5 Tips for Cleaning More Efficiently

April 10, 2013 By 39 Comments

Note: This post is brought to you by Clorox and The Motherhood, and I’ve been compensated for my time. All opinions are my own.

While I may not be the best homemaker, I really do enjoy being one. I love cooking for my family & providing a meal to bond over at the end of the day, and I even like cleaning. I like how repetitive it is and I find that to be therapeutic. I even do a lot of my best brainstorming while I clean.

Even though I enjoy cleaning, I still don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time by making tasks take longer than they need to! I like to work smarter, not harder. There are five easy to implement tips that I live by for making cleaning more efficient:

5 Tips for Cleaning More Efficiently from @NotQuiteSusie

1. Clean from top to bottom. Nothing is worse than diligently vacuuming your floor, only to push dust from the counter onto it moments later. Be sure to work from the top down {think ceiling fans & light fixtures first, then walls, counters and surfaces, and then the floor} and by the time you get to the bottom, you’ll be able to pick everything up with the vacuum.

2. Keep it handy. Keep your household cleaners in the same place that you use them. I find that I am much, much more likely to actually clean if I have the product I need handy. For me, that means keeping multiples of products- I have one set of glass and window cleaner, all-purpose cleaner, cleaning rags, bathroom cleaner, dusting cloths, and sanitizing wipes upstairs and one set downstairs. It makes it easy to do quick touch-ups, and it makes it harder for me to procrastinate by saying the product that I need is too far away.

3. Less is more. Products that can do multiple jobs are winners in my book. I’d rather use one bottle for everything in my bathroom than have to use a separate cleaner for my toilet, shower, and other surfaces. I like Clorox Clean-Up Cleaner + Bleach for bathroom jobs since it can tackle everything in the room.

4. Purge items before or while you clean. It took me awhile to figure this one out, but either take a few minutes before you pull out the cleaning solution to throw away trash and do a quick decluttering or do it as you go. I spent a lot of time dusting items that I decided five minutes later to donate, and I moved a lot of trash to dust or clean under it before realizing I was adding extras steps. Rather than cleaning around items that you don’t want or need, just toss or donate them before or while you clean!

5. Spray Every Drop. I used to get so annoyed with bottles of cleaners that would still have a lot of the contents left but would stop spraying correctly because it was running low. Sometimes I’d take a cloth or paper towel and dip it in the open bottle to soak up the cleaner, but it was often too saturated and just made a big, wet mess. Clorox has a brand new technology in their bottles called Smart Tube Technology that makes sure that not one drop of your cleaning product goes to waste! Each bottle has a built-in tube that reaches all the way to the bottom of the bottle, allowing you to actually spray every drop. This new technology is available in many of your favorite Clorox, Formula 409 and Tilex products.

Spray Every Drop with Clorox

Buy It: You can find Clorox’s new bottles in stores now. To get started with cleaning more efficiently, be sure to head to the Spray Every Drop website to download and print a coupon for a high value coupon- $1 off for watching a quick video & $1.50 off if you share the video with your friends!

Win It: One lucky reader is going to win five coupons for FREE products! Just enter using the simple form below. Good luck!

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Filed Under: cleaning, giveaways, homemaking Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Making Any Cleaning Job a Quickie!

April 6, 2013 By 30 Comments

I’m not good at cleaning. I do it, and I know how to do it {usually}, but I’m not good at actually deep cleaning everything on a regular basis. I try to keep clutter at bay for the most part but I vacuum about half as often as I should & genuinely forget to clean other things. &Then there are the things that I downright hate to clean. The shower is one of those things.

I can’t stand cleaning the shower- not because it’s exceptionally dirty {it’s really not, despite the “before” picture below which is the dirtiest part of the shower} but just because it’s a lot of work. We have built-in texture on the bottom to prevent slipping, which is nice to have but difficult to clean. Dirt always finds it’s way into the little grooves but no matter how hard I scrub, I have trouble getting in between them. Plus, cleaning the shower just takes so long- I’m sure it would take less time if I did it more regularly but even when I use the powerful cleansers, there is a lot of surface area to scrub and doing it manually wears out my arm, which usually falls asleep halfway through.

Quickie Household Power Scrubber

When I was asked to review the new Quickie Household Power Scrubber, I wasn’t sure how much of a difference it’d make. It’s handheld, so it’s not very big, and so I thought it’d be just one more tool to sit under my sink untouched. I was totally & completely wrong.

Before & After Using the Quickie Household Power Scrubber

The Quickie makes cleaning faster {hence the name} but also easier. When you turn it on, it’s really powerful, and you can use it with your favorite household cleaner to give it an extra boost. The Quickie is safe for use on tile, grout, tubs, chrome and other household surfaces but I put it to the test with my shower since that’s what I struggle the most with. Not only did it cut cleaning time down by a lot, but my arm didn’t go numb from scrubbing because all I had to do was hold and move the Quickie- and it did all of the work for me! &Better still, it was able to get in between all of the texture on the bottom of the tub, so it’s now even cleaner than it was when we first bought the house!

