42 Cleaning Supplies and Cleaning Equipment in Your Home

42 Cleaning Supplies and Cleaning Equipment in Your Home is a very weird title for a post, don’t you think?  But, when I set out on this journey, this journey to inventory and catalog our household belongings, I made a conscious decision that I would lump all the cleaning supplies and cleaning equipment on one inventory sheet instead of adding them to other household inventory worksheets.

I could have put all the kitchen cleaning supplies with one of the endless lists of kitchen stuff, the laundry supplies with the laundry room inventory, the bathroom cleaners on the bathroom list, etc., but I decided to lump them together under this one checklist representing all cleaning supplies in your home.

There is no right way or wrong way to create an inventory list of personal property in your home.  Whatever works for you is perfectly acceptable.  The important thing is to get it done one way or another.

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I would guess that probably 99% of the people in our country don’t have a list of their household inventory.  And, they probably don’t have one for the very same reason that I don’t have one completed (yet) – because it is incredibly time-consuming.  Most people will probably never need a whole-house inventory list in their lifetime unless they have a loss and need to complete one for insurance claim purposes.

I had to do just that in 2008 – create a whole-house personal property inventory list.  We lost our home to a wildfire in October 2007 (you can read the story here:  Any Way the Wind Blows) and it took me 9 months of working nights and weekends to create the home inventory list that we submitted to our homeowner’s insurance company.

Eight days after the fire, our catastrophic insurance adjuster met us on the site of our destroyed home.  He led me to the area that used to be our front door and as we surveyed the wreckage that was once our home, he said to me:

“Carole, do you know how to use Excel?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Good; I need you to create an Excel spreadsheet.  That Excel spreadsheet needs to have a column for the item, a column for the year purchased, a column for the original cost, and a column for the replacement cost.  I suggest that you start immediately because this project will take you some time.  And, the sooner you start, the fresher your memory will be on your household belongings.”

“How detailed does this list have to be?” I asked.

“Let me put it to you this way:  if it’s not on the list, you don’t get paid for it.  Down to the last toothpick.”

“How am I ever going to remember every detail?” I asked.

“Do you have any pictures?”

“No.”  My first mistake; NOT photographing the inside of our home and having those pictures located somewhere else.

He pointed straight ahead and said, “was that your front door?”

“Yes.”

“Well, open your front door.  What was to your left?  Describe it.  If it was a closet, cabinet, etc., open the doors and drawers and visualize what’s inside and describe it.  Now look to your right.  Do the same thing.  Take each room step-by-step.”

I asked for pictures from relatives and what we were able to gather up was helpful.  But the visualization technique was the one I used consistently.  I created an Excel worksheet page for each room of our house and room-by-room, cabinet-by-cabinet, closet-by-closet attempted to put together our list.

It was exhausting.  It was mind-numbing.  And I can’t believe I’m doing it again; especially when I don’t have to for insurance claim purposes.

Why am I doing it again?  Because while I hope to never have another catastrophic loss in my life, I live in an area of our country that is prone to wildfire.  Just this past week, winds have been howling through our valley with extreme regularity and our weather has been 80+ degrees.  In January.  Doing this list helps me not worry so much.

Why don’t we move somewhere else?  Well, maybe we will at some point.  But our home is located on the property we have lived on our entire married life (25 years this year) and our old home was Charlie’s childhood home.  There is just something about the land and the connection that we humans feel to our land that is indescribable.  At some point in the future, we will have to move anyway, because when we reach our twilight years, living here will become a burden.

But, for now, we sit on our little piece of parched paradise, surrounded by dirt, dry brush, and tumbleweeds because we love this land.  This land – our home.

Are you working on your own home inventory project, whether for personal use or as the result of a homeowner’s insurance claim?  I’ve created an eBook to help you see it through.  The Complete Book of Lists: Room-by-Room Checklists for Your Household Inventory Project combines the 55 lists on this blog plus 20 new lists and rolls them up into one eBook with 75 different home inventory checklists – all for the low price of $9.99!

Check out my eBook!

42 Cleaning Supplies and Cleaning Equipment in Your Home

Here’s the list of 42 Cleaning Supplies and Cleaning Equipment in Your Home (this post contains affiliate links for your convenience.  Click here to read my full disclosure policy.):

1. Vacuum and vacuum bags
2. Hand-held vacuum
3. Broom and dustpan
4. Mops
5. Buckets and plastic tote caddies
6. Feather duster
7. Rags, cleaning cloths, dust cloths
8. Toilet bowl brush
9. Bathroom cleaners
10. Dish soap, dish soap dispenser
11. Dishwasher soap, dishwasher rinse aid
12. Floor cleaner
13. Cleanser
14. Cleaning wipes
15. Disinfecting cleaner
16. All-purpose cleaner
17. Scrub brushes
18. Bottle brush
19. Specialty brushes
20. Iron
21. Ironing board
22. Fabric finisher and/or spray starch
23. Laundry detergent
24. Laundry pre-soak, pre-treat
25. Laundry fabric softener
26. Dryer sheets
27. Lint brushes
28. Glass cleaner
29. Glass squeegee
30. Wood furniture polish and cleaner
31. Stainless steel cleaner and wipes
32. Silver cleaner, tarnish remover, polish
33. Pet stain remover
34. Carpet cleaner
35. Rubber cleaning gloves
36. Tile, stone, granite cleaner
37. Room freshener
38. Floor and carpet sweeper
39. Dish rack and drainboard
40. Sponges, scrubbing & steel pads
41. Oven cleaner
42. Specialty cleaners, such as rust remover, Goo Gone, cooktop cleaners, drain cleaner, degreaser, mold cleaner, fireplace cleaner, etc.

I’ve created multiple images to share on Pinterest.  Since I can’t decide which one I like best, I’m sharing 3 on this blog post.  A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right?

Love this one – so girlie and pink!

I like this one a lot, too, because, well, it’s aqua blue!  Blue is my favorite color but I have a hard time deciding which shade of blue is my favorite, so I just say blue.

Will you do me a favor?  Would you share my post on social media?  The pinnable images above are for your Pinterest boards so that you can bookmark this post and come back to it later.  Thanks for sharing!

And don’t forget to sign up to receive my newsletter in your inbox.  As a thank you, I’ll send you a freebie!  Look for the sign-up boxes near the top of this post and again at the bottom of this post.  Thanks so much!

P.S.  If you are looking for tips for cleaning a messy house fast, check out this post by guest contributor, Anamika:  How to Clean a Messy House Like a Total Boss.  And for organizational tips, check out my post:  3 Actionable Tips for Organizing Anything.

Tootles,

Related Posts in Toot Sweet 4 Two’s Archives:

42 Things in Your Living Room, Family Room and/or Great Room

42 Things in Your Master Bedroom

42 Must-Have Kitchen Utensils

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