The Best Items for Safely Storing and Organizing Your Cleaning Products

You use your cleaning supplies to keep your home safe from germs, bugs, and mess, but that doesn't mean they're safe themselves. Whether you have kids or pets you don't want getting into harsh chemicals, or you just want to know the right ways to store your products without them going bad, it's important to have a strategy for organizing and storing everything you use to keep your home clean.

How to store cleaning chemicals

The labels on any chemicals you use should tell you the best conditions for their storage, but if the label gets damaged or if you are a fan of decanting your goods into prettier or more stackable vessels, you may not be able to check those. In general, chemicals should be stored in a cool, dry place, far from anything that gets too hot, like pipes or vents. As long as you keep everything in its own bottle or container, you don't run the risk of them mixing together, so you're good to store them all in one place, which you should be doing because it's a key part of maintaining an organized home.

If your concern is kids and their possible access to the products, you should store chemicals in places they can't easily reach. If your kitchen is big enough, dedicate one of your upper cabinets to cleaning products and pick up a set of child safety locks for the knobs. Use low baskets to keep them organized by type and prevent any leaks from getting onto the wood shelving. Better yet, if you have space in your storage room, get a free-standing, lockable storage shelf, like this:

I'm not a big fan of putting everything under the sink because of the temperature variations that can come with all the pipes, but if that's your best option, make sure you're using a shelving unit that pulls out, so you're not having to crawl deep into the recesses of the cabinet to get to any infrequently used product. Try something like this:

Store your most used products toward the front and your least used ones toward the back. No matter which kind of storage tool you choose, remember to keep everything cool and dry.

Storing your other cleaning supplies

Everything should be stored together, as mentioned above, but if you have kids or pets, remember to keep abrasive or dangerous items like hard brushes or steel wool somewhere high or locked up. Other than that, these tools will help you organize and store everything:

• These wall hooks (six for $14.99) are specially designed to hold spray bottle nozzles, so they're great for empty bottles you fill with diluted cleaner or even frequently used products, like Windex.

• This cleaning caddy ($14.99) has space for bottles, paper towels, and brushes, plus a handle so you can pull it out, fill it with what you need, and stay organized while you tackle the mess in any room, no matter how far it is from where you keep the products.

• This hanging rack ($16.97) for brooms and mops helps keep those bigger tools out of reach of kids and stops them from getting dirty on the floor. It also has some standard hooks for rags, brushes, and more, so everything you need is in one place.