Latest / More Organised Less Clutter / 259. Eco-Cleaning Hacks to Save Time and the Environment
Transcript
- Narelle King: Welcome to More Organized Less Clutter, a podcast to empower individuals and neurodivergent families with practical, realistic tools to create a more organized, sensory-friendly, clutter-free, and intentional home that works with your lifestyle and brain, not against it. I'm Norelle King, a professional organizer and neurodivergent mum who understands the unique challenges of family life. I help people just like you simplify your space. Build sustainable organizational systems and create more breathing room physically and mentally. Every fortnight you'll hear solo episodes and guest conversations filled with practical strategies on decluttering, home organization, routines for neurodivergent families, mindful living, and how to build a home that feels safe, calm and functional. You'll walk away with actionable takeaways you can implement even if you only have 10 minutes to spare. Ever wished your cleaning routine was faster and kinder to the planet? Today on More Organized Less Clutter. I'm sharing eco-cleaning hacks that help you save time, reduce waste, and keep your home clutter free. Let's jump into this More Organized Less Clutter episode for simple eco cleaning hacks that help you save time while being a little kinder to the environment. Thanks for joining me today on More Organized Les Clutter. For this episode about eco-friendly hacks to save time, also reduce your waste, and they're also better for your health and also reduce cleaning products, which means less clotter in your home. I know it's coming into spring and people are starting to think about maybe spring cleaning. I know for myself living in a colder environment that starts to move into the summer and the nice warmer weather, you notice those things that build up. Because we have the heater on all throughout the winter. So I thought I would break this down into three areas. So I'm going to share some time saver quick cleaning hacks. So three, just three I'll share with you that I use myself. Then I just want to talk about some eco-friendly products and also about how using these is going to also help you with decluttering your actual cleaning space within your home. It's a really quick episode. I want you to have some quick takeaways that you can implement today. So let's start. The time-saving quick cleaning hacks. My first one is a laundry sort. So depending when you have your do your washing, it might be each day, it might be throughout the week. It might be like a Wednesday and a Friday, which is what I do or a weekend, or it might be just all over the weekend. But one thing that I found that really helps for me is instead of letting the laundry just pile up and then I have to sort through it, I prefer that I bring my baskets out. So I actually have two, one for color and one for whites. And I bring them out. They're actually now on wheels, which I've only just recently implemented, only because I was sick of everyone putting them in the piles on the ground and not actually moving the door to get the laundry basket. So now on a Wednesday, I wheel these baskets out into our sort of kitchen dining area, which is just in front of the laundry door. And I just say, has anyone got any washing? Bring it down because I'm going to put a load on. And whoever feels like bringing it down will bring it down. And then if it's delicate, they just put it on the bench. And if it's got a stain or something, they'll put it on the bench and I'll deal with that later. But they're the days that I will do the washing. If anyone wants anything else done, they will then have to do it themselves. So everyone brings down their washing and puts it into the laundry baskets, and then I'm ready to go and put on the washing. I can then visually see how much I've got as well, which is why I like to do it sort of twice through the week. Depends on how many people you're doing washing for as well. But I found by having it sorted, it really helps and it allows you to know what amount you actually have. Now my number two time-saving cleaning hack is having intentional doubles in my bathroom. So in the past, I would, just being neurodivergent, if I saw my bathroom needed to be cleaned, I would go into the kitchen, I would get distracted, I would forget to grab the spray bottle. I might then come back to brush my teeth and realize, ⁓ that's right, I was doing that. Go back again, maybe come back and finish the job or just brush my teeth and leave the mess. So one thing that I found that really helps is having cleaning sprays in my bathroom. So that is like I have a mirror cleaning spray as well as just a general cleaning spray. So when I'm in there and I've got also have to have the cloth because if I have to go off to get the cloth, that is when I'm not going to come back and get distracted. So after brushing my teeth or maybe it's even after a shower or during a shower, because those bottles are in our bathroom, it's so much easier to just grab out and do. Another thing, if I know that I want to clean something in the actual bath in the shower, if I know I need to clean something in the shower, I actually