My Professional Cleaning Caddy: The Tools & Tricks I Use on Every Job

Living in the bustling heart of Chicago, keeping your home spotless can feel like a second full-time job. Between work, family, and trying to enjoy the city, who has the time? Whether you’re looking for quick touch-ups or need a full reset, having the right tools and tricks can make all the difference. And when the task feels too big, that’s when a trusted Chicago cleaning company can step in to save the day.

Ever wonder what the pros use to get homes looking magazine-ready? As a cleaner in Chicago, my caddy is my toolbox, and I’m pulling back the curtain to show you my must-have products and techniques. These are the items that help me tackle everything from greasy kitchens to stubborn hard water stains, efficiently and effectively.

My Go-To Cleaning Products

Every cleaner has their favorites, the products they reach for on almost every job. Here are mine.

The Dynamic Duo: Bleach & Tide

If I could only pick two products, it would be bleach and powdered Tide laundry detergent. This combo is incredibly versatile. I use it as a multi-surface cleaner on floors, walls, and bathrooms. It’s a powerhouse for general apartment cleaning.

For Sparkling Showers & Fixtures

Hard water is a common foe in Chicago. My top picks for battling it are:

• Scrubbing Bubbles Easy Peasy: Amazing for shower glass and fixtures. You spray it on and the bubbles cling, doing the work for you.
• Iron Out: The best for rust stains in toilets, showers, and tile. It can even whiten laundry dinged by hard water.
• Lime Out: This sister product tackles tough calcium build-up. (Pro tip: Use carefully, as it can damage some finishes).

The Secret Weapon: Windex

Don’t limit Windex to just windows! This is my secret for the final “sparkle.” After cleaning, I walk through with Windex and a polish cloth to shine fixtures, appliances, and glass. It’s the finishing touch that makes everything look professionally done. When you need that level of detail but are short on time, consider fast cleaning services to handle it.

Heavy-Duty Degreasers & Stain Lifters

For kitchens and tough messes, you need serious power.

• Mr. Clean Clean Freak (Platinum): A fantastic heavy-duty degreaser for kitchen hoods and greasy cupboard tops. Always dilute it for painted surfaces.
• Dawn Power Wash: Excellent for grease stains on stovetops, ovens, and even in laundry. It cuts through burnt-on food spills fast.
• Easy-Off Oven Cleaner (Blue Can): Safe for self-cleaning ovens and brilliant for baked-on grime on stovetops. It lifts off the toughest messes.

The Multi-Purpose Miracle Workers

Some products are so versatile they earn a permanent spot in my kit.

Bar Keepers Friend

This powder is a miracle worker. I use it to:

• Clean inside toilets and polish sinks
• Remove rust from stainless steel and scuffs from bathtubs
• Tackle hard water stains around taps (safe for many stone surfaces)

It’s perfect for those stubborn spots that make you wish you had deep cleaning help.

Mr. Clean Magic Eraser

We use these on every single clean. They effortlessly remove scuffs from walls, tubs, and even sneakers. They’re also surprisingly effective on shower glass for hard water spots.

My Essential Tools & Cloths

The right tools are just as important as the right products.

• Swiffer Dusters: The long-handled and handheld versions are perfect for ceiling fans, blinds, and tight crevices after vacuuming.
• SOS Pads: Safe for glass cooktops and inside ovens (when used gently), they lift off stubborn residue without scratching.
• Quality Cloths: I swear by Grab Rags and carbon glass cloths. They’re lint-free, washable, and perfect for polishing without streaks.
• Vacuum with a Horsehair Brush: This attachment is a game-changer for dusting baseboards, light fixtures, and shelves before wiping. It cuts cleaning time in half.
• The Spin Mop: After trying many, this is my go-to for efficient and effective floor cleaning.

The Pro Organizer: The Caddy Itself

My biggest tip? Use a caddy with a strap. Keeping all your products and tools in one portable place is a massive time-saver. You bring the “cleaning station” to the room, instead of running back and forth. It’s a simple trick that makes cleaning your apartment feel much more manageable.

Keeping a home clean in a busy city like Chicago is about working smarter, not harder. With the right arsenal, you can maintain a beautiful space. But when life gets in the way, or you need a thorough refresh, remember that professional home cleaning is just a click away. You can easily schedule a cleaning with a team that uses these same pro techniques to get your space cleaned to perfection.

