the lazy girl's cleaning hacks

I am so not a homemaker. I kind of suck at it. If I were left to my own devices, things would be messy and sort of clean most of the time.

Our house is messy. It's actually less messy now that we have a kid though. We kind of figured out we can't just leave random shit around because babies like to stick shit in their face-holes.

I knew how to clean before. I taught myself a lot after I moved in with JP because, quite frankly, the man was messier than me, and sometimes dirty as well, so I had to clean up after him. I taught myself about bleach and borax and all kinds of stuff.

And then Willow happened and I realized I'd rather not have all those unnecessary and unpronounceable chemicals all over stuff that my precious baby would touch. So I discovered vinegar and baking soda.

I didn't believe they would work at first. I thought that if by some miracle they did work, they would work like shit and I'd have to scrub and scrub- and quite honestly, I'd like to spend the least amount of time I possibly can doing something other than being on r/gonewild. Just kidding.

But then I tried them. And holy god did they work. They worked faster and better than conventional cleaners. So, here's the lazy girl's guide to cleaning, aka my favorite cleaning cheats.

1. Microwave:  Put 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup vinegar in a glass bowl and nuke it. It doesn't have to be exactly that consistency or measurement. . I usually just pour some vinegar and some water in there and don't really check. Put it in for like 3 minutes. The water and vinegar will boil, steam up and loosen all the gunk stuck to the roof of your microwave from cooking spaghettio's without a paper towel over them. Once it's done, grab a sponge or a paper towel or a clean holey sock that you're gonna throw away anyway and wipe it all off. Much easier than scrubbing and scrubbing.

2. Shower/bath: Sprinkle baking soda on the floor of your bathtub or shower and on the knobs, then lay either paper towels or rags on the baking soda and pour vinegar over them. It helps if your bathtub/shower is plugged, that way you can let the shtuff sit there and soak. Depending on how bad it is, let it soak for a while, adding more vinegar to the rags/paper towels if need be. Sometimes I also add a bit of Dawn dish soap. When I feel like it's soaked enough, I wipe it down with the paper towels/rags, run water over it and voila! Done! If your bathing area is really scummy you can scrub the solution in and then rinse it off.

3. Shower/bath: I always keep a little scrubber full of 1/2 Dawn and 1/2 vinegar in the shower and scrub the walls down while I'm taking a shower. Why not? It takes 2 minutes and saves me a lot of time. I saw this on pinterest, and they were using a long-handled, hollow sponge. I tried that but it failed miserably because it wouldn't go into the small spaces I needed it to go, so I tried one of the little ones, and that worked gobs better.

This kind!

I really use baking soda and vinegar in almost every household task, from dishes that are super nasty (we all know those sippy cups that have been left in the car for too long get stinky and moldy), to laundry (especially diaper laundry), to mopping and disinfecting.

This is so much more convenient I don't know why anyone would spend tons of money on twenty different potentially harmful products.