Quickie Household Power Scrubber Attachments

The batteries last a long time {I’ve deep cleaned b0th poorly neglected showers as well as my bathroom counters & am yet to run out of juice} & it has interchangeable heads for different uses. I like the disposable scour pads because I feel more sanitary throwing the pads away when I’m done cleaning some of the more dirty spots in the house.

No matter what the yuckiest place in your house is, Quickie can make the job fast & painless.

Buy It: You can find the Quickie Household Power Scrubber as well as the accessories at Walmart.com

What spot in your house do you least like to clean?

Note: I was provided with a cleaning kit to facilitate this review. All opinions are my own.

Filed Under: cleaning, homemaking, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

8 Ways to Clean Up Using White Vinegar

January 10, 2013 By 18 Comments

Guest Post By Diane Kuehl

There’s always something around the house that needs to be cleaned. Always. Especially if you live at my house, which is run by two little boys.

And there are many things around the house that need to be cleaned in order to ensure the health and safety of everyone in the home. Sometimes, things need to get cleaned just to ensure the sanity of everyone in the home. Right?

With all the cleaning that needs to be done, I’m sure you have to run back and forth to the store to get cleaning supplies. I used to. Now I just use white vinegar.

Seriously. Just regular ol’ white distilled vinegar.

Here are a few of the best ways to use your white vinegar.

Natural Cleaning with Vinegar

Clean and disinfect baby toys – Baby toys can get pretty grungy and gross pretty quickly. All that slobber and time on the ground creates a petri dish of germs and bacteria ready to take hold in your baby. To clean the toys, add a healthy dose of white distilled vinegar to soapy water and soak the toys.

Clean and deodorize urine on a mattress – Kids pee in the bed. It happens, it’s a fact of life. But it doesn’t have to ruin the bed and bedding. To clean up this little mess, use a white distilled vinegar and water solution. Sprinkle the area with baking soda and let it dry. Brush or vacuum the area once it is dry to the touch.

Clean up pet accidents – Another fact of life: Pets have accidents, too. Unless you plan on covering every surface in your house with housebreaking pads, you’re going to need to do some cleaning every once in a while. So, here’s how: Get most of the area cleaned with a towel. Add a white distilled vinegar and water solution. Blot until it is nearly dry. Sprinkle baking soda over the area and let it dry. Vacuum the area the next day.

Kill germs in the bathroom – If I need to tell you how many germs there are in a bathroom, then I guess we live in different worlds. Typical bathroom fixtures have more germs on them than accumulate in the rest of the house… combined. To clean, use a spray bottle full of full strength white distilled vinegar and spray the bathroom. Wipe it clean with a damp cloth.

Remove a label, decal, or price tag – Those pesky labels and price tags. I could quite possibly be the biggest proponent for completely doing away with tags and labels altogether, but I suppose that is something for another article. To remove these banes of my existence, cover the label with a rag soaked in white distilled vinegar. Leave it overnight and the label will slide off the next day.

Clean cloudy glassware – There are many different theories on how to get rid of that cloud that seems to always be in your glassware. I’ll give you the easiest way to get rid of it. Soak cloths or paper towels in white distilled vinegar. Wrap both the inside and outside of the glass. Let it sit for a while before rinsing.

Deodorize and clean the garbage disposal – This one is fun and really handy. I can’t tell you how many times my husband, seemingly, has thrown month-old Chinese food down the disposal and left it there to rot and ruin everyone’s lives. So, pull out those old ice cube trays. Freeze full strength white distilled vinegar in an ice cube tray. Place several of the cubes into the disposal and run it while rinsing with cold water.

Clean a plastic bookcase – Typical bookcases are a boon to those with bad dust allergies. They’re difficult to clean because, with all those books, you can’t get to all of the nooks and crannys, leaving much of the dust sitting there. To clean, dust, and keep dust away for a short period of time, use a white distilled vinegar and water solution in a spray bottle. Spray the solution onto the bookcase (minus the books, of course). Let it sit for five minutes then dry with a cloth.

There ya have it! There are so many different things you can clean using white vinegar, so this is just a small list of my favorites. Enjoy your new found freedom!

Diane Kuehl is a home improvement professional and owner of DIY Mother. She lives in Springfield, Illinois with her husband and two kids.

Filed Under: cleaning, homemaking Tagged With: , ,

Containing the Wild & Crazy Holiday Messes with Glad!

November 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I have a three-year-old, and he can make quite the mess. Toys are always left out, food wrappers seldom seem to make their way to the garbage, and every time he gets a new toy the packaging practically fills up an entire trash bag! Add that to Bella’s habit of getting into the food, and it can get pretty messy around here.

We use a lot of trash bags- while we do recycle what we can, we are still a family of three and we can easily fill two trash cans a week. &I tend to over-stuff those bags since I hate taking them out, so we have to use bags we can count on. We have literally tried every major brand and the only kind that works for us is Glad! On other brands, the handles pop off when we lift the bag out of the trash can, or they leak on the way to the garage. Or worse yet- some of them are so thin that they stretch & snap as soon as we pick them up! But Glad bags have never given us issues so we use them both for our indoor and outdoor needs.

