Organize Your Home Cleaning Materials

Every home has it: an endless amount of household cleaners and chemicals, mops, dusters, vacuums, cloths and sponges. Each room seems to require a different set of products or tools to get it clean. We organize the rest of our homes, but tend to shove all of our cleaning supplies into whatever closet has some space. Since these products and tools keep our homes clean, shouldn't they be organized and easy to access? By organizing your cleaning materials, you can save space and get your cleaning done faster.

Give Cleaning Supplies a Home

The first thing you should do is dedicate different areas to your different cleaning supplies. If possible, keep your materials on the same floor or even in the same room where you'll use them, but you don't need to put cleaning materials in every room of your house. Rather, use your upstairs hall closet for the bedroom and bathroom supplies.

The supplies you use regularly should be easy to access, so give them a box to sit in or hook to hang on. By giving your materials a permanent home, you will save time by knowing where they are (and avoid multiple trips up and down the stairs).

Separate Your Materials

Not only should you have specific areas for your supplies, you should also organize them by which room they will mainly be used in. For example, all of your kitchen cleaners should be together. If you have limited storage space and have to put a lot of supplies in the same area, label your storage boxes or plastic bins and keep the materials you rarely use in the back.

Keep Hazardous Substances Out of Reach

Hazardous cleaners and chemicals should always be kept out of reach of children and pets—swallowing chemicals could seriously hurt or even kill them. When storing these materials, put them on the highest shelf and keep them in a sturdy box or bin. Never remove the labels; they contain emergency medical information, safety guidelines and directions. Also, don't put household cleaners in water bottles, milk jugs or any other beverage container in which they could easily be mistaken for a drink.

Keep Big Cleaning Supplies in Place

No one likes it when they open a closet door and a broom comes toppling out. It's not only frustrating but also dangerous to both adults and kids. Keep your brooms, dusters, steam cleaners and vacuums in place by installing hooks and wall-mounted holders. If you have the space, consider getting a tool rack that can hold your mop, broom, dustpan and other cleaning tools. It's especially important to store your broom off the floor to minimize bent and broken bristles.

Make the Most of the Space You Have

In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to worry about how all of our cleaning supplies will fit in that tiny closet—actually, in an ideal world we wouldn't ever have to clean at all. But you can make the most of what you have by stacking boxes, using all-purpose cleaners where you can and separating your products by the area of your home in which you use them.