My Favorite Cleaning Products of all time
Keeping our home clean with a toddler and two dogs isn’t the easiest feat. These cleaning products are always stocked at our house and are some of the most affordable & low-waste products we could find that worked well for our family. Whether you’re putting together a cleaning kit for your own home or just want to waste less plastic, I hope this list gives you some ideas for some really great products.
This article includes products I received for free to review as well as affiliate links - regardless, all options are my own and these truly are my favorite cleaning products that I use in my own home on a daily basis.
All-Purpose Cleaners
Just like every other person who saw the Instagram ads a few years ago - I signed up for Grove (a home and cleaning company if you don’t follow ANY influencers) and we still love and use a lot of their products. We have 4 or 5 of their glass spray bottles and they have held up really well over the years. Recently, they released their Concentrated refill sets for all-purpose, glass and tub & tile cleaner. We bought a couple of packs and have been using them ever since.
We re-use the little glass bottles for crafts, spices, and my daughter’s play kitchen. The all-purpose cleaner is used on virtually every surface of our home from floor to the kitchen, and we have never felt the need for any other specialty cleaners because these work so dang well.
Mop
When we moved into our home, we fell in love with the floors, but quickly realized they showed every hair, smudge, and drop of water. I started off with a Swiffer mop that we had when we moved, but it was so small that it took forever (and a lot of scrubbing) to really get the floor clean. Also, unless you buy the brand-name pads nothing quite fits.
We got this mop from Target with the hopes it would cut back on our waste and cover more space. Unfortunately, it didn’t hold up well. The top ended up cracking which caused spills if we filled it up all the way and it still took a lot of scrubbing to get the floor clean.
Eventually, we caved and bought a $300 mop-vac that was supposed to do the work of a vacuum and a mop, and ummmm, it sucks. It’s loud, hard to clean and the battery barely lasts to do our 1st floor. We accepted the fact that keeping our floors clean was a fading dream.
Then, I partnered with Microfiber Wholesale, they offered to send me THIS mop to try out in exchange for an honest review. I figured I had nothing to lose, and this could at least replace my broken mop for one that looked a bit more sturdy. Holy moly, this thing changed the game.
I spray the floor with all-purpose spray, move this bad boy over it a few times and my floors are CLEAN. Like, let the toddler eat the spilled goldfish, oops a baby licked it - oh well, walk around barefoot clean. This is the only mop I will ever use again. I don't know what kind of magic this is made of but it is worth every penny. Like, seriously, we’re donating all the other mops we’ve collected.
We use this on the shower tiles, the wood floors, and our tile floors. It even picks up left-over pet hair instead of just pushing it around in a pile (I have NEVER found a mop to do this as well as this one).
Is it weird to give this as a gift? Yes. Am I going to do it to every new home or pet owner I know? Also yes.
Vacuum
This is one of those cleaning gadgets that can make you go a little crazy if you don’t have something decent. With dogs and a cat, we need a pet-friendly option. With three stories, we also preferred something cordless but didn’t want to run out of battery before we finished all the floors. We researched, we asked family & friends, we tested - we ended up spending a lot on the Dyson Animal Cordless Vacuum.
I have absolutely zero regrets. Our floors are clean, the battery is amazing and it’s quiet enough to run during nap time. I’m sure there’s plenty of other great options but this one has never left us wanting.
Cleaning Cloths
Rather than using paper towels or sponges, we bought a pack of 100% cotton shop towels. We use these for EVERYTHING. From cleaning mirrors to scrubbing the tub, even cleaning up pet messes. For towels that get really soiled, we can compost them instead of throwing them away. The ones we use for cleaning get washed in a hot run through the washing machine.
These aren’t the kind of un-paper towels that you’d set out on display, but they work really well for what we need and they are very inexpensive for how much use you can get from them.
We’ve ended up buying two packs of 150 towels over the last 5 years, and only once did we actually throw a handful away because they had paint on them. Otherwise, these towels hold up really well and cause much less waste than paper towels or another alternative might.
Laundry Soap
Through my job, I’ve been able to work closely with the company Grab Green, so this has been one of our favorite options for low-waste laundry. We still use their powdered laundry detergent after 6+ years. Another option we have loved is the Grove ultra-concentrated detergent. The dispenser you can buy from grove also makes for a pretty aesthetic and perfectly measures out the detergent without a mess.
I have very sensitive skin with eczema so both of these products have been great for keeping scents off our clothes but still making them smell and feel really clean.
Dryer Balls
Lastly, for our laundry routine, we have switched to only using dryer balls. Again, with my sensitive skin, we needed something fragrance-free that wouldn’t leave our clothes a static mess. These dryer balls are also compostable (as it is all-natural wool) and can be used for over 1000 cycles. They actually seem to help our clothes dry even faster and since we started using them a few years back, we’ve only ever had one pack.
