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We all need to save money right now, and I rely on my favorite budget household cleaning products to keep my home clean and fresh for cheap.
Has this ever happened to you? You are checking out at your local grocery store after picking up some cleaning products for your home. You’ve got kitchen counter spray, toilet cleaner, specialty floor cleaner, bathroom tile scrub, and an expensive disinfectant that promises to kill more germs than any other cleaner out there. The cashier tells you the total cost, and your heart sinks with how much everything costs these days. But you wonder if you could be saving money using budget-friendly cleaning products instead. We are here to help!
It can be really disheartening how much things cost in today’s world. As a mom of three, I am feeling the pinch pretty much everywhere I shop, from the gas station to the grocery store. I’ve definitely had to be more careful about where I spend my money lately. If you are blowing out your monthly budget on household cleaning products, let me give you some good news. There are so many great budget cleaning products out there, and they will save you tons of money.
Let’s start by introducing my arsenal of budget cleaning products: blue Dawn dish soap (it has to be the blue one!), vinegar, powdered Tide detergent, bleach, baking soda, and hand sanitizer. That’s it! Throw in a bucket to mix things in, a mop, and some kitchen rags, and you are ready to get your home sparkling clean and fresh on a budget.
Table of Contents
Budget Household Cleaning Product #1: Dawn
First up, let’s talk about blue Dawn dish soap. Make sure it’s the blue kind! I don’t know why the blue version of Dawn works best, but it just does. This is one of the best household cleaning products I’ve ever used, and you only need to use a small amount of soap each time, making this a very cheap way to get your house sparkling clean. Here are four of the ways I use blue Dawn dish soap in my budget cleaning arsenal.
Kitchen Counters
I get out my cleaning bucket, mix a few teaspoons of Dawn with hot water, and use this mixture to clean my kitchen counters. This works especially well if you have stone kitchen counters because you need to use a gentle cleaner to protect the finish of your stone surface. I take one kitchen rag and scrub the counters with soapy water, and then I take another rag and buff it dry. Dawn is really good at cutting grease and lifting up the mess that covers my kitchen counters daily from the smear of peanut butter my toddler left when he ate his lunch to cooking grease that splattered from the pan on the stove.
Dusting
I find that it’s better to dust using a damp cloth rather than a dry cloth, and dipping my dusting cloth into my mixture of Dawn and hot water and then wringing it out really well is an effective budget cleaning product for getting dust out of my home. Here are more ways to control dust in our homes.
Clean your toilet
If you walk down the cleaning aisle at any grocery store, you might get the impression that the bathroom needs all kinds of expensive cleaning products. Remember, soap is soap. I like to squirt a little blue Dawn dish soap in my toilet bowl and then scrub with a toilet brush. It gets the job done for cheap, and the money I saved gets to stay in my wallet. Here are more helpful tips for getting your toilet fresh and clean.
Dishes
This might go without saying, but a sink full of hot water and a few drops of Dawn works better than anything to get my dishes clean. I have a dishwasher in my home, so I like to pre-soak any dishes with stuck-on food in a sink full of hot soapy Dawn water before I rinse them off and place them in the dishwasher.
Budget Household Cleaning Product #2: Vinegar
Next up in our budget household cleaning products, we have good old vinegar. Vinegar has strong cleaning power, a cheap price tag, and is all natural. You can’t beat that! Here are three areas of my home I clean using vinegar.
Anything shiny
A mixture of one part vinegar to three parts water is great for cleaning anything shiny – windows, mirrors, shiny metal fixtures like sink faucets, glass coffee tables, glass cabinet doors. Just wipe or spray on the vinegar mixture, and then use a paper towel to dry. I use paper towels instead of my kitchen rags because I find that the kitchen rag leaves lint behind. A squeegee would be a good environmentally friendly alternative.
Microwave
Pour a cup of vinegar into a microwave safe bowl, and place it in your microwave. Turn your microwave on and let it heat up the vinegar for about ten minutes. Let the vinegar cool down for a minute or two before removing it very carefully from your microwave. Now take a kitchen rag and wipe down the inside of your microwave. The hot vinegar has steam cleaned the inside surfaces and that stuck on food is easily wiped off.
