i am not giving you a giant ‘no duh’ for the cotton clothes - i never even thought about it before! i always go for the papertowel! but i like this idea! now, how do you get them to wash themselves?

I love Mrs. Meyer’s stuff too. We use a lot of the Method products. I especially love their granite cleaner (not sure if it would work on your stone, but probably yes?), stainless steel cleaner and wood cleaner. The wood cleaner smells REALLY good - like almonds. However, it will not remove Sharpie from a wooden kitchen table. (stupid kids).
My favorite thing to do is to make my daughter (age 6) help. She has her own cleaning products in her bathroom and is in charge of cleaning the sink every day after she spits toothpaste all over it. My son is Riley’s age, and he is actually kind of helpful too. Baby wipes are great for kids that age. They can use them to wipe up most household items, like garbage cans, chairs, etc.

I love those microfiber cleaning cloths. They’re great for wiping down stainless steel without leaving streaks and I find that I can clean lots of things with them without even having to use cleaners (faucets, toddler handprints on walls, baby spitup on carpet, etc.)

I also made up my own cleaning solution using Borax, vinegar, water and some drops of tangerine essential oil. I have no idea what proportions I used…I just kinda dumped it all in a squirt bottle and added enough essential oil to make it smell pretty.

Borax will clean a lot of stuff, too. Cooked on gunk on your stovetop? Just make a paste of Borax and vinegar and let it sit there for a while and shazaam! It comes right off. Also, dump some Borax in your toilet, leave it for at least half an hour, swish around with toilet brush, then flush. Also works well as a laundry booster (think: OxyClean). No nasty smells or fumes and it’s cheap!

Okay this may or may not be so environmentally friendly..and I’m getting a vibe here ..but seriously I would DIE without my magic eraser. The plus side Ozone preservation wise? You only need water..no cleaning solutions with it.
If you have a white fridge..seriously wipe it with that. Yeah exactly..you THOUGHT it was clean. My husband believes it’s alien technology..I just want to sleep with the inventor.

Cheapest and best cotton cleaning towels are the chinese/ indian cotton prefold diapers. You can get them for a about $1 a piece on ebay. They are awesome and last forever.

Vinegar is the best for cleaning carpets! And cheaper by far than carpet detergent. I use it in my Hoover Spinscrub with hot water and it removes tons of dirt. When the carpet dries the smell dissipates. I also saved the cloth diapers that I used as burp cloths for my children to use for cleaning mirrors and such-they are the bomb!

I love Murphy’s Oil Soap for my floors — it will clean anything. It’s environmentally friendly, and it’s one of the few wood floor cleaners that doesn’t leave streaks or spots (which drive me nuts). Too bad the smell isn’t all that great, but it dissipates fairly quickly and is cheap and easy to use.

In the pantry I have 4 baskets (that I labeled when DS#1 was on a labeling/ learning to read kick)- towels, napkins, rags, placemats. The rags are cut up bath towels-the boys love helping me cut them up! That’s my alternative to the above mentioned diapers.

I use Amway concentrated windex on everything- high chairs, table, etc (got it cheap at a yardsale and have enough to last a year or two). My staples: the lavender counte rspray and magic eraser and I use pine sol to mop with and Electrosol geltabs in the dishwasher (hate cascade! dang grit!!). Fels Naptha soap will help scrub out ANY stain that a spray won’t.

But my best cleaning tip? Not quite a product but . . . Teach your kids! No joke!! My boys willingly do chores and have routines. They to use a placemat or they are cleaning the table. The 4 year old is my biggest helper! My kids clear their own places and put away their own clothes. They only have comforters on their beds so it is easy peasy to straighten each morning. Now- their room is a wreck with toys- don’t get me wrong, they are messy little creatures but they have learned to bring the laundry from teh hamper to the washroom when asked, take the trash out, wipe up spills etc.

I need a little help. I’m cleaning illiterate (you can give me a little break as I’m only 24 and for the first time I am living in a place that I actually desire to keep clean) … can these Method products be purchased in store anywhere? I am looking at amazon.com and they are all 6 packs of bottles or something along those lines. I’m interested in trying them out, but not investing in a years supply of cleaning product.

Also, I want to use cloths instead of paper towels. Here is my conundrum with them … after they are used they are gross and obviously need to be laundered. But I don’t want to put them in the laundry with my other clothes/towels for fear the would get gross — am I crazy? Should I just toss them in with everything else?

Thanks in advance!

I also love the method products. Their shower cleaner rocks my world! Just spray it in the shower after everyone is finished. All of the water spots disappear from the faucets. I’ve even used it on my son’s bath toys to help with the mineral build up. (note: he’s 3 so they are not toys he puts in his mouth).

I especially love that the method products don’t smell like cleaning products. So if I panic-clean just before people arrive at my housethey don’t know that I’ve spent the past 30 minutes cleaning up just for them.

Also, rather than throw out old t-shirts, I cut up the non-printed areas and use them as cleaning rags. They don’t absorb a whole lot of liquid so I tend to use it for wiping down surfaces such as glass or stone.