Take a look at the cleaning aisle of any grocery store and you will quickly see a baffling range of products. There’s floor cleaner, bathroom cleaner, wood cleaner – the list is endless. Each individual task involved in the cleaning of your home seems to require a different product. It’s baffling, and then you realize the expense of it too.

Is it necessary to have a different product for every function? Is the bathroom floor so different from the kitchen floor that they require entirely different products? It doesn’t seem likely, but if you follow the instructions on a label, you’d think so.

It doesn’t end there, either. In the personal aisle, men and women are so different that they need individual shampoo- really?

Then there are the storage implications of all these different potions. They’re not small, and you end up with a cupboard full of products that only have a singular use. Whenever you move, you end up unearthing bottles covered in dust that have only been used once.

It doesn’t have to be this way. For regular maintenance, there are many items that can pull double, triple or even more duty.

Hair Conditioner

The obvious use is to make your hair soft and touchable, but there’s a few extras it can offer:

• Use it as a shaving balm, for both men and women. This is a product that’s silky by nature, and works well to lubricate the rub of a razor over skin.
• Soften brushes, such as makeup and paint brushes. If these items become stiff with use, mix warm water with conditioner and soak for an hour. Rinse thoroughly and they should be soft as new.

Orange Oil

PixaBay Image

As a sweet-smelling essential oil, this is nice to have around for its fragrance alone. It’s a bonus that it has extra uses:

• Anything with citric acid works well as a floor cleaner. Add a few drops to warm water and see grease stains melt away.
• Use diluted in water and spray around plants to keep pests away from them. In the home, it’s an efficient method of termite control, so spray on any unprotected wood.
• Add a few drops into your laundry rinse cycle to infuse the delicious scent into clothes.

Toothpaste

You might have heard the idea of using toothpaste to dry out face pimples. This isn’t a good idea for a variety of reasons, but that doesn’t mean you’re limited to just cleaning teeth with it:

• As a mild abrasive, toothpaste is excellent for lifting light scratches from surfaces. It won’t fix a deep paint scratch in your car, but it will buff out anything superficial. The same works for old CDs.
• If your child has used crayon on a painted wall, toothpaste is your best bet. Use it little by little on the mark, and gently buff it away.
• Cleaning metals, such as silver. Again, the mild abrasive property means that you can lift tarnish from precious metals.

There are plenty of other products that can do more than just one thing in the home. Don’t be afraid to try things out, and reduce your cost and storage needs at the same time.