It’s easy to overspend on cleaning supplies and realize, years later, that you never used that super-useful-looking double-sided window dust removal brush or whatever it was. If you’re on a budget, you want to optimize, buying only what you really need, making it last a long time, and reusing whenever possible while still achieving a very clean home.

You also don’t have to spend loads of money to maintain your home spotlessly. The majority of the cleaning products we use at home are also loaded with dangerous chemicals.

So what can you do to ensure that you do this? The key is to take note of how your products work and use them up completely, all while avoiding throwing away any cleaning supplies that have useful life left in them.

Regular Cleaning:

Cleaning your house more frequently may seem contradictory, but it will save both time & expense. A new spill may be removed off the stove with a simple swipe of a clean dishcloth, but if you delay until the spill has hardened into a crusty glob, you’ll need heavy-duty cleansers and scouring sponges. If you clean your house monthly or more frequently, you’ll notice that most messes can be cleaned with a moist cleaning cloth.

Add Multitaskers, Not Uni-Taskers, To Your Cleaning Closet

First, many of us have a whole cabinet or closet full of bottles and jars of cleaning supplies, each one promising to do something slightly different for our cleaning lives. While I’ll always advocate that you use up supplies rather than throw them out if they are still useful, how you replace them matters. Aim for products that are safe for a lot of surfaces, all-purpose or general cleaners.

Make note of what each product cannot clean so you don’t overuse those multitaskers on a surface that could be damaged, but in general, try to winnow down your supplies to just a few favorites that let you clean the whole house with the fewest containers of products possible.

The reason this saves money is that the more products we have, the harder it is to keep track of them and use the right one in exactly the right circumstance, leading to wasted products.

Baking Soda for Carpet Cleaning:

Light stains can be removed by rubbing baking soda further into the cloth with some hot water. Take your floor carpets outside and shake them off now and then to get rid of the dust. In addition to pollen, mold, and mildew, these locations attract creepy crawlies. These granules, together with a good vacuum cleaner, can perform miracles. Baking soda is the main component.

Quality Supplies:

Avoid being persuaded by a plethora of extra features that are a ruse to get you to spend more money. Most households can get by with just a flat mop, broom, dustpan, window squeegee, tub squeegee, cleaning bucket, spray bottles, a real ostrich feather or lambswool duster, and a few nicely folded cleaning rags.

Bathroom Tiles:

The bathroom is simple to clean, but the area between the tiles — the lines where tatty mildew forms – requires special attention. There are a plethora of bathroom cleaning products on the market. However, a simple solution of baking soda and lime juice might help us.

Find a Cloth You Love Rather Than Rolls of Paper Towels

It’s easy and fast to grab a disposable cloth like a paper towel when cleaning, but your goal should be to make it just as easy to grab a rag or microfiber cloth instead. You can go through a lot of disposable towels when you are cleaning, and only a few cleaning sessions will use more disposable products than the cost for a rag or cloth that will last you… well, pretty much forever.

If your clothing supply doesn’t regularly generate rags you enjoy cleaning with (some clothing fabrics just don’t work very well as cleaning rags), aim to get a set of microfiber cloths or another fabric of cloth that you know works in a lot of settings so that they become your go-to.

Use Dirt Cloths:

When cleaning, it’s convenient to go for a throwaway cloth like a towel, but your objective is to make reaching for a rag or microfibre cloth just as simple. When cleaning, you could go through a lot of throwaway towels, and simply a few cleanup sessions will consume more disposable items than the cost of a long-lasting rag or cloth.

Put Dates on Your Products And Rebuy Long-Lasting High Performers

One extra tip is a real experiment. When you buy a product, write the date of the product’s purchase on the bottle with a permanent marker. Start noticing how long these products last: does your window cleaner seem to be watered down and need to be sprayed a ton before you get real cleaning power?

Try a different brand, because if the bottle lasts double the time but only costs 10% more, you’re saving money. This is also helpful when experimenting with new natural or gentle cleaners – you want to find some that have all the cleaning power without needing a new bottle every week.

Let this be your way of experimenting, and you’ll eventually have a cleaning supply cabinet that only contains the products you love to work with that also last and last, an especially nice feature when you’re trying to sell your home and don’t want to waste any money!