{"id":648715,"date":"2010-01-30T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T15:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10001369"},"modified":"2010-01-30T04:43:27","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T09:43:27","slug":"when-buying-cleaning-supplies-dont-pay-for-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/648715","title":{"rendered":"When Buying Cleaning Supplies, Don&#8217;t Pay For Water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/01\/IMG_0242-thumb-300x267-36516.jpg?w=780\">         <\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/01\/IMG_0244-thumb-400x388-36515.jpg?w=780\">         <\/p>\n<p>In order to save money and the total number of heavy bottles you need to haul home from the store, try buying ultra-concentrated cleaning supplies and adding your own water at home. Reader M. discovered these products at Big Lots, and shares his secrets.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One day while perusing Big Lots, I found that they sell bulk cleaning supplies that you can &#8220;water down&#8221; to get to the right concentration.  Home Depot also has these, and they are in-stock more often compared to Big Lots.  I looked at the bottle of the 409 concentrate and found out that it was enough to make 10 Gallons of 409 for $4.   You only need to mix 3 tablespoons with water in order to fill one normal spray bottle, so when you buy the normal bottle you&#8217;re paying mostly for water and plastic.  Each normal bottle of 409 is 1 quart, so I paid 10 cents per &#8220;bottle&#8221;.  I don&#8217;t know how much a bottle of 409 costs in the store, since I haven&#8217;t purchased one in 3 years, but I assume it is significantly more than 10 cents.  I have also found concentrated Windex as well and I&#8217;m sure other cleaners are also available.<\/p>\n<p>One caveat, after 3 years the original Windex bottle we had started leaking around the sprayer, Home Depot also sells generic spray bottles for about $1, which we  now use for the Windex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My favorite concentrated cleaner is Simple Green, which I buy by the gallon at Home Depot and then dilute in a sturdy spray bottle at home. If you use diluted cleaning products, where do you find them?<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"IMG_0244.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/consumerist.com\/2010\/01\/30\/IMG_0244.jpg?resize=400%2C388\" width=\"400\" height=\"388\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;\" \/><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In order to save money and the total number of heavy bottles you need to haul home from the store, try buying ultra-concentrated cleaning supplies and adding your own water at home. Reader M. discovered these products at Big Lots, and shares his secrets. One day while perusing Big Lots, I found that they sell [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2IL9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}