Keeping it Plenty Clean ;)

Anyone who is gradually shuffling off the trappings of early parenthood will know that one of the greatest losses of that time period is the end of baby wipes in the house. The time between Josie no longer needing a bum clean and Bene arriving was a time of drought and desolation in the cleaning history of our house as we struggled to deal with the deluge of dirt with only those tools unknown to the emerging teen… a cloth, tea towel and duster.

Oh woe.

The other day I was stood in my kitchen musing about how best to keep my newly solid wooden worktops clean without over wetting them (did I mention my new kitchen? No. Oh, do feel free to go and have a look. I know I’ve been very discreet about it) when the door knocked and a man handed me an unexpected parcel. When I opened it, there was (in a moment of serendipity I’m not even inventing), a pile of cleaning products!

Plenty Easy Clean Wipes

I kid you not.

It was like some form of fairy had decided it new exactly what I needed and fairy godmothered them right into my hands.

Wooden surfaces are, you see, a wee bit tricky potentially. On the one side my ranting about them means the kids are generally quite careful about wiping up spills, but on the other, when they need a really good clean, you don’t want to accidentally leave them swimming in water. Particularly if, as might possibly have become the case here, you haven’t yet oiled the newly fitted upstand and bought pretty tea towels which look great but apparently don’t actually absorb water.

In general, I try not to use wipes more than absolutely necessary but there is a time and a place – and that was right then and there on my wooden surfaces! The Plenty Easy Clean Wipes is a new patented PerfectSeal dispenser pack that holds a rolls of wipes inside and keeps them locked down and moist when not in use, thus avoiding the annoying “yes the kids wiped down the bathroom but they also dried out an entire pack of wipes afterwards” scenario 🙄 I was quite taken with the neat little pull tag that helps you thread the new pack through the dispenser hole too.

They stood up really well to the initial try out on the wood; I tested it quite carefully on a small patch first since I wasn’t sure of the effect they might have on the oil but it was all fine. Crumbs, sticky spots and general mess disappeared and they were better than a cloth at gathering up the bits of sesame seed and bagel that tend to get left around. Given we now have 8m of worktop, I thought giving everything a clean with just two of them was pretty good going; the cloth structure stayed whole and there was plenty of moisture in them. They picked up grease and stickiness well.

Thus spurred on, I decided to tackle the job I’ve been avoiding for months; the banisters and doors. This lead to a bit of a prairie muffin moment with me dusting door (I kid you not) and generally de-gunking everything in sight. I am ashamed to admit I thought the paint had worn off my newel posts, but it turned out to just be dirt :blush: It took less than two Multipurpose wipes to clean each set of stairs (we have 2 flights) and each one did several door fronts. I used the Antibacterial ones for handles, just to be properly housewife-y.

3 teens in the house, 2 adults and a couple of small ones means the bathrooms in our house take quite a hit and they are our toughest place to keep clean. We have a fairly strict housework policy here, with everyone taking part in the ‘Friday Tidy’ but they don’t like doing the bathrooms, partly because I make quite a fuss about not using the cloth on the loo and then the sink (fussy old me, eh?) Josie approved of wipes though and took them off to clean everywhere, throwing away germy ones as appropriate. Result! There are also special Bathroom ones that work on Limescales as well as killing 99.9% of germs. (Take that, kid scuzz!)

Plenty Easy Clean Wipes are available from Morrison’s, Asda and Waitrose. A starter kit with dispenser and 30 wipes are £2.99 rsp. and refill packs are also available (rsp. £1.99).

Yes, that was me blogging about cleaning. The world has gone mad. Hopefully it will make you feel better to know it was a collaborative post!