Take That, Swiffer!

No longer will I be a slave to buying new Swiffer WetJet cleaner solution bottles.

Swiffer USA thought it had consumers deep in its pockets by designing non-refillable bottles and pricing its cleaning solutions at outrageous prices.

After all, people were more than willing to pay these high prices for the convenience and efficiency of a Swiffer WetJet, which is actually more superior to a sponge or string mop.

But guess what?

Those bottles are refillable. All it takes is soaking the cap in a little bit of boiled water for about a minute or two to soften the plastic. Then wrap a dish cloth around the cap and twist. And voilà! It's off.

Next, rinse out the bottle to remove all residue of the cleaning solution (so that you don't accidentally mix incompatible cleaning solutions), and mix up your own favorite cleaning solution. The cap pops back on easily.

I was SO tickled when I discovered this information on-line this morning, especially since I ran out of the cleaning solution while in the middle of washing the bathroom and laundry room floors.

Not wanting to run out to the supermarket before the mail came, and not wanting to delay my cleaning until it did, I went on-line to find out how to refill a Swiffer bottle.

I guessed that someone had already thought of a way to easily make that non-refillable bottle into a refillable one. And sure enough, I was right.

(Man! I sure love Google and the Internet! With them I can find out just about anything I need.)

In addition to finding out how to refill a Swiffer bottle, I also discovered what other people used in place of those expensive Swiffer pads.

Some people used old onesies that their babies no longer wore. Other Swiffer pad substitutes that worked were old tee shirts, old flannel shirts, finger towels and dish towels ~ basically anything that the Velcro strips on the Swiffer mop head could grip.

One of the great thing about these substitutes is that they can be re-used. Just throw the soiled pad substitutes into the washing machine, and they'll be ready for the next time you need to wash your floors.

Just think of all the dollars you'll be saving just by refilling your old Swiffer bottles and making your own Swiffer pad substitutes from recycled materials!

Take that, Swiffer!