will then put the spray bottle in, say the night before, so that when I'm having my shower in the morning, it's all there, ready to go. This I find helps with my brain with task initiation. It's helping me to send that signal to my brain and body to get started. I don't have to think about all the steps. Because the bottles there in vi in front of me, it's like a visual cue for me to do that job that, you know, I wanted to do anyway. My number three hack is having a cleaning caddy. Now, this might live in your kitchen like mine under my sink. It might live in your laundry. It depends where it's easy to access and it's maybe gonna be that visual cue for you. But having a small cuddy with your cleaning essentials, so mine has like a multi-purpose spray, it has mirror and glass. I haven't been able to find something that can do both mirror and glass apart from A cloth by itself. I have toilet sheets at the moment that I'm using. So I also have in my caddy some bicarb as well as some gumption. Now gumption is an Australian brand. It's made up of borax, and borax is like a salt and a mineral. And so it gives you that abrasive feel that it comes, anything can come off it, like texture on the wall I used to use when my kids would write on the walls. It would also work on surfaces. Other surfaces like your TV unit. I used to remember having to take permanent marker off that as well because someone liked to draw and practice their drawing. And it's also great for sticky things it can get off. It's amazing the things that it can get off things. It's amazing what it can be used. If in doubt, I always just grab the gumption because it's generally quite safe and it doesn't take other parts of the surface off. So next to my cutie, I have some microfiber cloths. Now I know that there are lots of people who don't like the feel of microfiber cloths. So you could look at getting those plant based cloths, which I also have, and Filthy Clean has some great ones, which I've been trialing, and I really like how much water they absorb, and then you can wash them as well. So we've been using them in our actual sink as well as my knitted crocheted. cloths that I have. And then for a like scrubbing brush, I really like the coconut fiber scourers because they sort of just disintegrate over time and then you can just throw them in your compost. Another great tool is having an old toothbrush. And again, if you've got like an old toothbrush that's say a bamboo one, you can just slowly cut it up and then you can put that wooden part into your recycling as well. So having that essential cleaning caddy means you can just pick it up and take it to any room that you need to clean. I'm a person who would rather clean a little area rather than the whole house at one time because I do get distracted. So I'd more likely to take that, and I think because I enjoy organizing, I'd rather organize it, clean that area, and then put everything back rather than just doing from top to toe cleaning. That's definitely not something I enjoy. The next area I wanted to share was about eco-products. So I really like eco products that have zero waste. And I've been on this journey of finding, you know, products over the last say 10 years to sort of 12 years since my children have had some really bad reactions to some of the products that we've had in our house. So I've really focused on changing some of those things. Now, one of the things I've really loved lately that I've been trying is the plant-based. laundry, dishwashing, and toilet sheets. Now the brand that I've been used, and this isn't a paid ad was Filthy Clean, and they're an Australian-based ⁓ company. And so they just dissolve and they're also not bulky. So they're not like having plastic bottles on your bench or in your in your cupboard. You just place it into say the toilet bowl, it dissolves and then which is obviously going to save you money with the cold water. And it's going to then clean, and you just use a brush and it's done. And then you have your flush. Same with putting it in your dishwasher or using it in your laundry. And the little boxes are really cute and they're not cluttered like your plastic bottles and they're recyclable. ⁓ the other thing I have done is trying to switch to like a simple, biodegradable, all-purpose cleaner rather than having lots of little bottles, just having the one cleaner that does. your bathroom but also does your kitchen. And what I've found is that for an all-purpose one, if some of them you can add two, say, tablets to them to dissolve for the bathroom and just have one for the kitchen if you don't need it to be quite strong. Now Everclean is one that I've experimented with and I really like. It's working out also the window one because the window one I found is a lot harder to find one that doesn't leave streaks. So In that case, I might use vinegar on my mirrors instead and also soda water I've used. So if you also grab, you know, a white vinegar, water, and just a few drops of lemon or tea tree, and that's going to give you the scent, but also that antibacterial boost, that can be used on so many things within your home. So that could be used so many places in your home, like on your bench tops, on