Cleaning on a (tight) budget

Whenever people are mentioning their low weekly budgets, they usually tell "...and that's even without cleaning supplies". I get that getting by on a low budget can be stressful, having had personal experience with that myself. But, the cleaning stuff have never really been an issue. In fact, it's where we'd spend the least out of all groceries. I'm convinced that with almost no money, it's possible to buy all your cleaning necessities. 

As time went by, and our finances improved, I've noticed that our spending on cleaning stuff hadn't increased so much. Not spending a lot in this area isn't just a choice out of frugality, it's also for the environment- not wanting too much harsh chemicals in the home. I'm not completely using only good stuff and rigorously shunning all the chemicals, but I'm still glad our detergent cupboard doesn't equal some sort of chemical factory either. 

What do I all use? First of all, I probably have mentioned this a lot by now, but we try to use as little disposable products as possible, so that includes wipes. I really don't see the need to pay for disposable wipes that are usually much more pricey than the good old reusable ones. So, no disposable wipes it is. I only use a piece of kitchen roll when I clean the shower drain (we live here with three girls which means quite a lot of hair...). But, only if it's a lot and I always cut one piece of paper unto four squares. So one roll still lasts a long time. Another disposable product I use are sponges - I like referring to them as semi disposable as they don't get tossed right away, but still get tossed in the end. I'm still looking for a solution to that though, I do have a cleaning brush but sponges are just more convenient in my opinion. 

Now we'll move on to the detergents. I try to keep this as minimalistic as possible, and especially not using single purpose cleaners. Those are really a waste of money in my opinion. The main products I use are washing up liquid (which I buy in large 5L jugs), a block of household soap, which is insanely cheap here, powdered laundry detergent -not just for the laundry-, and vinegar. I also have a jug of "all purpose cleaner", which is a bit of a misleading name because there is no cleaner in that jug; it's just scented water which you can add to your mopping water or even throw some of it to the toilet bowl etc. And yes, I use bleach too. Bleach water to be exactly, not the concentrated stuff because bleach water is much cheaper here. But I try not to use that a lot honestly. I'll elaborate some on how I use each of the aforementioned cleaning products: 

Washing up liquid: for the dishes (duh!), as we don't have a dishwasher. And to me that includes the counter, sink and hob. I pretty much use this washing up liquid as an all purpose cleaner, adding some drops to a bucket of water for mopping the floors, or when dusting surfaces, cleaning the fridge etc. It's basically my all purpose cleaner, just a very concentrated one. 

Block of soap: I like this for cleaning the bathroom - rubbing it on a sponge and then cleaning the sink with it. And then for the wall tiles, toilet, shower surface, floor etc. I use it diluted in a bucket of water. I also make my toilet cleaner by diluting a bar of this kind of soap and boiling it, then adding some of the scented water that I mentioned. I also use this soap to remove stains out of clothes, which works great. Sometimes I rub some of this soap on stains before the clothes get washed in the machine too. Washing clothes by hand is something which is still done by a lot of people where we live, and because this soap is so powerful at removing stains, most will use this plain soap - also because it's insanely cheap (the ones that wash by hand are doing so usually because they're very poor). One bar of soap costs onder €0.30, which is very very affordable. 

Powdered laundry detergent: We buy big bulk sacks of detergent, of 5 or even 10 KG. The main purpose is laundry, obviously, but there are other uses. When I'm short of washing up liquid, I use this detergent, as do many people here (which they then mix with bleach... But that's something I would never do!). And I use it in the toilet bowl- whenever I'm not using my other toilet cleaner. Note that this detergent isn't exactly the same as every other powdered laundry detergent, it's a multi purpose product- at least that's what the package says. 

Vinegar: I used to use it a lot more than I do now, which is because quite a few surfaces in our home aren't suitable to be cleaned with vinegar. But I still use it as a fabric softener replacement, to descale taps, etc. Last winter, I made a cleaner with a lot of leftover lemon peels soaked in vinegar - then diluted with water because the peels make the vinegar even more strong. Not only is this a great way to use your leftover citrus peels (I used lemon, but orange peels are a great option too), it's also smelling less vinegary, for those who are put off by using vinegar because of the smell. I regularly use this in the toilet bowl and for other things that I would use regular vinegar. 

Oh, and this one is probably a bit unusual but I also keep some cheap shampoo for certain cleaning jobs such as heavy duty descaling, or when I need a "real" all purpose cleaner instead of washing up liquid. I already have shampoo ar home anyway, and thus way I'm avoiding buying expensive and big bottles of cleaners that I'd use a few times before it's just sitting endlessly in the cupboard. So I guess I'd need to add shampoo to my list too. You might not consider it as a real cleaner but I guess I do. 

Bleach: I try it to use it as minimal as possible, so one bottle lasts quite a while. I clean my bathroom with it every so often and the main use is when I've been cutting chicken. Sometimes I even dare to just use washing up liquid for that. 

So these are the main cleaners we use, which allow us to spend as little as possible on cleaning while at the same time staying organized because we don't have a thousand of different kind of detergents, cleaners and whatnot. Cleaning doesn't need expensive, ultra scented stuff (although that's fine too if that's important to you, but I guess for me it isn't...). Soap is usually enough, you might have to use some extra elbow grease at times.