One Thing To Try Before You Hire a Cleaning Lady

If you have ever dreamed of hiring a maid, this post is for you. 

What is it about cleaning ladies that leaves us drooling?! It’s effortless. It’s speedy. It sparkles. 

But if you are like me…it’s a far-fetched dream because it comes at a cost. A cost that my wallet (and my stomach) can’t quite handle. 

I was in this boat for a long time. I would sit on the couch, mentally rehashing my list of things to clean and begin dreaming the Molly Maid dream. 

After looking around and coming to terms with the fact that my house wasn’t going to clean itself, I’d spend the next unsaid number of hours tackling my cleaning list with arms full of cleaners, paper towels, sprays, wipes, buckets, rags and a mop.

What made things even more difficult was adding children to the mix. When the newborn twins came along, let’s just say, cleaning wasn’t exactly the first priority. As they learned to walk, I was now outnumbered with their 4 hands grasping at the cleaning bottles while I desperately tried cleaning with one, and holding back the very curious forces with the other. Then came baby #3. Game over. I needed a new game plan.

The only way this would work is to either clean my house after 8pm (great intentions…but Netflix usually won), OR find a cleaning product safe enough for the kids to play with. BINGO.

I found it. And I loved it. 

My favourite microfiber cloth!

Here’s how it works. 

Wet it with JUST WATER.

The microfiber in this cloth is SO tiny. Like as in, split-one-hair-into-200-strands-tiny. As you move it along any surface, it gets into the microscopic pores and pulls up ALL the dirt, bacteria, fungus, grime and grease and holds it in the cloth. So rather than spraying a potentially toxic chemical onto the surface to kill it, you can actually just pull it up, by the roots so to speak, and get rid of it all together.
Side story…I forgot the grease collector in my bacon griller on one of our Breakfast for Dinner Sundays. Oops. I wiped up a counter pool of bacon grease with my microfiber cloth using just water and not even a hint of residue was left on the counter. Un.Real.

Find another clean side. Keep wiping.

My favourite microfiber cloth is the size of 4 large adult hands. If you fold it in quarters, you can fully deep clean 8 areas of your house, without even revisiting the sink. I absolutely love it because I’m not hunting down my next cleaning product for each different area. I literally walk around my house with one cloth and clean everywhere. It doesn’t get easier than that.

Rinse and rub under hot running water. Hang to dry.

Did you know that silver doesn’t allow bacteria to reproduce? It literally messes up the DNA, bursts the cell membrane and destroys the bacteria – SO COOL! Why does this matter? It has to do with the nasty stink that comes from our cloths and towels. You know the smell.
Turns out, when you put silver in cloths, they don’t stink. And it’s true. I have used, rinsed, hung-to-dry and re-used my self-purifying microfiber and they actually don’t stink. The bacteria doesn’t stand a chance. Sure makes me wonder what I was wiping around my kitchen back in the stinky-cloth days!

And the best part…

As my kids are crawling across our floors, eating crackers on our counter-tops, putting toys in their mouths, and kissing the windows – I know that not a drop of chemical residue is getting into their tiny bodies.
What. A. Feeling.
No more inhaling cleaning fumes.
No more fear of accidental swallowing by the little ones.
No more skin and eye irritation from cleaning products.
It’s just water. 

Before you call up your local cleaning service – give this thing a try.  Check out how clean my windows are now – seriously just using water + 1 microfiber cloth to clean, and 1 to dry!

dirty window showing greasy fingerprints, dirt and streaks before being cleaned by microfiber clothclean window that was cleaned using only microfiber Norwex envirocloth, window cloth and water

The crazy thing is I actually don’t mind cleaning now. It feels manageable. It’s easy. And in complete honesty – it’s made me double-take my home a few times. All without the price tag of hiring someone to do it. 

If you want to know which microfiber cloths I use (and totally love), click the Learn More button below!

Yes, I want to learn more!

 

 

How I Changed My Cleaning Routine From BLAH to BLAM!

The Problem.

Let’s just say, what I was doing, wasn’t working. 

I never felt “on-top” of housework. In fact, it always felt like I was drowning under the weight of it all. 

