After 21 Days of Minimalism, My Home Is Just Enough

We’re chatting about keeping things simple today with our friends from Clorox. Thanks for supporting the brands that help support our voices!

The first month of 2017 is almost over and so ends my purging ambitions. You know how it goes – new year, new house. Out with the old and in the goals for a clean, tidy home. After 21 days of a hardcore minimalist overhaul, I’m pretty sure the only things left in our home are used often, cherished daily or properly stored away. And you know what? It.feels.awesome!!!!

It’s been fun to teach my daughter how to prioritize things after people and experiences, but I think the most surprising outcome of our minimalist challenge is how much my husband appreciated the efforts. One morning he woke up, walked into the living room and thanked me for reducing the decorations and wall hangings. He said it made him feel lighter. Crazy, right? He loves the way our tiny house now feels bigger with less stuff looming in the corners… and I love how much easier it is to clean!

A Minimalized Cleaning Routine

One of the areas I sought to completely minimize was the cabinet under my sink – the one bursting at the seams with cleaning products and tools. The goal was to determine which products were totally necessary, find ways to combine their uses for multiple parts of the house and create more efficient habits around cleaning. Really, the goal was to minimize the whole process so that cleaning our house didn’t take an entire day during our weekend!

Who else loves taking up their entire Saturday to clean a house? Ya, me too.

So on January 1 st , as I started to purge, I decided to clean my kitchen and bathroom using only Clorox Regular Bleach in order to become most cost effective and streamline the process.

As both a cleaner and a disinfectant, using bleach just made sense in these rooms since they’re where germs like to hide out the most. I tackled the bathtub (my kids still love baths!) and the kitchen sink, but I even started cleaning my cutting boards this way too. Remember when I shared how to use bleach to kill germs? That was exactly the moment I decided that maybe Clorox Bleach could do the work of many other products I have sitting in my cabinets. Clorox has lots of how-to videos to teach us how to best use bleach on bathtubs, kitchen sinks and cutting boards just to name a few.

Now that cleaning with only bleach has become a habit, it’s pretty simple! To clean non-porous surfaces, I just keep a couple bottles of ½ cup of Clorox Bleach with 1 gallon of water in the kitchen and bathroom. To clean, I spray problem areas down (especially the spots that are prone to mildew and mold), let stand for 5 minutes, then rinse with cold water. Easy peasy!

And because we have less things collecting dust and furniture against the walls from my minimalist challenge, cleaning our tiny house feels like it takes about 10 minutes too! That’s truly the best gift: spending my time how I want to. Instead of cleaning or tending to our stuff, I’m busy building a legacy with my babies.