Cleaning your house doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, if you buy the right products and plan accordingly, you can clean your whole house for very little money.
But what does this actually look like in real terms? Below, we’ll cover the most important tips for how to clean a house on a budget.
How to Clean a House on a Budget
1. Buy Quality Supplies
You wouldn’t have thought the first tip on a budget-friendly list would be about buying, but here we are! If you can afford it, investing in high-quality products is one of the best ways to save money in the long run.
Although this logic applies to cleaning products as much as tools, we’re mainly focusing on tools here. Invest in a decent corded vacuum cleaner over a cordless model, for example. Corded hoovers are usually cheaper and have less that can go wrong (along with being more powerful). Put simply, higher-end, quality products are less likely to need replacing.
2. Make Your Own Cleaning Cloths
Make your own cleaning cloths and dusters out of old clothes. If you’ve got a t-shirt with holes in it, rip it up and turn it into rags. These will do everything a store-bought duster or dishcloth will do without costing any money.
3. Use Less Cleaning Product
Often, many of us will spray our cleaning products liberally and then get to work. However, this is surprisingly wasteful because you can often do the job with a lot less than you might expect.
Instead of spraying and wiping, use much less product and leave it to sit for 5 minutes or so. You’d be amazed at the difference it makes to the product’s effectiveness, and makes it last a lot longer.
4. Ignore Job-Specific Products
In theory, you only need a handful of cleaning products to do your whole house: a general surface spray, glass cleaner, and furniture polish. Flashy bathroom tile or shower glass sprays can be tempting, but they’re often just rebranded versions of standard cleaning supplies.
White vinegar covers most of these bases, in fact. You can use it as a glass cleaner and an antibac spray (provided you don’t mind your house smelling a bit like a plate of chips for a few hours!).
5. Make Your Own Cleaning Products
Go a step further and make your own cleaning products. You’ll be able to find plenty of recipes, but some examples include:
- Bicarbonate of soda mixed with a small amount of water as a tile scrub
- White vinegar and essential oils mixed with hot water as a floor cleaner
- Washing up liquid as a general disinfectant
- Bicarb as a deodoriser
- Walnut oil (or cutting board oil) and lemon juice as a furniture polish
Half a lemon is ideal for polishing stainless steel, too. The only other tip is to not bother mixing vinegar and bicarb. You might see it used as a drain unblocker, but it simply doesn’t work as advertised, so don’t bother wasting your products.
6. Learn How to Repair and Maintain Things
Knowing how to clean and maintain your vacuum cleaner, for example, will keep it working for longer. Similarly, if you’ve got a few basic tools and a desire to learn, you’ll be able to fix most minor issues that might pop up.
While this doesn’t apply to all cleaning tools, it’s worth knowing how to repair things, especially if it saves you from having to buy a new one.
7. Ventilate Your House
Does this count as cleaning on a budget? Perhaps not, but it’s a useful tip. Open your windows as much as possible to ventilate your house. This should help reduce mould, mildew and dust as well as musty smells.
8. Don’t Let it Get too Dirty
As a follow-up to the above tip, try to avoid your house getting too dirty in the first place. Small daily cleaning tasks are generally more budget-friendly than deep cleans that require loads of product.
For example, a daily wipe down of your bathroom sink (with or without product) will be more cost-effective in the long run than a weekly deep clean with loads of tile cleaner.
Final Thoughts
Cleaning a house on a budget doesn’t need to be difficult. Along with making your own products, being mindful of when and how you clean can help save you money. You should find that after a bit of practice, you can make your house spotless without spending much money at all. Many people hire cleaning services and it costs them a lot of money, meanwhile you will be saving every penny and won’t find it a big expense.