School Cleaning: 5 Things to Clean First

🧼Quick Answer: Focus on the five things your kids handle every day: the backpack, lunchbox, shoes, water bottle, and school electronics. Spot treat and machine wash the backpack, scrub the lunchbox with dish soap (and deodorize with vinegar or baking soda), hand wash shoes with Dawn PowerWash, take water bottles apart to clean every piece, and wipe down electronics with a microfiber towel. For everyday messes and high-touch surfaces during germ season, Clorox Disinfecting Wipes make quick cleanups easy.

A new school year is the perfect time for a fresh start. Let me show you how to clean five of the items your family uses most for back-to-school season, so everything is fresh, germ-free, and ready for day one.

Cleaning Tools You Will Need

Backpack

Start by opening all the zippers and emptying everything out, especially any little scraps of paper, because if those get wet during cleaning they shred and make a bigger mess. Most school backpacks are machine washable, but if yours has a care tag, double-check it first so you don’t cause any damage.

Before it goes in the washing machine, spot treat the backpack. I like the spot treatment, sprayed onto the areas where you notice grime and buildup, then worked in with a soft-bristle brush using a gentle scrub so you don’t damage the fabric. Let the cleaner sit for 5 to 10 minutes to do its job. If you can do this about once a month, your backpack will stay clean and last longer, potentially multiple school years, which saves you money. Add about two tablespoons of detergent and wash the backpack on cold. When the cycle is done, don’t put it in the dryer, since that can cause damage. Instead, hang it upside down and let it completely air dry.

🫧Pro Tip: Before putting the backpack in the washer, place it inside a pillowcase or a laundry bag if you have one big enough. This keeps everything contained so it won’t damage the backpack or your washing machine.

Lunchbox

If you’ve ever left food in a lunchbox for too long, you know the mystery smell (and sometimes the mystery growth) that greets you when you open it. To clean it, bring it to the sink, add some dish soap, and give everything a really good scrub, paying attention to the nooks and crannies, then rinse well. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but dish soap does a great job cutting through built-up food grime. Wipe it out with a towel and let it air dry completely.

Once it’s dry, you might still notice a lingering odor, which is completely normal. There are two easy fixes. The first is white distilled vinegar: put it straight into a spray bottle with no water added, spray down the entire lunchbox, and let it air dry. Vinegar is an awesome deodorizer that removes the source of the odor rather than masking it, and once it dries it doesn’t smell like vinegar at all, it completely evaporates.

The second option, if you really don’t like vinegar, is baking soda. Sprinkle some inside the lunchbox, zip it up, and let it sit overnight. The baking soda absorbs the funky odors and leaves it fresh. Just give it a quick rinse in the sink the next day and let it dry.

Clorox for Everyday Messes and Shared Bathrooms

Back-to-school season can get overwhelming, with changing schedules, people coming and going, and sickness that always seems to strike this time of year. That’s why it helps to have cleaning products on hand that make everyday cleans faster and more manageable.

For everyday messes and quick cleans, Clorox Disinfecting Wipes are my go-to. Whether you’re cleaning up in the kitchen, the bathroom, or anywhere else in the house, they do a great job, smell great, and I love using them on high-touch surfaces because they kill 99.9% of germs, which is especially helpful during back-to-school season.

The bathroom can be one of the most stressful spaces to keep clean during the school year, especially for a college student in a shared space. For that, I recommend the Clorox Toilet Wand, an all-in-one toilet cleaning system with disposable scrubbing pads that come preloaded with a bleach-free cleaning solution to cut through tough stains. The caddy sits right next to the toilet, so anyone who notices it’s dirty can quickly clean it.

🫧Pro Tip: Keep a to-go pack of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes in your backpack. That way you always have them on hand, and if you run across a mess, you can clean it up right away.

Shoes

Cleaning shoes is pretty straightforward. Start by removing the laces, spraying them with a little Dawn PowerWash, and scrubbing them in your hands. Textured cleaning gloves work great for this, and once they’re scrubbed, drop the laces into a small dish of warm water to soak while you clean the rest of the shoe.

For the shoes themselves, use that same Dawn PowerWash. Most people think it’s only for dishes, but it works well on a variety of fabrics and surfaces around the house. Spray it on and give everything a good scrub with a soft-bristle brush. You can machine wash shoes in a mesh bag, but personally I find that does only an okay job and can be a little rough on the shoes, so I prefer to wash them by hand. When you’re done scrubbing, rinse the shoes well at the sink to remove all the soap, because leftover residue dries sticky and attracts more dirt, making your shoes dirty faster.

After rinsing, you might notice a few scuffs along the soles, and a simple melamine sponge is perfect for those. Just get it wet and it removes scuffs to make the shoes look like new. The last step is drying them as quickly as possible. Stuff microfiber towels inside the shoes and wrap more around the outside, then let them sit overnight. Microfiber is very absorbent, so it pulls the moisture out and helps your shoes dry fast.

Water Bottle

Water bottles get pretty grimy, especially if you’re not cleaning them regularly. Always start by taking the bottle apart, since almost every brand has a few components that come out, and grime builds up in those areas if you don’t remove them. For everyday cleaning, keep it simple with a little dish soap and a bottle brush, scrubbing everything well. For the straw, use a straw cleaner so you can really get in there and scrub away any hidden grime.

Sometimes you’ll have a lingering odor even after regular cleaning, which is normal. For that, I like to use a denture cleaning tablet. It might sound strange, but it works so well. Fill the bottle with warm water, drop in a tablet, and let it sit and fizz. It cleans the bottle and gets rid of the odor-causing bacteria, so it stays smelling great.

School Electronics

Tablets and computers get carried to school and back and used constantly, so they get grimy over time. Start with a dry, clean microfiber towel, which does a great job buffing fingerprints off screens and picking up dirt from the keyboard. When something needs a little more cleaning power, use a damp microfiber towel, but wring it out really well so moisture can’t work its way into the device and cause damage.

If you find sticker residue on the outside of a computer, a little 70% isopropyl alcohol applied to your towel will lift the stickiness away so it doesn’t attract more dirt. And if you want to disinfect your device, you can use a Clorox Disinfecting Wipe, again making sure it’s wrung out well so it isn’t too wet. I also like to wipe down the case, since that tends to get dirty too. And there you have it, everything you need to get your family prepared for back-to-school season.