My five ways to save £372 a year with simple hacks when tidying your home

CLEANING your home is a dreaded chore most of us hate to tackle.

But you could be spending hundreds of pounds more than necessary to get your pad sparkling, according to one expert.

In the lead-up to the festive season and the ongoing high cost of living, every penny counts.

With a few simple tidying and cleaning tricks, you can make some big savings sprucing up your living space, according to specialist cleaning and home organisation expert, Heidi Phillips.

She owns cleaning firm Tergo Specialist Cleaning. You can find her on Instagram @tergospecialistcleaning.

Here she shares her top tips…

USE OWN-BRAND – £85 a year

Own-brand cleaning and laundry products are a snip of the price of branded items and usually do the job just as good.

Consumer brand Which? found that the most expensive laundry detergents can cost 53p a wash while switching to a own-label powder is just 12p a wash.

Using your machine four times a week would save £85 at these prices and even more if you us your machine daily.

And it’s not just laundry, Heidi says: “You can save loads of money by ditching the big-name cleaning brands and using a supermarket’s own-brand range.

“I really like Sainsbury’s own-label, it works really well and smells divine.”

DITCH DISPOSABLE WIPES – £156

A branded pack of antibacterial wipes comes in at around £3 – if you go through a pack each week that amounts to a whopping £156.

However, they are totally unnecessary.

Heidi says: “Disposable wipes are very expensive and you can just as easily spray a cloth with a bit of anti-bac and it will do the same job.”

Sainsbury’s antibacterial spray is 85p and you can just rinse a cloth and spray.

BAN DISPOSABLE SPONGES – £58

You can also get rid of disposable sponges for wiping and light cleaning.

A pack of two comes in at £2.25 meaning if you used one each week, you’d end up spending around £58 in a year.

Even reusable microfibre clothes are another expense that you can cut out. A pack of five is £4 from B&Q.

Heidi says: “You can save money on cloths by cutting up old clothes that are heading for the bin. T-shirts work really well.”

AVOID SPECIALISED PRODUCTS – £48

You can get specialist cleaning products for just about any task but these tend to be expensive.

For example, some of the branded kitchen or bathroom-specific cleaners are £4 a pop – buying just one of those each month amounts to £48 a year.

And there’s a cheap alternative that we all have sitting at home already.

Heidi says: “Much of the time you don’t need specialised products.

“Washing-up liquid is absolutely amazing for getting rid of grime and you can follow up with a couple of sprays of anti-bacterial to make sure you’re getting rid of any germs too.”

Own-brand washing-up liquid is under a £1 at most supermarkets.

There is also another way to avoid have to use specialised products for limescale or mould, which again can be pricey.

Heidi says that simply cleaning more regularly will mean you’re less likely to get build-up which requires expensive specialised products, and possibly more specialist tools.

She added: “For example, if you clean the bathroom every week you can easily take care of a small bit of mould but if you let it go on, you’ll start to need black mould cleaner.“

CLEAN YOUR DRYER – £25

Consumer group Which? tested a range of tumble dryers and found that after 20 loads of washing, some used 50% more energy on the last load compared to the first.

This was simply because of the filter getting blocked with lint and dust reducing the machine’s efficiency.

The group found the average achine costs £50 a year to run but this could be £25 higher if the energy use increases by half.

Simply cleaning out the filter keeps your machine running to its best without adding any extra costs to your bills.