with lemon if you want to freshen the scent) for a couple of minutes and it loosens up everything making it super easy to wipe down.

I will be sharing more about organizing my cleaning and my homemaker's journal in another post. For now, I would love to hear about your favorite products and tips for easy cleaning!