Stain removal
You steam cleaned your microwave, and now you have a bowl of hot vinegar sitting on your kitchen counter. What should you do with it? You could pour it down the drain, but wait! Squirt a teaspoon of blue Dawn dish soap into the bowl and mix. Now you have a great budget stain remover that you can use to spot clean the stains on your couch, the rug in your living room, or even the cloth seats of your car. Check out these tips if you’ve got some really tough stains to get out!
Budget Household Cleaning Product #3: Tide and Bleach
Let’s talk about the magic of powdered Tide detergent and bleach. This tip comes from the amazing cleaning company, Go Clean Co. Follow them on Instagram for more cleaning tips. They recommend mixing a few teaspoons of powdered Tide detergent with about a third of a cup of bleach with a gallon of hot water. This mixture is pure magic! I was a little skeptical about using laundry detergent to clean more than my clothes, but once I tried it, I never went back to any other cleaner! This is how it works: the Tide lifts stains and dirt while the bleach disinfects. It’s genius, and even better, you need to use so little of both ingredients that one box of Tide and one bottle of bleach last forever. It’s the perfect budget cleaning hack! I use this budget cleaning mixture almost everywhere in my home, but here are three specific examples.
My entire bathroom
The bathroom is an area that needs daily disinfecting, and this mixture works wonders. I use it on my bath tub, my toilet, my tile floor and walls, my sink, and even inside my little bathroom waste basket.
Floors
I use this mixture on any hard surface floors except hardwood. I’ve got five people plus pets walking on my floors every day, and even though I try to get everyone to remember to take their shoes off while in the house, our floors get so dirty! This budget cleaner gets them shiny again, not to mention germ free.
Kitchen cabinets
Those fingerprints, food smudges, and dust will wipe off your kitchen cabinets so easily with Tide and bleach. Now that your cabinet doors are sparkling clean, read this tips for getting the inside of your kitchen cabinets organized.
Budget Household Cleaning Product #4: Baking Soda
Baking soda is a budget cleaning super star. It’s cheap, easy to find in most stores, and it’s all natural! What’s not to love? It’s a super budget friendly household cleaning product, and it does the same job as the more expensive products – scrub. Here are two ways I use baking soda around my home.
Scrubbing power
Soap and water can clean almost anything, but sometimes you need a product with a little more grittiness to give you a bit more scrubbing action. Mixing baking soda into a paste with a few drops of water works great for scrubbing the grime out of the kitchen sink, scrubbing buildup on your bathroom tile, or scrubbing the ring around the inside of the bathtub.
Odor
Living in our houses brings along some unpleasant odors, especially if you have pets. I love my basset hound, but sometimes he stinks! I like to sprinkle baking soda on any soft surface that needs a little refresh – my couch, area rugs, or the bed mattress. Let it sit and do its job for a few minutes, and then vacuum the baking soda up.
Budget Household Cleaning Product #5: Hand Sanitizer
Last but not least in our budget cleaning kit is hand sanitizer. These days, we all have plenty of hand sanitizer in our homes. Why not get double duty from it? Here’s how I use hand sanitizer in my home as one of my best household cleaning products on a budget.
Stain Removal
I use it in my home for one thing- removing stubborn stains from hard surfaces. One box of Magic Erase stain scrubbers costs more than ten dollars, but a bottle of hand sanitizer costs just a few dollars. I’ve got a sneaky toddler in my house that sometimes manages to grab one of my ink pens and color on our walls. Ugh. Put a little hand sanitizer on a kitchen rag, and the ink wipes right off the wall. It also works on stubborn makeup stains, paint splatters, and red wine spills.
So, don’t spend your hard earned money on expensive cleaning products. We all work so hard, and the dollar isn’t stretching as far as it used to these days. Keep your cash in your wallet, and try out some of the top five best household cleaning products I have found to get my home clean on a budget. If you try them and they work for you, let us know in our Facebook group!
