Minimizing my cleaning products

This morning, I was cleaning our bathrooms. Glamorous, I know. 🙂

I had run out of the Clorox toilet wand refills that I had used for many years to scrub the toilet, and I decided to make a homemade cleaner that would be more sustainable and non-toxic. I used the “Lazy Day Toilet Scrub” from DIY Natural. When I went in to scrub with a toilet brush, I was ASTONISHED that tons of nasty brown stuff started coming off my toilet. It must have been high on the rim, because I had never noticed it and our toilets seemed clean, but it was for sure that my previous cleaning methods had not been cleaning quite as well as I thought.

And then I went to return the three different kinds of spray that I use in the bathroom to my cleaning cabinet. And I wondered, why do I have all of these bottles of cleaner?

I decided to take stock of the cleaning products I currently have in my house. And I was a little embarrassed:

• 4 carpet stain removers
• 4 lime/mildew removers
• 2 stainless steel cleaners
• 3 granite cleaners
• 2 lemon oil polishes
• 1 wood polish
• 1 multi-surface polish
• 1 antibacterial spray
• 1 everyday spray
• 2 glass cleaners
• 3 types of hardwood floor cleaner sprays
• 1 huge refill of hardwood floor cleaner (not pictured)
• Goo Gone (not pictured)
• Goo Gone wipes
• 3 bathroom cleaners
• 2 shower sprays

In all, I counted 32 bottles. This does not include my dish soap or my dishwasher tablets. I’m not sure how I ended up with so many. In a case or two, I think it’s because I decided I didn’t like the way one of the products worked and bought a second. For some, I just don’t know – maybe I didn’t know I had it and bought another?

I’ve been thinking for some time that I would like to reassess the things we are using in our house for cleaning, and we have moved to Method for a lot of things for a more natural alternative. But when a quick Google search shows that pretty much all you need for almost all of the above things is baking soda and vinegar in some kind of proportion, I wonder why I’m spending so much money on cleaning products! Not to mention that this is taking up at least two cabinets worth of space combined, and I (with my minimalist goals) would love to get all that space back! And all of these things are in plastic bottles which, even though I recycle, is not ideal.

So today, I am pledging to try to phase all of these things out. I feel like it would be even more wasteful to just chuck all of these things out when they are still useful, so I do plan on using most of them up. I will make an exception if I find it’s just not cleaning the way I want it, and then I will try to find someone else who can use it. And when these things are used up, I will try a natural alternative to whatever it is – and then share my results with you!

I think this project meets a lot of the things I’ve been interested in lately – making my own (which I’ve always loved to make! that’s why this is a craft blog!), minimizing items in my home, reducing plastic waste, and working to live more naturally.

Minimizing and Maximizing

It’s been quiet around the blog lately, and that’s because I’ve been very busy.

We just returned from Spring Break, which was both amazing and exhausting, and a story for another day.

And before that, I was busy starting down a new path… minimalism.

A few weeks ago, while Mr Snips was away on a business trip and BK had been put to bed, I cuddled up on the couch and turned on Netflix. It recommended Minimalism: A Documentary. I can only guess this is because I’d sped through Marie Kondo’s series pretty quickly. 🙂 I’m not sure what made me select it, but I did, and I was VERY interested once it started going. As I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up more than once, and I’ve certainly made a go at it a few times. But what I realized after watching this film, and then visiting a few minimalism blogs, is that the reason it never really helped all that much is because I didn’t go far enough. There were still LOTS of things I was holding on to just in case. There were still a lot of things I was keeping out of obligation to those who gave them to me. And I spent the couple of weeks before spring break loading up my SUV several times to drop things off at donation centers.

It’s been a bit of a rocky ride. I believe that this is what I need to do and that it will greatly improve my home life and increase my sense of relaxation in my space. But…it has also been incredibly difficult! I managed to go through closets and toss tons of things into the donate pile without a second thought. But when it got time to go to drop it off, I started being filled with anxiety. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m overwhelmed by the waste of money loaded up in my car each time, or because I’m worried I really will end up needing those just in case items. It’s been much more emotional than I expected.

It’s also been very difficult to get my 5-year-old on board, because though she pretty much never plays with any of her one million toys, she wants to keep all of them. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to handle that. and I certainly haven’t cracked it yet.

This journey has also made me reconsider lots of other things. I really want to minimize my time online, and also PUT MY PHONE DOWN. Once my phone started giving me weekly screen time reports, I was horrified! How much of my life I was wasting was concerning. I want to be able to take those minutes back and read books and work on my projects and WRITE. But it’s also hard to think about how to maintain a blog and grow an audience if you are also trying to not be on the internet. Ha. I’ve also wrestled with what Carole mentioned last week – that maybe blogging is just self-indulgent and not really contributing much. But at the same time, writing and connecting is very important, too… so I’ll also continue to post.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about my craft projects. I’ve been missing my mojo for some time on lots of projects (cross stitch, quilting, knitting…), and I’ve been trying to think very hard about how to fit in my hobbies with the idea of having only what you need. How many quilts do we feasibly need for a family of three? What is the point in knitting more accessories when we already have more than we can wear? I obviously still want to make – that’s one of the things that makes me tick. I’ve considered moving most of my efforts to charity projects, but I also often wonder if those are really needed/used. Is it just moving our excess on to another person or organization? And then you consider that there is already a used clothing problem, etc, etc. Wouldn’t the charities rather have food to feed people and and money to provide adequate shelter and support for those without any? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in particular.

So, I’m working on a lot of things around here to try to figure out how to craft a life that maximizes my time to pursue things I love and minimize things I don’t. Adulting is so much harder than anyone ever tells you. 😛