Like many people, I’d say that my kitchen is hands-down the hardest-working room in our house: I mean, sure, it’s where I cook dinner every night…but our kitchen is much more than just the room where I break out the pots and pans. It’s also where my son explores the intricacies of whether or not scrambled eggs really can fly (they can), where Lucy and Virgil create mud paintings using materials dragged in from our backyard, and where my husband and I perch on the countertops for a late-night catch-up after all the small creatures in the house have retired for the evening.
But high-activity goes hand-in-hand with high-mess, so I end up doing a lot of cleaning in our kitchen…and want to make sure that I’m using products that make the whole messy chore just a little bit easier. Presenting: three of my must-have cleaning products, all recipients of aBetter Homes and Gardens Best New Product Award, voted on by consumers in an independent research study.
First, we need to talk about Mr. Clean Select-A-Size Magic Erasers. This is important, so pay attention.
I first discovered this little miracle of a product a few years ago, when I stayed at a friend’s apartment that had extremely lovely wood floors, and ended up…well, sort of destroying them by walking through the living room in a pair of heels. I was horrified, but about thirty seconds after she broke out a Magic Eraser we had removed every single mark.
Whew.
Kendrick didn’t believe me when I told him about the miracle that is a Magic Eraser, so I had to set him straight.
Next: Cascade Complete ActionPacs-Dishwasher Detergent.
Remember how excited I was to finally have a dishwasher? (That’s me hugging it on move-in day.)
I continue to want to give my dishwasher hugs every single night, but I don’t always treat it as well as I should. On especially busy evenings, I sometimes (OK, often) forget to pre-wash my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, but that seems to be A-OK, so long as I’m using the ActionPacs – the whole point of them is that they offer an all-in-one solution for dissolving food and cutting through grease, so you basically get to skip the pre-washing step. I mean, you should still do it (my mom drilled that into my head for too many years for me to ever forget it)…but you don’t have to. Which is awesome.
Finally, let’s talk dish-washing liquid, because even in The Land Of Dishwashers, sometimes hand-washing has to happen. Making roast chicken, for example, usually requires surrendering my sink to an overnight soak, but Dawn Power Clean Detergent is fantastic: you get the results of overnight soaking in just around five minutes. And it smells lovely, which is a nice little bonus.
To learn more about these products, just head over to PGEveryday.com.