What’s in my caddy? I’m going to show you guys my bag of tricks. Starting with my two favorite products, bleach and powder Tide laundry detergent. If I could only live with two cleaning products, it would be these. I use it as a multi-surface cleaner, use it on floors, use it on walls, use it in the bathrooms. I love it. I’ll put the recipe here for you guys. This is a relatively new product. It’s Scrubbing Bubbles Easy Peasy. This is amazing on shower glass and on like shower fixtures. Iron Out. So, this is really good for hard water like rust stains in your toilet bowls, in your showers, on your tile. You can actually put this in your washing machine to whiten brighten whites if they’re looking a little bit orange from like your hard water. So, it has a lot of uses. Now, we have Lime Out, which is kind of like sister product to Iron Out. This is really good for calcium build-up in your toilets or in your showers. Just be careful where you use it, you guys, cuz it will like eat the finish off of some stuff. Windex. Okay, so this is not just for windows. We actually use this to like shine up everything at the end. When I do a walk-through of a house, I always have a Windex and my handy polish cloth. Where is it? So, when I’m walking through a house at the end doing like the final check through, I take Windex and a polish cloth and this just like shines everything up and it gives that like final finishing touch. I love it. I like Windex for mirrors and windows, but I love it for just shining everything. It’s actually funny cuz I actually don’t show this that often. Like I just for some reason on my Instagram, I don’t use Windex often. People are like, “Don’t you use Windex?” I use it for everything and it’s actually the most thing that I have to replace for like the staff. We run through so much Windex. I guess if I had to say what my third favorite product is, probably Windex. This is our shower spray. So, it’s vinegar and a couple of teaspoons of blue Dawn dish soap. I’m going to put the recipe here for you guys. We spray it on shower glass, we let it sit for like 20 minutes up to 3 hours or even overnight if you want to. It works really, really good. The vinegar like eats away the hard water and the blue Dawn like help works as a binding agent on the glass so that the cleaner doesn’t all fall down, slide down. But again, I like the Easy Peasy, kind of the same concept because you spray it on and the bubbles stay there. Okay, so I have Mr. Clean Clean Freak, a Mr. Clean. This is called platinum now. Used to be called summer citrus. They keep changing it. It’s still the same thing. It’s a really good heavy-duty degreaser. Only thing I’m going to say is like don’t We use this straight. Just don’t spray it straight on your painted cabinets, you guys. We use it for the tops of cupboards when it’s really greasy. We use it in the kitchen to get grease off, but dilute it before you spray it on cabinets. It It can just sometimes if the finish is like old, I I’ve seen it do some damage. So, just be careful. Dawn Power Wash, which this is really good for grease stains. Also really good for grease stains in laundry, you guys. But I kind of use them a little bit interchangeable with Mr. Clean except for this works on burnt-on food. Like it’ll work in your oven, it’ll work on your hood range. It works really good for glass cooktops like after you’ve cooked dinner and you have those boil-over spills. It’s just like a really fast clean-up. Spray it on, let it sit, and then you scrub and wipe away. Swiffer. I You guys, even though we vacuum everything with a horsehair brush, we always a Swiffer and we like the long one, the 6-ft. We use the little tiny handheld ones, too, to like get into tiny crevices, but the This one’s just good to get the tops of fans. It It has a locking mechanism. I actually prefer the heavy-duty Swiffers that go all the way like the pet ones. They’re kind of more round for fans, but this is just all I got right now, so this is still good. I just like those yellow ones that are a little bit more money, but they get more stuff. Bar Keepers Friend, I use this on so much stuff. Okay, we use this inside of toilets. We also use this to polish up copper and brass. We also use this on sinks. We also use it on pots and pans. Let me think. It will get like the the It’ll get like stains out of your quartz. It’ll get rust off of stainless steel. Scuffs on bathtubs, like little tiny black scuffs or like even like sometimes people get on the counter here, your belt will rub against the counter and leave a little mark. That’ll get it off. This stuff does a lot of stuff. Also, hard water stains like around the tap. If you squeeze it onto the countertop and let it sit, it really works to soften them cuz a lot of stuff isn’t safe for like say quartz or granite or marble. You can I’m pretty sure you can use this on marble. Do we? I know I do. We’re probably not supposed to, but it’s definitely like less abrasive than say using like Lime Out. Do you know what I mean? So, okay. So, Easy-Off oven cleaner. The blue one is safe for the inside of self-cleaning ovens. So, that’s what we use on the inside of self-cleaning ovens. Most ovens are self-cleaning, but if we run into an old one, we love to be able to use this stuff. You can’t use the yellow can cuz it will remove the high heat protective finish on the inside of your oven. That is what protects it so that you can do the self-cleaning feature. So, if you use this on it, you