glass, in your oven. And you could add the bicarb, which is going to help as well with the grease and is going to give you a bit of an abrasive texture to it. It's also cheaper and there is no harsh chemicals that are going to irritate your sensitive skin and especially noses. I actually find the sensory overwhelm of smell, in particular smells of cleaning products, too much for my nervous system. So that has really helped by just reducing those. Harsh chemicals. Now, a benefit of also switching to these sheets or also switching to a bottle and you're just adding maybe a dissolvable tablet is that you've freed up covered space. So for myself in my kitchen, I now have so much more room. And so it's allowed for me to add some extra containers for some of our recycling that we now do. So we have batteries that we recycle. So this has given us a spot to put any dead batteries because in the past they used to be all over the house. There were some in the tech drawer, there were some in the go-to drawer. Now they're all in the one container that has a label on it saying battery dead batteries. We also have a container there for pens because we can recycle those at Officeworks as well. And then reusable zip bags. So for example, our frozen berries. come in a resealable ziploc bag. Once they're finished, I rinse them out and we put them under our sink and we reuse them. So you just dry them out and then reuse them. And that has made a big difference. It's amazing now how many things that we get in our groceries that have a Ziploc bag that you can then reuse. It's also a spot for all our paper bags, which have allowed just a small amount of room and that's helped to reduce the amount. It's giving it a boundary. So we can't keep adding paper bags because there's not room. So that's when they'll go out to the recycling. In the laundry, now that we've like reduced even in the laundry some of our products, I've been able to move my indoor plant products instead of having to go out to the shed to get them. They're in the house, which means my indoor plants are looking so much better because it's easier for for me to grab any of the products that I'm going to use on my indoor plants. So having that less physical clutter means also less mental clutter. It's also really easy, I find now, a lot quicker to order it when we need it. I don't find that I now have as many of those products under the sink or in the laundry as what I used to because I would see them on sale and just grab it and I wouldn't know if we actually need it. Whereas I find now I only replace it when we needing it rather than having you know more on stock and the cupboard was overflowing. It also means I don't need to go down the aisle in the supermarket, which gives me a massive headache if I do go down there. Also having less waste, not the all the bottles, and because I'm just refilling the same bottle in particular for all my cleaning products, it's better for the environment. It means that I am reducing my amount of rubbish that's going into my bin, which is probably also reducing the amount of cost to myself too. So let's recap. The three quick cleaning hacks is to sort your laundry and make sure that it's coming down just before you're ready to do the laundry. You might have the system of actually everything comes straight to your laundry and you go straight from there. But I with the families I work with, I find that there's laundry either in a bathroom or it's in their bedrooms and then it needs to come to the laundry. The next cleaning hack Would be having intentional doubles of cleaning products in your bathroom. So you can do those quick cleans when you're in there. And the last one is having your caddy with your essential cleaning products. And you can grab that and take that anywhere in the house and bring it back and put it back in its home where it's going to live. Also look for those multi-use eco products that are better for your environment, for a health, and also then they're going to just reduce clutter and will also give you back. cupboard space for you to store other things that are maybe more important. I hope these small eco-friendly hacks is something you can try. The trick is to find easy, sustainable habits you can stick with, even if you only have 10 minutes to spare. So I'd love to know if you make your own cleaner, please share it with me. I'm always looking for new cleaning products that are better for the environment and also better for our health. Thanks for listening to More Organized Less Clutter. If you find yourself wasting precious time searching for misplaced items and wishing for a more organized life, then you need my 5-minute declutter ebook, the ultimate guide to quick and easy organizing solutions for a clutter-free and happy home. Forget about spending months commaring your house. These fun solutions are designed to give you immediate results in under 5 minutes. Head over to Simply Happy in the resource section and download your free copy and start seeing results in minutes. I'd like to acknowledge the Watherong people of the Kulin Nation on which this podcast is recorded as the traditional custodians of the land. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.