Spring Cleaning Season Is Coming. Here’s How to Approach It.

Five hands reach toward the center of a blue background, each holding different cleaning or maintenance items, including a spray bottle, nail polish, a scrub brush, a coiled orange cable, and small white strips that read

Join Wirecutter’s 4-day spring-cleaning challenge, starting March 9, and get a daily 5-minute hack for a tidier home sent straight to your inbox.

Six months ago, the state of my shower was pretty bleak: The grout grime had caked into icky, unignorable lines of gray that completely harshed the calming vibes of my bathroom. I deserved this, because, well, I loathed cleaning it. I hated pulling out the sad, fraying neon toothbrush that never quite got into the crevices. I hated wasting an hour every few weeks for results you could barely notice.

But then, as is sometimes the case in this job, a very smart colleague (cleaning expert Caroline Mullen) turned me onto a life-changing product solution — this perfect $2 Muji grout brush — and I, and my shower, were magically transformed.

About the size of a toothbrush, its skinny head is perfectly shaped for scrubbing grout. It’s angled, making it comfortable to hold flush against the wall. The bristles are rigid enough to really get in there and lift grime. And it’s a pleasing, minimalist shade of gray with a convenient hole in the handle, so it’s easy to hang from a hook and leave out in plain sight.

Because it works so well (and is so pretty to look at), it was easy to develop a more robust habit. Instead of scrubbing the grout as part of my infrequent deep cleans, I now do it weekly. And because I’m cleaning it more regularly, the actual scrubbing part has become much quicker and easier.

So as we look ahead toward spring-cleaning season, you have my permission to ignore the #CleanTok influencers telling you to turn your whole house upside down and scrub everything within an inch of its life.

Instead, look for the smaller stuff: actually doable tasks that you can work into your routines and build into a habit. The grout brush totally changed the chore, which, in turn, totally changed my behavior. Sometimes the right tool or simplest hack is all it takes.

For more inspiration: Sign up for our 4-day spring-cleaning challenge. Starting March 9, we’ll send a daily 5-minute cleaning hack — along with more simple to-dos and effective, good-looking cleaning tools.

In the meantime, below are some of Wirecutter’s favorite, rigorously vetted cleaning essentials to get you ready. Happy scrubbing, friends.



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