screw up the inside of your oven. So, like I have warned you, but we use this for the top of like a gas range stove where it’s really burnt-on. We use it for the top of the glass on a stovetop. You can whether it’s really burnt-on, it really works to lift it off. Sometimes I’ll use it like I have a really good accurate spray, so I will use it on the inside of oven glass, but like don’t get cocky. I know what I’m doing. This works really good, too, you guys. If you don’t want to buy this and put this in your house if you’re just worried someone’s going to use it on the wrong thing, just stick with the blue one. It just takes longer. Like you have to let it sit longer and you have to a little bit more elbow grease. Okay, so Weiman stainless steel. This is not an everyday cleaner, you guys, but I use it on um like stainless steel fridges, stoves, dishwashers. It’s really like you have to You actually have to be really liberal with this stuff, but it gets rid of heat transfer stains. Those are really common on people’s dishwasher when you have those kind of stains on the steel. So, if you use that, rub it in. Sometimes your sink will look like bone dry, like the steel is looking like it just needs like a little bit of love. This conditions it, you guys, and that’s what keeps it really in good shape. But again, it’s a little bit greasy, so I wouldn’t use it every single day. It’s just like I use it in Probably use it once a month. SOS pads. So, we use these on the insides of ovens. It doesn’t scratch the It doesn’t scratch the inside of the oven and it doesn’t scratch the glass. You can use it on a glass cooktop. You can use it on a gas stovetop. I would just watch it if you have like a black or a stainless steel gas range because sometimes it can scratch. Don’t press too hard, but it really works to lift stuff up. And by the way, you can safely use an SOS pad with oven cleaner. People ask me that all the time. Just a really good scrub brush on it that can get in there. I It really matters like ergonomically to me how they scrub. So, and if the I don’t like a really stiff bristle, but I like a little bit of a softer one. So, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. If we don’t have Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, everyone messages me and is like, “I’m out of Magic Erasers.” We use them on every single clean. We wipe down walls if there’s scuff left over, we go over with this. They’re really good in the tub if you have like scuffs on it. Good on sneakers when you’re at home. It’s just nice to have these on hand. I also use them on shower glass sometimes cuz it works really good to get the hard water off. Then we have some sponges. You can use whatever ones you want. I just really like the scrunches from Vileda or O-Cedar. These are non-scratch, so I don’t have to worry about like anybody accidentally scratching anything. You want a good set of rubber gloves. I am not picky on my rubber gloves, but I do like it when they go a little bit higher up so that the like drips don’t go into my shorter glove. So, these are Grab Rags. These are the We really, really like cleaning with these cloths. They’re not a super thick cloth. Like you guys can just cut up some old towels, but since we’ve been cleaning with these, like all of us refuse. We’re like, “We’re out of Grab Rags. We can’t clean anything.” That’s how we get. I don’t know why. It’s just like it’s such a nice cloth. It picks up everything. You can wash them a whole bunch of times. If they get super gross and dirty with like full of dog hair, we just have to toss them. Um I think that you can wash them up to 70 times, it says on the box. 50 washes, it says right here for me. So, you can get them at Costco. They’re in the auto aisle in Costco, actually. This is a carbon cloth. We use this to polish glass, windows, fixtures, everything like that. They wash up really well. If you wash them, don’t use any fabric softener or dryer sheets on them. They’re just really good. They don’t lint. It like cuts down on paper towel costs, too, and paper towel can lint all over mirrors. So, I really, really like I just love these. We’ve had them in our cat Like some of these I’ve had for probably 7 years. That’s crazy. Now, for the vacuum, the horsehair brush. This is like so good for baseboards, cleaning in the bathroom, doing fixed light fixtures. Like it just does everything. We just snap it on, we vacuum everything. This is just a little tiny lightweight canister vacuum. This is the Bissell Zing. I like to be able to lift stuff up, like lift it up and move around, and it’s really good on floors. It just has great suction. Every good cleaner has a favorite vacuum. Mine is the Bissell Zing. This is what I have in my caddy, okay? I use the horsehair brush with it. This really, really helps cut down on time if you vacuum everything first and then vacuum again at the end so that you have that like perfect sparkling shine. Now, I have the spin mop. I’ve tried a lot of mops. This one’s our go-to. Then I have my caddy, which has like a strap on it. I really like having everything in my caddy so it’s like one place. Not just because I’m a professional cleaner, it’s because it just makes it much easier if you bring all your products, your vacuum, everything into the room that you’re cleaning so you’re not running all over the place looking for stuff. There is the updated version of what’s in my caddy. I’ll put the link below if you guys want to pick anything up.