cleaning

Top Eco-Friendly Cleaning Supplies to Use During Your Move

When you move to a new home, you probably assume you don’t have many options when it comes to the supplies you’ll need to use and the cleaning products you should use when it comes to cleaning the home you’re leaving and freshening up the home you’re moving into.

In reality, you can choose to have an eco-friendly move that will still allow you to keep chemicals out of the cleaning duties you have to perform. That also means you can be more eco-friendly in the packing process too. Take a look at the eco-friendly cleaning supplies to use during your move and how to have a more eco-friendly move overall.

Pack with eco-friendly supplies

The first way to make your move more eco-friendly is to choose eco-friendly resources for your move. This means hiring a moving company that is focused on going green so that you can count on everything from eco-friendly moving trucks to moving supplies.

eco-friendly moving supplies available at The Chicago GreenBox

Your green moving company can supply you with reusable moving supplies to pack your things with that actually end up protecting your items even better than traditional cardboard boxes and packing peanuts.

Using reusable supplies like plastic bins, bubble wrap, and furniture blankets will keep waste down while still giving your things proper protection for a fraction of the cost of buying everything yourself for a one time use. You can even look into using supplies from someone else who has recently moved that wants to find a home for everything they’ve purchased to be used again.

Buy eco-friendly cleaning supplies

Next, you’ll want to stock up on some eco-friendly cleaning supplies. You’ll not only be cleaning the home that you are leaving, but you’ll probably want to put your own touch on the new home too. This means choosing cleaners without harmful chemicals. Avoid traditional cleaning supplies like bleach that will contaminate the air.

Instead, purchase the ingredients you’ll need to make your own supplies or purchase from a brand that is already eco-friendly in their products. You’ll want supplies like baking soda, vinegar, essential oils, and water to mix into different types of cleaners. With spray bottles, sponges, and rags, you’ll have a great set of cleaning supplies in no time.

This will also reduce the waste of disposing of the supplies you buy and throwing them away afterward since you can reuse the containers and supplies you’ve purchased to make more. This will help you avoid creating airborne pollutants for the family and pets moving into your home, and will allow you to clean some of the chemicals on the surfaces of your new home that your family is about to move into.

Other essentials to have on hand

In addition, to choose eco-friendly moving supplies and cleaning supplies, it’s going to be helpful to pack a bin of essentials that will help you during the moving process. Pack a bin of medical supplies, tools, cleaning products, kitchen essentials, and bathroom supplies in order to avoid having to buy something at the last minute that you already own.

Keeping things like a first aid kit, your pots and pans, a shower curtain, disinfecting wipes, and a screwdriver at your disposal will come in handy as you move into your new home. The more you prepare, the less you’ll have to waste because you can’t find something when you really need it.

Eco-friendly disposal

You may have things in the move that need to be disposed of, such as moving supplies you’ve received from someone else that you didn’t need or potentially hazardous supplies that were in your previous home that need to go.

You’ll want to talk to your moving company about what items need to be disposed of rather than moved, such as propane gas, paint, and industrial cleaners. You can recycle any unused moving supplies that are not reusable. The more you choose to go reusable, the less you’ll have to dispose of later.

You can have a more eco-friendly move by making eco-friendly decisions in how you pack and what you purchase. Make sure to stock up on some essentials to help reduce waste and remove chemicals during the moving process.

5 Spring Cleaning Tips to Help Prep for an Upcoming Move

It’s moving time for your family, and you are wondering how to go about cleaning your old home before officially handing over the keys. The good news about cleaning your house before an upcoming move is that you can look at it the same way as you would a spring cleaning session.

You’ll clean a little deeper, cover more details than normal, and you’ll make the home shine like you do every spring when it’s ready for a really good scrubbing. There are 5 ways to really get the job done right that you may not have thought of, starting with a good deep clean and remembering to end the job with a great staging job. Take a look at the top 5 tips to help you prep for your move.

Deep clean the home

Start with a good deep cleaning of the home. While you’re used to cleaning the kitchen counter, the dishes, and the sink regularly, you’re probably used to skipping things like the walls and behind the appliances.

Now is the time to hit those surfaces you may have never thought of because someone new is going to be living here now and it’s important to give them a fresh slate from your family’s life here. Wipe down the walls and the trim and the baseboards.

Clean doors and ceilings. Scrub the grout and wash the windows and their treatments. Move appliances and get all of the nooks and crannies. Clean lights and fans. This is the time to really deep clean.

Declutter

You may find that you have too much stuff to move or that you are already imagining your new home is going to be too small to fit all of your things. Nobody wants to go into a new home with clutter. Now is the time to declutter your home and start separating the things you love from the things you aren’t using anymore.

Donate or sell those items so that you can take only the things that make sense into your new home. If you still have to show the home, this will help with all of the traffic coming through and making the house look neat and tidy for a new family to envision living here.

Clean high to low

When you start to clean, make a point to clean from the highest points of a room to the lowest. This way the dirt from up above will fall to the next level down, and you can clean that area next. It’s easy to make a mess on an area after you’ve cleaned it if you work your way from lower to higher areas.

young happy couple cleaning their new house during a move

You’ll find when you dust those overhead ceiling fans and lighting fixtures that dust tends to fall down and you wouldn’t want it falling on an already-cleaned surface.

Don’t forget the details

Sometimes you get so used to skipping specific tasks that you forget to do them when the time really calls for it. It’s that time to actually clean every shelf of that fridge and really clean out your oven. Now is the time for details so handle everything from your appliances to your furniture upholstery.

Clean inside the cabinets, wipe down light switches, brush over the tops of doors, clean the carpet, and do both cleaning and polishing on your furniture and wood floors. Don’t leave any details untouched.

Staging

Lastly, spring clean that home by ending the job with proper staging. Make sure you’ve decluttered the home, deep cleaned everything, removed all dirt from overhead, and cleaned every last detail. Now it’s time to stage the house with what items are left that are not personal to the family, such as seating areas and decorative pieces. This will make the home look fresh and ready for the next family to discover.

Use these tips to spring clean for your upcoming move successfully.