You’d be surprised how many stores sell bleach, soda, baking soda and citrus acid. It’s cheap, very low in waste, and less to carry from the store.
The ones I have even describe how to use them for different use cases. Basically you just put it in some water. A package costs like a euro and lasts you a year if not years.
Edit: Here’s the list:.
- Water: Helps you mix and rinse; cleans almost everything. :)
- Washing Soda: Great for tough stains on clothes and hard surfaces.
- Baking Soda: Sprinkle on carpets or scrub sinks; it’s a gentle cleaner.
- Bleach: Need to kill germs or whiten whites? Use bleach, but carefully!
- Citrus Acid: Makes your kettle or showerhead shine by removing scale.
- Rubbing Alcohol: Perfect for glass and wiping down surfaces; dries fast.
- White Vinegar: Mix with water for an all-purpose cleaner; good on glass too.
- Borax: Boosts your laundry detergent; helps keep bugs away.
- Sea Salt: Scrubbing a pan? Sea salt helps scrape away the tough bits.
- Castille Soap: Wash floors, dishes, or even pets; it’s mild and versatile.
And if you’re lucky there may be a store in your area that sells most of that without the containers - the one in my area has big barrels of the stuff with spigots or pumps on them. You bring your own containers and they weigh them and you fill them yourself.
So far they just do cleaning products, which I suppose makes sense - they’re shelf stable and not much of a risk of making someone sick if they get mixed. It’s a small thing but I get our dishwasher powder and Castile soap there. And we use different mixes of the Castile for laundry detergent, hand soap, face soap, an an all purpose cleaner.
That’s amazing. I wish we had such a store!
You might already for example they might not even call themselves terms you would think:
https://www.cleanrefillery.com/
You can also reach out to manufacturers to buy in bulk and split the costs (and the items) with friends/neighbors.
Absolutely! Other useful and cheap cleaning things are rubbing alcohol, white vinegar (great for floors), “washing soda”, borax, and seconding @JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net about the castille soap, too. I also find sea salt a useful-everywhere ingredient in both household and personal-care cleaning – it dissolves dirt, scrubs and disinfects. I’m a pretty picky cleaner, but with those things and a good microfiber cloth, no dirt stands a chance.
I got into making all my own cleaning stuff thanks to a sensitivity to chemical fragrances, but it’s saved so much money and prevented so much waste compared to buying branded products, I’d never go back. Thanks for the great topic \o/
Thanks for expanding the list, it’s in the post now.