If you’re making an effort to clean the house on a regular basis, you may be finding that you’re having to frequently replace your cleaning products, especially if you’re using different products across the various rooms. These kind of costs can quickly make a sizeable dent in your budget, but you don’t need to spend a lot of money to keep your home clean. Here are some tips for cleaning your home on a budget.
Kitchen and bathroom cleaners
You can easily make household cleaners for these areas of the home from ingredients that are already in your kitchen cupboards. In particular, white vinegar has a range of uses:
- Cleaning glassware and removing water marks from stainless steel appliances.
- Diluting white vinegar with water and putting it in a spray bottle creates a handy kitchen and bathroom cleaner, especially if you add in 10-15 drops of lavender or lemon essential to offer some antimicrobial properties.
- Try using white vinegar to clean the inside of the fridge too as it can prevent mildrew build-up as well as doing the basic cleaning job.
- You can make a great floor cleaner by adding half a cup of white vinegar to a bucket of water.
- Combining one part vinegar with four parts water can clean mirrors and windows.
You can also create a bathroom cleaner using peppermint essential oil and baking soda. You can also add two cups of boiling water to two cups of fresh thyme (for its antiseptic qualities), steep it for ten minutes and add it to a spray bottle after the mixture has been strained and cooled.
To clean the oven, sprinkle some baking soda onto a wet sponge. Baking soda can also be used to clean sinks and baths.
For cleaning stainless steel sinks and faucets, regular washing-up liquid is just as effective as a specialist bathroom cleaner and can be picked up for much less.
Laminate floor cleaners
For easy cleaning of laminate floors, add a few squirts of a mild, liquid dish detergent to some hot water. If you’ve got a more glossy laminate floor, adding half a cup of vinegar and 1 to 2 squirts of mild liquid dish detergent to a bucket of hot water will get rid of most dirt and grease. Instead of mopping this mixture directly onto the floor, it may be better to spray it onto a damp cloth and use this, because excess liquid can damage the flooring. If you do go down the mopping route, make sure that you don’t leave any excess liquid on the floor to avoid the possibility of water damage.
When it comes to cleaning your home, you don’t need to use specialist cleaning products to achieve an impressive finish. Most of us will have ingredients like white vinegar and baking soda in our cupboards, but even if you don’t, you can usually get a hold of them for a lot less than specialized cleaning products. This isn’t the only advantages, though. These natural cleaning products are more green than their chemical-based counterparts, so you can be more eco-friendly while you’re saving money!
(photo credit: emdot)