Donating clothesThe first bag of clothes is ready to go!

During the holiday season, it seems like we run out of bags as soon as we buy them! They can hold a lot, but we’re also creating a lot more trash- whether it’s a bag full of food wrappers from holiday dinners or the trash bag we keep next to the Christmas tree on the big day so we can throw the wrapping paper away immediately to avoid a wild & crazy mess! Then of course there are donations to be delivered- I always go through our clothing this time of year & give what we can, which leaves us with a fairly large donation. The only reasonable way to transport these donations are in our Glad bags!

missing in the mess

Back in April, I shared with you The Wild Life sweepstakes from Glad. Well, the sweepstakes is over but they’re not done celebrating! On Glad’s Facebook page, you can find a tab called “After the Wild Life” where you can play a “Missing in the Mess” game- a spot-the-differences style game that is a lot of fun! I beat the first puzzle in 17 seconds- see if you can beat my score!

What other things do you use trash bags for during this time of year?

Note: I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for Glad. I received products to facilitate my review as well as a promotional item as a thank-you for participating.

Filed Under: cleaning, home, homemaking Tagged With: ,

10 Creative Beauty and Cleaning Uses for Baking Soda!

November 13, 2012 By 10 Comments

Sometimes I look around & just marvel at how much “stuff” we use every day. I use four items for my teeth every day {toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, mouthwash}, three things on my face {cleanser, moisturizer, exfoliating scrub} and I use two things for my hair {brush, hair tie}, not including actually showering & washing it. Add in lotion, a water bottle, vitamins & 2 types of asthma medications and that means I’m using fourteen different things just to get ready for bed every night.

Not only do all of the items we use daily add up & cost us money, but they take up a ton of storage room in our homes. So whenever I have the chance to get one item that can multi-task, I go for it. Especially if that item is super affordable!

Enter Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. I’m positive you’ve used it for something in your life- whether it was for baking cupcakes, deodorizing your fridge or sprinkling it over a pet “accident” to neutralize odors. But there are so many more uses for it- including lots of beauty uses- that I didn’t even know about. Check out some of my favorites below!

5 Health and Beauty Uses for Baking Soda

Clean Your Cuticles: Make a paste of 3 parts Arm & Hammer Baking Soda and 1 part water and scrub into nails and cuticles. You can use any leftover to gently rub on your hands & fingers in a gentle, circular motion to exfoliate and smooth.

Natural Deodorant: Dust Arm & Hammer Baking Soda under your arms as needed.

Bath Soak: Add 1/2 cup of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda to your bath to relax and soften skin.

Super-Clean Your Hair: Sprinkle a quarter-sized amount of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda into your palm with your shampoo and lather & rinse as usual. The baking soda will help remove product residue, making your hair cleaner & more manageable.

Brush Your Teeth: Sprinkle baking soda into your palm, dip a damp toothbrush into it, and brush. You can even make a mouthwash by adding 1 tsp of baking soda in 1/2 glass of water. {Note that Arm & Hammer Baking Soda does not contain the anti-cavity ingredient fluoride, so only use this if you have fluoridated water or if your dentist recommends you avoid fluoride.}

5 Household Uses for Baking Soda

&Of course, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda is great around the house, too! Check out these great uses for them at home:

Food Safe Surface Cleaning: If you clean your counters with harsh cleansers and then make food on them, you may be inadvertently ingesting those chemicals. Try sprinkling Arm & Hammer Baking Soda onto a clean damp sponge and wipe clean, rinse thoroughly and dry.

Wash Fruits & Veggies: You can use Arm & Hammer Baking Soda to safely clean dirt and residue off of fresh fruit & vegetables without adding chemicals. Just sprinkle a little onto a clean damp sponge, scrub and rinse!

Serve Up Fancy Cocktails: Add a dash of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda into your holiday cocktails to make them fizz!

Freshen Upholstery: Remove odors by sprinkling Arm & Hammer Baking Soda on upholstered sofas and chairs. Wait 15 minutes, then vacuum for easy clean up that leaves your home smelling fresh!

Santa’s Footprints: Use a footprint stencil and Arm & Hammer Baking Soda to leave Santa’s footprints throughout your home! Clean up is easy- just vacuum!

Some of these great uses are on my to-do list, but I have tried a few. I used it to clean my counters and while I wasn’t sure how clean they’d really get, they looked just the same as when I use harsher products, and since I don’t have to worry about ingesting those chemicals I think I prefer using the Arm & Hammer Baking Soda! I’ve also used it to clean my cuticles & scrub my hands and my hands were so smooth when I was done!

I have plans to try the deodorant {on a day where I can stay home all day, in case it doesn’t work!} and I think the Santa’s footprints idea is so cute! I’m also going to recommend the shampoo add-in treatment to Justin, since he uses gel.

Which of these uses is your favorite idea? Have you tried some of these before?

Note: I wrote this review while participating in an Blog Tour campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Arm &Hammer and received product samples to facilitate my post and a promotional item to thank me for participating.

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