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Over the past few months, I have been sharing with you various printables to help you organize, manage and stay on track of your daily, weekly, monthly and annual cleaning tasks. While I think it’s incredibly important to have routines in place to clean your home, you also need to have some cleaning tools too!
While I try to keep gadgets to a minimum around the house, especially in the kitchen, there are just some cleaning tools that you need to have on hand to clean all areas of your home. Today I’m sharing 15 of the BEST cleaning tools that I personally use on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
15 of the Best Cleaning Tools
As a side note, while I am linking to Amazon to show you these products, most of these can be found cheaper at either Wal-Mart or Target especially if you stack a sale with a coupon. With that being said, these are affiliate links below meaning that if you click through and make a purchase, I receive a small commission. You can read my disclosure policy here. Thank you for supporting Creative Home Keeper.
1. Swiffer Sweep & Trap
80% of my home is either hardwood floors or tile and the other 20% is carpet. In fact, our entire main living area, including our bedrooms is hardwood. While only the basement and upstairs bedrooms (which we don’t use yet since my kids are so young) are carpeted. Which means that I hardly spend any time vacuuming carpet and spend a LOT of time sweeping hardwood floors.
While I love the beauty and ease of hardwood floors, I don’t love that they show every piece of dust, dog hair, water spot or crumbs. In fact, I almost hate the early morning sun that shines in because it highlights ALL the dust. While a broom and a dustpan are great at picking up the dirt and crumbs and a dust mop is great at getting the dust and dog hair, I need something that does both, without having to drag out the vacuum cleaner every day.
Enter the Swiffer Sweep & Trap. This thing is amazing! It picks up most of those crumbs, dirt, hair and dust in one quick sweep. Plus it’s quiet which means I can quickly sweep the floor while the kids are asleep. The one negative is that it does require those disposable dust cloths which can be both expensive and not exactly environmentally friendly. But I have had some luck in attaching a thin washable microfiber cloth.
2. Hand-held Broom and Dustpan Set
Thanks to my kids spilling Cheerios all over the floor I use a hand-held broom and dustpan daily hourly. It helps pick up those loose pieces that my Swiffer Sweep & Trap misses, plus it’s great at picking up those hard to get crumbs under the kitchen table.
Between this and my Swiffer, I have absolutely no need for a traditional broom anymore, except for garage and patio cleaning.
3. Rubbermaid Reveal Microfiber Spray Mop
As I mentioned above, since 80% of my home’s floors are solid surfaces you can bet that I spend a lot of time mopping! A spray mop makes it so much easier to mop, plus it’s incredibly handy to always have a mop ready to go whenever you have a spill or small mess.
I like to make my own cleaning solutions for both my hardwood and tile floors and on the Rubbermaid Reveal Microfiber Spray Mop you can easily swap out the cleaner bottles and replace the cleaning pads. In fact, I have an extra cleaning pad and an extra bottle that make it super easy to switch from my hardwood floor cleaner to my tile cleaner.
4. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers
These little erasers are like rock stars! They seriously clean everything! From scuff marks on the floors, stains on the counters, soap scum in the shower, burn marks on the stove top and sticky glue on glasses, these remove all marks.
I am seriously in love with my magic erasers, I always have some handy. They definitely are not the most “green” cleaning product around but for how well they work (they are also cheap, you can usually get them with a sale and coupon) they are high on my cleaning must-have list.
5. Dust Mop
If you have lots of hardwood floors, like I do, then a large, quality dust mop is a must-have! This is a better option if you are more of a minimalist and don’t want to mess with a Swiffer. You’ll still have to vacuum or sweep up the crumbs and dirt, but these do a great job at getting all the dust.
I have a Rubbermaid Reveal Mop Dry Dusting Cleaning Pad that I can easily attach to my spray mop. It’s not as large as a traditional dust mop head, but it does the job.
6. Scrub Brush
I firmly believe that a scrub brush with a grip handle is worth the small investment. I’ve used the cheaper scrub brushes without the grip handle many times before but I was always loosing the grip as the handle got wet. With a gripper, I never loose traction and I believe it’s easier to hold.
Scrub brushes are great at cleaning the floor and walls of your bathtub or shower, sink and grout on the tile floors. I like a medium size one that can easily fit into most spaces and clean those hard to reach corners.
7. All-Purpose Squeegee
As part of my morning routine, once I finish taking a shower I quickly spray down the walls and use a squeegee to wipe off the excess water. This helps me to keep the shower clean so soap scum doesn’t build up and I’m not having to clean as hard later. I leave my squeegee in the shower so it is always within reach.
Using a squeegee to clean windows and mirrors is also very effective at getting rid of smudges, marks and build ups.
8. Hand Duster
I have a small confession to make–I don’t polish my furniture or use any type of cleaning product on them… ever. I’d like to say that it is a frugal and green cleaning practice, saving money and not using any extra potentially harmful cleaning products. But in reality, it’s actually more of a laziness thing, or what I like to call using my time wisely tactic.
