Excerpt from FC&A's How to Do (Just About) Everything Right.

5 Cleaning Products You Should Never Be Without

You don’t have to spend a fortune on cleaning products to keep your house spotless. The only five you need cost less than $10 for the lot of ’em. They’ll help you repair, clean, shine, and protect everything in your home for pennies. Even better, you probably have everything you need in your house right now.

• Baking soda, also known as bicarbonate of soda or sodium bicarbonate, is made up of fine particles. That means if you mix it with a bit of water to form a paste, you can scour pots, pans, sinks, bathtubs, and ovens. And because it’s absorbent, it’s famous for soaking up odors.


• White vinegar is often called a household wonder cleaner. It’s inexpensive, nontoxic, and useful for dozens of chores. It’s the acid in vinegar that cuts through grease and germs and inhibits bacteria and mold.


• Bleach is simply a chemical mixture of chlorine gas, sodium hydroxide, and water. It’s the chlorine that makes bleach such a great disinfectant. This one inexpensive household product kills disease-causing bacteria and viruses in your bathroom and kitchen, gets rid of mildew, and makes your laundry whites whiter. Why bleach is a great stain remover is a little more complicated, but it has a lot to do with a chemical reaction that removes color.


• Ammonia can be a tricky product to use because of the important safety measures you must take. The vapors can irritate or even burn your skin, eyes, or lungs, so you always want to work in a well-ventilated area. And never use ammonia with bleach. This mixture produces a dangerous gas.


• Liquid hand dishwashing detergent contains surfactants — organic chemicals that actually change the properties of water. They help quickly wet the surface of whatever you want to clean, make dirt easier to loosen and remove, and trap oils so they can’t settle back on the surface and are easily rinsed away. Most hand dishwashing detergents cut grease and are biodegradable.