I always thought cleaning products were one of those small household costs that didn't really add up. A few pounds here and there, nothing worth thinking about. Then one Sunday I was putting the shopping away, fitting yet another bottle of bathroom spray into the cupboard that was already overflowing, and I decided to actually work it out. I opened my bank app, searched for the supermarket, and started adding up every receipt that included cleaning products over the past twelve months. The total was just over three hundred dollars.

Three hundred dollars. On sprays, bleach, floor cleaner, oven cleaner, glass cleaner, disinfectant, sponges, rubber gloves, grout remover, limescale remover, and stain remover.
Twelve different products that I was rebuying every few weeks because they run out constantly. And every single one of them had a warning label telling me to keep it away from children and avoid skin contact. I was spending three hundred dollars a year on products that told me on the packaging not to let my family near them.

I bought a Vorn for a hundred and thirty-nine dollars. That was four months ago. Since then I have not bought a single cleaning product. Not one bottle, not one spray, not one sponge. Everything under my sink is gone. I use water. That's it. The kitchen, the bathroom, the floors, the oven, the windows, the kids' high chair, the car seats — all of it, just water heated to two hundred and thirty degrees.

At this rate I'll save over five hundred dollars in my first year alone. By year three that's over eight hundred dollars saved. And that's without even factoring in the part that actually matters most — there isn't a single toxic chemical in my home anymore. My children are safer, my house is cleaner, and my wallet is heavier. I genuinely don't understand why I didn't do this sooner.