One of the great constants of life is that there will always, always be something that needs cleaning. It’s just the way of the universe.
To that end, I am constantly looking for new products to try to find the best and most efficient ways to get things done. The two newest are pretty basic cleaning tools but no home can really be run with any success without them, in my opinion.
Vacmaster
Vacuum cleaners are a must if you have carpets, and a wet/dry shop vac is an additional option that comes in really handy for spills, accidents or any number of incidents. For me, the Vacmaster Professional Wet/Dry Vac, 5 Gallon, Beast Series is really helpful in my mudroom especially.
I have a chicken in there. Yes, a chicken. In my mudroom. I’ve been rehabbing her indoors because the other hens were pecking at her and she’d lost all of her bumbum feathers and had injuries to her backside and her head from the others pecking at her.
But, you know chickens like to scratch at their food to spread it out and then peck it up to eat it. So, I have not been able to find a food dish that she can’t scratch the food out of, resulting in chicken feed on the floor of my mudroom, every day, every time she’s out of her crate to eat. It’s SO annoying to be sweeping constantly. It’s so much easier to just grab the wet/dry vac and swoosh over the mess to clean it up.
The Vacmaster Professional Wet/Dry Vac makes it really easy to vacuum out my car, as well. Definitely beats trying to find the extension cord and trying to keep my vacuum sitting on a floor mat in the driveway while trying to use it on the interior.
The Vacmaster Professional Wet/Dry Vac features a five gallon polypropylene tank, a powerful motor, a seven foot hose and an eighteen foot cord, with a utility nozzle, a car nozzle, crevice tool, extension wand, fine dust cartridge filter, a foam wet filter, onboard hose and cord storage, and (my favorite accessory) an air and noise diffuser. Seriously, shop vacs can be quite loud, so this accessory is perfect for trying to use this with a chicken in the same room because she startles at many loud or sudden sounds or movements.
Another neat feature is that the Vacmaster Professional Wet/Dry Vac can apparently convert to a blower. I haven’t had a circumstance where I could really test that part out yet. But, it’s good to know! And my second favorite feature is the handle. It’s centered on top and makes it really easy for me to lug the vac around where I need it with only one hand.
This particular shop vac doesn’t have wheels, but Vacmaster offers other models that do if that’s something you need or want. And I like that it’s pretty compact and easy to store away between uses.
I won’t go into all the specs here, but if you want to know more about this product, check out the Vacmaster website product page for all the info about it.
My mudroom is truly a workroom. It is not only a psuedo-home to an ailing chicken, it also contains our washer and dryer, a dedicated area for storage of cleaning apparatuses like brooms/mops/vacuum/carpet shampooer/long-handled dusters/ironing board, seldom-used appliances like the breadmaker/juicer/waffle iron etc., storage cube shelving, a couple of desks and sets of file drawers, an organizer for all the kids school supplies, all of the animals’ food and snacks (dogs, cats and chickens), and an extra upright freezer. Winter hats, scarves and gloves have a home in here, as do my canning supplies, extra cast iron skillets, cookbooks, sheet sets, tablecloths, box for paperwork to be shredded … I think you kinda get the idea about the multitude of tasks this room serves, right?
The point of that word vomit paragraph is to illustrate that space is premium in the mudroom. Items must be able to be stored around the periphery and not in my way when they’re not in use. So, I look especially for ways to make that happen. The Vacmaster works well in this room as it’s trim body size makes it easy to store away when I’m not in need of it.
Shabby Chick Natural Products
Speaking of the mudroom, the other item I wanted to share is also used in this room. Aside from animal care, the next most time-consuming thing on a given day is laundry. Ugh! Laundry, it’s an evil thing. Just… always… there… staring me in the face every single day.
Nah, it’s not really that bad. But, I do enjoy trying out new laundry products to find which clean best and leave the nicest scent on the clothes and sheets and stuff. This fall, I tried a totally new brand, Shabby Chick Natural Products. They offer 100% natural products, hand crafted in the USA. They have an interesting line of products called White Girl Crack that is pumpkin spice latte scented.
Their White Girl Crack Pumpkin Spice Latte Laundry Soap is interesting to me, not only for the unique scent, but also because it’s sort of a concentrated thick liquid versus the more watery versions of other brands and it comes in a pourable pouch. It even comes with it’s own stainless steel measuring spoon, which I thought was pretty neat.
I didn’t realize, at first, that it wasn’t thin enough to pour out easily. I thought putting it in a resealable glass jar might be fun. But, alas, that was quickly determined not to be practical. But, it did make it easy to use a small amount of the soap to do a quick suds test to see how much suds it would create and how easily it would dissolve in water. It creates suds, but not too many. This is good for me high efficiency machine, obviously. And it very quickly dissolved with only a few quick swishes in the jar. So far, so good.
Next, I used the handy dandy measuring spoon to add some soap to my washer drum, threw in a load of clothes and left the soap and machine to do what they do. I thought the scent was pretty nice, very mild and not overpowering at all.
This was my concern when trying it because I used Shabby Chick’s White Girl Crack Pumpkin Spice Latte Air & Fabric Freshener first. And, while I like the scent, the spray’s scent was a lot stronger than the laundry soap. My dog, Charles, wasn’t a fan, at all. After I sprayed one end of the couch and cushions with it he looked confusedly at me from the other end of the couch. He was clearly sleepy but kept raising his head to look at the area where I’d sprayed and after a minute or two left the couch entirely and went to sit on the other couch we have in the living room.
Well, he is a dog, I guess. So Pumpkin Spice scents may be a bit above his experience in life. LOL
My advice, especially if you have pets, is to use the spray a bit more sparingly than you might use other commercial fabric freshener products because a little of it spreads a lot more scent than other products. But, it really does smell great!
Overall, I was pretty pleased with these new products. I like to have options to switch up different products and scents for different seasons of the year. These will be great fall time items to have on hand.
What are your newest fave products to make cleaning your home easier?
Get Your Clean On
Get Your Clean On
Get Your Clean On
Get Your Clean On
Get Your Clean On
Get Your Clean On
Get Your Clean On
Speak Your Mind