Take my bathrooms, for example. Bathroom cleaning often fell to the bottom of my to-do list. It involved so many steps, and so many different types of cleaners that all needed to be in one place, and then moved to the next bathroom – all while 3 little ones followed me from Bathroom A to Bathroom B. 

When I would finally get to it (on the one magical day where all 3 happened to nap at the same time), it was a CHORE. 

For a few months I tried motivating myself with a “Washroom Wednesday” routine! The idea was that every Wednesday I would make tackling the bathroom a priority and thus stay on top of it! 

The problem was, Wednesdays were often our busiest days. Wednesday would come and go without a “washroom-wash” and on Thursday I would wake up and say, “Well…it’s not Wednesday! Guess I’ll wait ’til next week to tackle those suckers!” 

And then there were those once-a-year chores. Probably not ones that should wait an entire year.

Dirty stainless steel fridge, dirty glass top stove and dirty outside window

My stainless steel appliances fell into this category. Greasy fingerprints and kitchen splashes/drips were the permanent decor on these! Finally, my mother-in-law was coming to stay with us for a few months so I’d thought I’d freshen things up around the kitchen. After multiple vinegar washes and a tedious olive oil polishing, my arms hurt in places I didn’t know existed. It took me hours. And it took all of 7 minutes the next morning for the fingerprints to return – but it was even worse because now they were smearing around with oil! I firmly decided I would not tackle that again for another 365 days.

I could go on about my floors needing to be mopped, my windows needing to be scrubbed on the inside AND outside, my screens collecting spider webs, the dust collecting under furniture and all around my laundry room. And I have this suspicion that if you are reading this…you are right there with me in the trenches.

Please. please. please. Let me tell you how everything changed.

How I Cut My Cleaning Time In Half

A good friend introduced me to these incredible microfiber cloths by Norwex that only required water. No cleaners, no buckets, no harmful chemicals.

I’ll be totally honest. I really resisted buying one because I HAD cloths. My laundry baskets were overflowing with them! 

What I didn’t realize was that these weren’t replacing cloths. They were replacing ALL of the cleaners I’d spray around my house. Like as in every single bottle collecting under my kitchen and bathroom sinks.

Woman carrying chemical cleaning supplies in arms

So that $18 Windex bottle at Costco. And the $15 Mr. Clean bottle. And never EVER buying them again? The frugal side of me started LOVING this. 

I ordered my first 3: The Envirocloth, The Window Cloth and a Bathroom Scrub Mitt.

Norwex envirocloth, window cloth and bathroom scrub mitt

When they arrived, I wiped my entire house. I threw my dry Window Cloth over my shoulder, wet my Envirocloth and wiped every wall, chair, window, mirror, appliance, counter, table, shelf. You name it. I wiped it. Again – just with a cloth and water. I dried the shiny things with the Window Cloth and my mind was blown. It was next level clean.

This was honestly the first time I felt like cleaning my house was finally easy

Not having to run around looking for paper towels, window spray, all-purpose cleaner, an old rag for each surface, the tub cleaner, the toilet bowl cleaner, etc gave me the freedom to clean my bathroom in about 3 minutes FLAT!

I clean my stainless steel appliances weekly now, and it takes me 3 minutes from start to finish.

Clean stainless steel, clean glass top stove, clean window

I can handle this kind of cleaning! It doesn’t feel like a chore. When I know it’s achievable in a matter of minutes, I can literally do it on the fly. I don’t need to stick to a cleaning schedule because it’s just so easy to get it all done.

Oh, and did I mention…they are self-purifying 😲 because there is silver within them (which I can 100% verify when I accidentally left one in my oven while ‘proofing’ my hamburger buns and saw the silver dripping out!) Check out the video above to see them in action against raw chicken and butter!

Finding yourself in the “It’s Not Working!” phase?

Here’s my challenge for you. Imagine yourself in Costco, grabbing that big $23 bottle of Disinfecting Wipes and the $24 pack of paper towels, and instead just opt for this Envirocloth and Window Cloth combo this time. 

It’s really a “love-at-first” use situation… You’ll never need to go down that aisle again. Not to mention the chemicals you’ll be kicking to the curb to keep your family safe!