5 Thrifty Ways To Save Money On Cleaning

The costs associated with keeping a clean home can be relatively high. Even if, like me, you do the cleaning yourself, you can soon rack up large bills on the cleaning products themselves.

All items in the house seem to have a specialty cleaner these days. The issue is down to marketing. The cleaning product industry, like most these days, are very good at convincing us to buy things we don’t necessarily need. It doesn’t take long for our houses to get cluttered with products that only get used once or twice a year and spend the rest of the time sitting on the shelf.

While being prudent is quite important in this day and age, it’s not enough to let your cleaning power suffer for it. The good thing is, there are lots of thrifty ways to save money on cleaning. You can also consider Stashing money using an app or joining a cash back program for shopping.

• Buy an Air Purifier

Ok this may sound like I’m adding to your cleaning bill right off the bat, but you would be shocked at how much dust a good air purifier can remove from your home. They can significantly reduce the amount of time you spend dusting and vacuuming surfaces. Vacuum cleaners are one of the biggest drains on electricity in the home, so limiting it’s use can only be a good thing for your pocket.

• Use dish soap rather than specialty cleaners

Specialty cleaners cost a lot and stockpiling them often ends up being a waste as they’re usually not necessary to get your cleaning done.

Plain water or mild dish soap is usually more than enough to clean most objects in the home. If for one reason or another you have never tried using dish soap for cleaning other things in your home apart from the dishes, then you will find that you’re missing out on a lot. Most surfaces are very responsive to dish soap cleaning and lets face it, if they’re designed to remove the bacteria and germs from things we eat off, then they’re clearly good enough to clean a sideboard. Not only can dish soap be used on surfaces around your home, but they’re also very effective on stubborn laundry and carpet stains.

Generally, all you need do is to add a dab to a wet washcloth and sponge lightly. However, it is important not to overdo it, so you don’t have suds everywhere.

• Use a Store Brand

Once again, due to clever marketing, we’re usually led to believe that there are certain brands that will perform the job of cleaning better than others. Whilst this is the case in some circumstances, a lot of the time it’s not.

This clever form of marketing can have a significant physiological impact on the way we think – even if it’s on a subconscious level. The message in most cases usually leads us to believe that store brand products are inferior as they are not marketed to the degree the other big brands are.

There is often no difference between brand-name versions and generic versions of the cleaning supplies. So try as much as possible to look for cheaper, store brand version if it is available. Give them a try first and see if you really can tell the difference. If you can, then simply go back to buying the big brand version. But I’ll wager in many cases, you won’t be able to see a discernible difference. This tip alone can help you save you around 35%.

• Don’t Buy Disposable Items

Even though Disposable cleaning items can be very handy, they also do a good job of eating up your household budget. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of disposable items:

• Ensure you use a mop that makes use of a reusable mop head and not a mop that needs disposable mop pads.
• Use a rag and not paper towels since it can be washed and reused.
• Use bagless vacuums. Vacuum bags can be expensive and these days, mostly obsolete.
• As much as possible use a scrub brush that does not need replacement and not scouring pads or disposable sponges.
• Try to buy refill packs for detergent and other cleaning product bottles in order to not only save on throwing away those big bulky plastic bottles every time, but invariably they are much cheaper to replace.

• Maximize your broom functionality

Brooms often get tossed out as soon as they begin to get haggard or frayed, but it is possible to maximize its functionality by following some simple tips.

Wrap a rubber band around the bristles of the broom a few inches from the tips as soon as the broom tips start spreading or getting out of control. But if it is already in very bad shape, use more rubber bands close to the tip of the broom’s bristles to make sure they are firm and stay back up. The rubber bands can then be removed after a few days for it to be refreshed.