Cleaning products are not something we often think about, especially considering all the other things we have to keep in mind at all times. But when you do think about it, all the cleaning products you use at home make for a large chunk of your budget, and on a regular basis. Can that change?

1. Clean More Often

Yes, you are probably living a busy life that does not leave you with lots of time for cleaning. But if you want to save some money, try to make some time. The more often you clean the surfaces in your home, the less time they will actually require to become clean. For example, the sticky combination of oil vapors and dust that covers lots of the surfaces in your kitchen and requires thorough scrubbing to come off will not be there at all if you wipe your counter tops and other objects with a damp cloth every few days.

2. Choose Store Brands

Our TVs are teeming with cleaning product ads, every one of them claiming that you could not achieve even remotely the same amazing results if you do not use that particular product. In truth, most cleaning products contain much the same ingredients and there is rarely that special revolutionary thing that will make your roasting dish look as good as new with just one smooth motion of your wrist. As you have probably already discovered, unless you scrub viciously or let the dish soak for a while, it will not become clean no matter what product you are using. So why waste your money on those expensive brands when the store brands will achieve the same for a better price?

3. Multi-Purpose Cleaners Galore

If you look in your supplies cupboard right now, you will probably see a wide range of cleaning supplies – stain remover, carpet cleaner, a special cleaning solution for the cooker, another one for the bathroom tiles, a third one for the toilet, one for the windows, and so on, and so on. By the way, you don’t need them. Your regular old dish soap will do everything these things do and save you a whole lot of money in the process. Just put some in a spray bottle, dilute it with warm water and start cleaning. You will only need special solutions if the thing you have to clean is really really dirty, which gives the above-mentioned frequency of cleaning even more importance.

4. Leave the Paper Towels Alone

You have probably not thought about it much, if at all, but try to guess how much paper towels you have used in the past week, the past month, etc. A lot, right? Though not that much of a budget strain when you think about them individually, the monthly cost of paper towels can actually be quite significant. And they are certainly not environmentally friendly! So kill two birds with one stone and switch to cloth wipes and rags, which are reusable and very cheap. In fact, you can use old sheets or towels as rags for those less important surfaces and save even more money.

5. Homemade Solutions

The versatility of regular dish soap was mentioned above, but we can easily take that a step further. You can use white vinegar instead of dish soap and enjoy the same great results. Vinegar is acidic which allows it to easily fight grease, mold, bacteria and much more, leaving your home clean and disinfected at a small fraction of the price. Also, if you need a stronger cleaning product for something and would like an abrasive paste, you can scoop old coffee grounds from your coffee machine and use them – same effect, no cost!

As you can see, keeping your home clean doesn’t have to be an expensive affair. We have yet to see a law that requires you to keep 20 different expensive cleaning products in your cupboard so just don’t do it!