About Us

My name is Mike Robinson and with my wife Martha we founded Cleaning Essentials. I’m a lifelong sailor and traveler. I studied ecotourism in college and had my first career as a crewmember on sailboats all over the world. Ecotourism taught me about how fragile our natural environment is and the best ways to enjoy nature without destroying it. While sailing in the far corners of the world I saw firsthand the amount and effect plastic pollution has on our oceans, even in some of the most remote places of the world. This experience and my education motivated me to find a way to help the world be a bit greener. I feel like big changes can be a huge undertaking, but we can all do little things that add up. An opportunity came with the idea to create durable reusable glass containers and print homemade cleaning recipes right on the sides. Martha and I experimented with different recipes and ideas, calling on knowledge from past generations and stories of what grandma used to do. We made a small number of bottles and gave them out to friends and family. The feedback was positive and this small idea turned into a successful product. 

The most common feedback we get is about giving away recipes, and how once a customer buys a bottle, they don’t need to come back for more. From a business standpoint this makes sense, but for the sake of the environment reusable containers are the future. We hope that the containers our customers purchase will be refilled for years to come. The world can’t take anymore single use plastic bottles. We created Cleaning Essentials to help people live with less chemicals and create less single use plastic waste. Thank you for helping support our small business and for making the choice to create your own homemade cleaners.