A House We Built

Custom House Designed by Husband & Wife Team | Modern Farmhouse Inspired

Cat-Related Sources & Cleaning Tips

by Leave a Comment

Cat-related sources:

Cleaning sources:

  • Robot vacuums: We have 2 different styles of these for different parts of our house. First is this: Walmart | Home Depot (regular vacuum, manual disposal). Second is this: Walmart | Home Depot (automatic disposal). We specifically have these because we have five rescue cats but my husband is allergic to cats to we have these to control the allergens in our home and they both have high-efficiency filter systems and they cover a lot of ground. We run them both 4-6 times a week in different parts of our house but I should note that the purpose of these in our house is to remove cat hair from our floors – like the subtle stuff that you don’t even see – and they do a fantastic job at this in particular. But in terms of actually cleaning floors after a mess or a spill, or like cleaning under the dining table after a meal, cleaning up crumbs, or cleaning an entryway mats etc, that stuff we still need to do ourselves because the roombas honestly just aren’t as good at it. So in our house we use them specifically cat allergen controllers, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have them.
  • Cordless vacuum: Amazon | Walmart. We have 3 of these for different parts of our house. It’s very smooth to use and has multiple attachments and overall it’s my favorite and most used vacuum. We keep our entire house clean with this vacuum. If you are looking for a single, awesome vacuum recommendation, this one is it! If I could choose to only have one vacuum, I would choose this one.
  • Corded vacuum: Amazon | Walmart. We’ve had ours for many years (ours is the slightly older version of these) but since getting our cordless vacuum cleaners and robot vacuums, I’ve used this corded one less and less. It’s a very good vacuum though and I’ll use this once a month or so for a deeper clean, but that’s it. If you have pets, this is a great vacuum for deep cleans.
  • Floor mop: Amazon | Walmart

To keep our floors clean and fur-free, I use a combination of the cleaning sources listed above and good grooming routines. I run the roombas either every day or every other day (specifically for cat hair), I vacuum the stairs each day with a cordless vacuum, and I groom the cats every other night. Even before getting the roombas, we rarely spent more then 10-15 minutes a day cleaning because we cleaned different zones of our house on rotation so that we weren’t left with situations of having to clean the entire house in one day. For our house cleaning routines, click here.

Grooming the cats regularly makes the biggest difference in keeping the house free of fur. I use this grooming tool and I groom all our cats at night before bed every other night. If I’m late by even one day, I notice a difference in our house. And because I groom them regularly, they don’t really leave much/any hair on our furniture or floors. The logic is to groom the loose hair off them before it falls off them. Please don’t bathe your cat. They’ll hate you, you’ll hate it, and nothing good will come of it. Instead, I just wipe them down with a cloth that is damp with water. This wipes the immediate allergens off their fur. It takes 1-2 mins to do all 5 cats and they absolutely love this routine! Regular grooming is also something that helps with allergies. To learn more about How to Cope with Cat Allergies, click here.

We keep a litter box on each floor of our house and one in each cat room. I clean them all every morning. Cleaning all the litterboxes only takes a few minutes and this regular cleaning combined with using self-clumping litter keeps our house odor-free.

The cats share a water fountain which lives in our mudroom, they also have bowls of fresh water in their cat room. However I keep the water fountain in the mudroom because it has a tile floor.

We keep these scratch pads on every floor (we have 2 on each floor and they move around a lot). This keeps the cats from scratching our furniture. Sometimes I even sprinkle catnip in them.

I use this leather conditioner to buff out any scratches that appear on our leather sofa. It actually works! I’m not sponsored by them or anything. But it legit removes scratches if you apply it as per the package instructions. I just use a clean cloth and rub a little of it into the leather. It works miracles!

Health & Safety:

  • Our cats are spay/neutered. This is best for their healthy and prevents territorial behavior.
  • Our cats are indoor only. This is best for their safety and longevity.
  • Our cats are NOT declawed! Declawing is an inhumane, barbaric, out-dated practice that is banned/illegal in many places. Please never ever EVER declaw a cat!

More cat-related posts that might help:

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *