House Cleaning Kit – Tips & Ideas

One of the secrets to efficient house cleaning is to cart around your own customized cleaning kit from room to room, this saves you time since you have everything you need at hand.

As common sense as it sounds, this isn’t something that occurred to me until FlyLady caught my attention a few years ago, she has a lot of good tips and I very much recommend the system (it’s free!). The kit was also recently suggested in How To Clean Like A Maid.

For the housecleaning kit itself, you can use a bucket, a plastic caddy, a box or whip yourself up a housekeeping apron to stick everything in. Using an apron is especially helpful when decluttering at the same time you’re cleaning since you can free up an arm to cart around an empty box to fill up from room to room (you can find a couple free patterns here for housekeeping aprons).

Here’s a list of ideas for supplies to pack in your own kit, feel free to add your own ideas below .

Housecleaning Kit – Supply List

• Rubber Gloves
• Clean Rags – I love old terry towel rags
• Feather or Rag Duster
• Window & Glass Cleaner Spray Bottle (bunch of recipes: Homemade Window Cleaner Recipes & Tips).
• Household Cleaner Spray Bottle (bunch of recipes: Household Degreaser & Cleaner Recipe, Homemade Citrus Vinegar Cleaner, Herbal Cleaners and Multi-Purpose Household Cleaner).
• Small Spray Bottle of Plain Water
• Artgum Eraser
• Nylon Scrubbie–here’s a pattern to make your own if you’d like. A store bought scrub pad is fine too. These also work great too.
• Small plastic tube of Baking Soda–just in case I need a gentle abrasive for something. The tube I use is an old candy container and I just shake out the bit I need. You can also use an old tupperware salt shaker for this (they have a snap lid).
• A small plastic container of softscrub if I know I need it for the upcoming cleaning.
• Tube of Toothpaste–it’s an amazing spot and mark remover (see How to Remove Permanent Marker.)
• Toothbrush–for scrubbing in tiny places. Also some Detailing Brushes. If you’d like to keep them clean and easy to find, you can store them together in a ziplock bag.
• Plastic Bags – To collect bits and bobs to throw out (in other words–trash!) as well as toss dirty rags into until I take them down to the laundry room.
• Sponge

Tips

• I’m not a heavy sponge user, but they can’t be beat in the bathroom around the toilet and the floor (in my opinion), just remember to clean them well.
• Once you’re done cleaning, remove anything that needs to be chucked out or washed, restock what’s needed, then store the cleaning kit away with all the cleaning tools and supplies left in the kit. The next time you need to clean, your kit is ready to go.
• The trick with a house cleaning kit is that you pack everything in your kit that you would use or need for cleaning your house, while at the same time not packing it so full of stuff that it’s a burden to carry around.

*Originally Published February 5, 2008

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