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Posts Tagged ‘cleaning’

Day 16 – Favorite Cleaning Products

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Health, Home, Resolutions, tagged , , , on October 16, 2026| 1 Comment »

Today’s Friday Five is a list of my favorite cleaning products (or at least where I get the products I like). I am moderately picky about cleaning products. I have some sensory issues and some allergies, so I need to be a little choosy.

Any product I bring into my house (cleaning or otherwise) has to pass the smell test. If the aroma is too strong (looking at you, Method), I won’t use it because I don’t want it stinking up the whole apartment. And while I try to remember to wear gloves (and by “remember to wear” I do mean “remember to buy”), sometimes it doesn’t happen, so I also need products that don’t irritate my skin.

Here are my top five go-to companies/products for keeping my home clean:

  • Three basic ingredients – white vinegar, baking soda, and salt. I buy these in bulk. I use them in cooking/baking, but as you can see from the links in the previous sentence, they are useful in other ways, too. A sprinkle of salt or baking soda added to the dishcloth gives it a little extra scrubbing power. Baking soda also works as a deodorizer. I buy vinegar by the gallon. I soak my stainless steel utensils in it to help deodorize them before washing. I pour some (half a cup? Cup?) in my rinse cycle when I’m doing laundry. In a pinch, I can combine it in a spray bottle with water and dish soap and make a pretty decent cleaner. These are particularly great to use if you have pets or children, because if they eat them (or, you know, lick the floor after you mop), it’s fine.
  • Magic Eraser – If there is a big job to do, I stock up on Magic Erasers. They can clean just about everything. When I moved into my apartment, the first thing I did after filling out the inventory to report the state of the place was to wipe down all the major surfaces with a Magic Eraser. If you’ve ever lived in an apartment, you know their deep clean isn’t that deep. This little beauty found all the grime it left behind.
  • Norwex – If you haven’t heard of Norwex, I encourage you to look them up (or use the link I gave you to support my friend Brenda). Yes, it’s an MLM company, but the products are solid. I think the first things I tried were the face and body cloths. While I still bathe my body with soap, I haven’t put face wash or anything like it on my face in years, and my skin is so grateful. No face wash (even the allegedly gentle kind) means no irritants. Just a gently exfoliating cloth and water. I use Norwex laundry detergent (and you know I’m picky about that) to clean both my clothes and the washer itself. The product I love almost as much as the laundry detergent, though, is the EnviroCloth. The other day, I scrubbed and scrubbed the stopper in my guest bathroom. Then I remembered I had an EnviroCloth. A couple of swipes (again, with just water) worked wonders. I use one almost every day to wipe down random surfaces.
  • Grove – I like this company for its environmental commitment, but I love it for its soap. Almost all my actual cleaners (dish soap, hand soap, multipurpose cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, glass cleaner, etc.) are the Grove brand. They offer a scent-free option for some of them, but even when a Grove product is scented, it’s not obnoxiously so. Also, I buy potting soil and sometimes even seeds from Grove (aside from those I pilfer from friends). I also get my toilet paper and the one box of paper towels I buy a year at Grove, too. The pandemic ruined me forever on actually going to a store to buy household supplies, and with as many choices as they offer, I don’t have to. Thanks, Grove!
  • HydroJet – OMG I LOVE MY HYDROJET SO MUCH. I impulse-bought this during a spendy phase, so I was skeptical. After all, not many things that I buy on a whim work out as well as I hope they will. But this is worth the money. Turns out, you can steam-clean most things. I haven’t tried it on my oven yet, but that’s one of the next things in the rotation.

As you can probably tell, I’m not a big fan of harsh chemicals. If something irritates my skin or makes me sneeze, that’s just one more excuse I have for not cleaning. Finding products that are gentle but still work well (bonus points if it takes less effort on my part) helps me keep house more consistently.

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days.

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Days 12-14 – Regular Rituals

Posted in 31 Days, Cozy, Getting It Together, Home, Mental Health, Resolutions, tagged , , on October 13, 2026| 1 Comment »

Today, I am talking about the main tasks that, if done regularly, make me the most satisfied with my home. I already talked about laundry on Sunday, and we will hear a little more about it on Thursday. I started off making these three different posts, but then I realized I don’t really have three days’ worth to say. Also, making one big post let me add a fourth and very important category.

Watering the Plants

There is nothing in my home that screams, “Neglect!” to me more loudly than a droopy or dying plant. Now, sometimes my plants droop just because they’re moody, and I’m not a plant whisperer by any stretch of the imagination (which you can notice if you look closely at the picture above). Even ivy is taking a gamble at being in my home. But most of my plants generally behave and thrive per my expectations if I pay them even the tiniest bit of attention on a regular basis. 

I used to not notice if my plants needed water until they drooped. Now, however, I have a little reminder by putting a goal on Finch that shows up once a week and doesn’t go away until I mark it done. 

Doing the Dishes

I don’t often wish for a partner. I used to yearn, but now, I’m pretty happy overall with my solitary life.

Until it’s time to do the dishes.

When dishes start to pile up, I start to fantasize about getting myself into one of those I-cook-you-clean situations. The main reason I don’t cook as much as I want is because I mentally calculate how many dishes I’d have to clean afterward, and it just doesn’t seem worth it.

This is the chore I’m prone to avoid the most. Unfortunately, it has a great impact on not only how well I feed myself but also how disgusting my home gets. So I’m getting back into the habit of making it a regular ritual. 

I’m not great at it yet, so on days when I work in the kitchen, the guiding principle is: Clean what I use, plus five. That is, clean every dish, utensil, and cooking implement I used that day and then add either five more items or five more minutes to the chore. I’ve been trying to do this at least 10 days a month lately, and my kitchen is slowly becoming manageable again. It’s not really clean yet, but at least I no longer regard walking into it with the absolute dread that I did when it was chaos.

Sweeping the Floors

This chore has become so satisfying to me. It makes such a huge visual difference in a small amount of time. In just 15 minutes, I can pretty much sweep my whole apartment. I try to do this at least once a week.

It’s official day is Saturday, but I find myself doing touch-ups of missed spots throughout the week. This is especially true of the weeks when Saturdays are busy and I end up skipping it. Even when I miss a whole week, though, my floors still look so much better than they did at the beginning of the year.

Cleaning the Bathrooms

This, too, is a once-a-week task. And when I say cleaning the bathrooms, I don’t mean deep cleaning. That is not a regular-ritual conversation. This is just maintenance.

A solid maintenance cleaning for the bathroom involves:

  • Cleaning toilet bowl and sanitizing all toilet surfaces
  • Spraying and wiping down the shower (sometimes twice a week, because my conditioner is slippery)
  • Sweeping and mopping the floor
  • Gathering the trash
  • Putting any loose items back where they belong
  • Wiping down the cabinet and the sink

This process usually takes me about 20 minutes in my primary bathroom and 10 minutes in the guest bathroom. I do each bathroom on its own night, and I clean them on days when I have somewhere else to go in the evening.

This is not a welcome-home–to-stay task. It’s a get-it-done-quickly-because-we-have-places-to-be task.

I come home from work and immediately tackle a bathroom while my brain is still in go mode, on nights when I don’t have time to overthink and talk myself out of it or get distracted by something else. Then I eat a quick dinner and go to whatever I am doing that night (e.g., book club, choir, etc.).

What are some of your regular rituals?

I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days.

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