This isn’t so much a life hack as a better option than using the Swiffer Wetjet. The Swiffer Wetjet is the classic razor / razor blade type product: the initial purchase of the mop isn’t that expensive but the refills of cleaning liquid and cleaning pads add up over time and end up costing much more than the mop.

For those of you not familiar, the Swiffer Wetjet is a mop which uses battery power to spray out liquid and features disposable mop head pads and single use cleaning liquid bottles. A image of it is shown below.

The pads are annoying in that they are single use and need to be thrown away. In addition to the cost they are not environmentally friendly. The cleaning liquid refill is also single use and the company goes out of it way to make it very difficult to refill. I once cut a hole and added a valve to refill it but it wasn’t really worth the effort. You can try to remove the bottle cap, but it is very difficult to take off and even harder to put it back on.

So what mop can do all the Swiffer Wetjet can do but without the single use refills which are the real cost? Welcome to the O-cedar mop. This is what it looks like, you can find it on Amazon here:

O-Cedar ProMist MAX Microfiber Spray Mop

Like the Swiffer it has a trigger which launches the cleaning liquid (but it is manual and doesn’t use batteries). However it has reusable cleaning pads which you can wash in the washing machine. They don’t last forever but should last for at least 50 uses. Also the cleaning liquid capsule has a screw up cap so you can use whatever cleaning liquid you choose. I bought a gallon of cleaning liquid concentrate which will convert to 64 gallons of cleaning liquid for $15. The exact concentrate cleaning liquid I bought can be found here on Amazon, I bought it four years ago and it is still more than half full.

Simple Green Industrial SMP11001 Clean Building All-Purpose Cleaner Concentrate, 1gal Bottle

Compare the resuable pads and refillable cleaning solution of the O-Cedar mop to the single use pads and non-refillable cleaning solution of the Swiffer Wetjet and you can see how the savings can really add up to potentially as much as $100 a year.

A summary video comparing the two mops is below: