Spring Challenge for a Clean, Organized, Thrifty and Healthy Home: Challenge #1 Cleaning Items List

It’s Springtime 2013! And the weather has been beautiful to boot! So it really gets me in the mood to get my home cleaned out.  AND…. let me tell ya’…. I really need this challenge for the next couple of months! I really, really love having this opportunity to take cleaning step by step and have a rewarding end to it!

Last week, we shared your shopping list to be able to make 23 natural homemade cleaning products for a very low price tag of $12.  And then if you wanted to make them anti-bacterial and anti-viral, we also shared the natural but effective add-ins for much less HERE.   We will be sharing all of these recipes for these cleaning products over the next few weeks and we will also be having cleaning challenges around our home a few times per week.

So, we hope that you got those ordered and items bought that you didn’t already have.  No worries if you haven’t yet, don’t let this stop you! Just grab your list and grab those items and pick-up with us where ever you are at.

For this challenge, I wanted to share a quick list of items to gather around your home to put together your cleaning caddy.  I really recommend having a cleaning caddy that allows you to just grab and go from room to room.

Here’s your list of items to collect:

• Caddy of some sort, the plastic one in the picture, I just picked up at Walmart for $1. It is a shower caddy, and I end up using it for my bathroom cleaners 🙂 The really nice one in my picture is from a discount warehouse type store (like a Family Dollar on steroids) and I bought it probably 5 years ago for less than $5. It IS my primary cleaning caddy and has been for 5+ years! BUT, don’t fret if you don’t have something like this yet – a good find will turn up eventually.  So worst case, use a box!
• Paper towels – I have these for a really messy job to throw away.  I don’t use paper towels in my daily or even deep cleaning as they can get expensive.  BUT, having a roll for “just in case” or “icky, I can’t keep this rag” mess, then there you go!
• Rags – old cut up t-shirts, old hand towels cut in half or old wash cloths.  Another great find that I happened upon was at Walmart probably about 4-5 years ago.  They had a bag of white rags with 24 -30 ct. for around $8-$10 (I can’t remember exactly, but I know that they were very cheap per rag).  Between my awesome homemade laundry detergent and oxygen bleach – I still have these same rags….they have lasted me this long!I know…I am shocked too! I keep them in my laundry room cupboard to separate from all other towels in the house.
• Scrubby Sponges for tough jobs.
• Microfiber cloths – I use these primarily for dusting, windows and mirrors.  They  are fantastic! Walmart has an 8-pk in the auto section of the store for $3.97. The dollar store is a great place to find these too!
• Pumice Stone – $1.88 at Walmart and is a very useful and natural tool for hard water stains, porcelain cleaning (like the porcelain throne), and much more! This stone can replace those heavy duty, high-potent chemical filled, expensive cleaners.
• Gloves – get a pair of cleaning gloves separate from your kitchen gloves.
• Old toothbrushes – don’t throw out the old ones, recycle them by using them in your cleaning. I really haven’t found anything better for getting the nooks and crannies.
• Grocery sacks to throw your rags in for cleaning and to replace expensive liners for small/bathroom garbages.
• For many of the recipes I will be sharing, gather spray bottles, hand soap pumps, cleaning or baby wipes tubs and dishsoap bottles. Please note, I try to recycle these items, but if they previously held a product that contained chemicals – THROW IT AWAY.  It is not safe to re-use these bottles.  If you previously had like GreenWorks wipes or 7th Generation products (essentially green or natural cleaners) then you should be safe to rinse/wash them out to reuse.
• Find some good boxes to use to gather items for these three needs: donate, garage sale, online sale (for higher valued items where you will make more money).  Of course, throw things away too – but that is what the garbage is for, you don’t need a box for that 🙂
• Finally, to replace both of the disposable dry and wet mop rags on a Swiffer type mop, don’t by the refills anymore.  I will be sharing a wet floor cleaning solution, so you just need to come up with rag options.  For dry mopping/sweeping with a with a Swiffer type unit, find some old fleece or fleece remnants and cut to size.  For wet mopping, you can use your rags or terry cloth (see my picture above for how I use those cheap rags as mop heads too!).  If you have the actual Swiffer Wet Jet, you can use clips to wrap the rag around it for wet mopping, or if you are handy with a sewing machine, turn some of your rags into a stretchy cloth that will wrap around with elastic sewn in!

With that, collect those items and then let’s dive right into our first cleaning challenge!

This is really embarrassing and shows just how much I need this Spring cleaning this year! I didn’t realize how bad this was growing until I am sharing it with the public!

Time to clean out the “junk drawer.”  Yes, this is mine right now! I even have hot pink duct tape stuck to the outside just for some added “junkiness” or rather – kids playing with tape……. (this isn’t the first duct tape handle in the house, but it seems to have “stuck” around longer than the others.  😉

Sometime in the next few days, get this little bugger cleaned out! I prefer to call it the “random drawer” and I haven’t ever been in a home that didn’t have one.  And as you can tell, mine is nothing but total random! But everyone in the house knows it is the random drawer and so everything that will fit goes in there.   Right now, we can barely close ours! YIKES!! It has probably been a good 3-4 months since I cleaned mine out. You can’t tell, but there was an organizer in there somewhere.

Now I like a clean, organized house – but with thrifty, healthy options.  But similar to myself trying my hand at gardening, I don’t have a natural knack for organization (like my lack of a green thumb). BUT…I still try…… Which is why we have shared our Be Intentional (taking baby steps for whole life change) plan as this helps me survive.  I can Be Intentional and accomplish many more goals, even when it comes to cleaning my home!

Watch tomorrow for the next update and tasks for the weekend!

Have fun putting together your cleaning caddy and getting your “random drawer” cleaned out and re-organized for today’s challenge!