When it comes to cleaning, our Helpers have high standards. So who better to carry out a cleaning product review?

We asked our Just Helpers team to review Astonish Cleaning Products. Here’s the verdict.

Astonish Cleaning products are “cleaners with a conscience” – so they are perfect for Just Helpers! The products are approved by the Vegan Society . This means they contain no animal ingredients and are not tested on animals. Astonish are a UK family business, and part of their mission is to keep their road miles to a minimum. Their laboratories, manufacturing and packaging are all under one roof.

But do the products work? Our Just Helpers team put them to the test in some everyday cleaning tasks. Here’s what they said: 

Astonish Premium Edition Kitchen Cleaner (Citrus Grove)

• Tested in kitchen (including oven)
• Has a synthetic lemon smell
• Quite good at dealing with grease
• Effectiveness score 4/5

Astonish Premium Edition Multi-Surface Cleaner (Citrus Grove)

• Tested in kitchen and bathroom
• A lovely smell
• Good on grease
• Effectiveness score 3/5

Astonish Oven and Cookware Cleaner Paste

• Tested on oven and cookware
• Smells okay
• Less effective on old burnt-on grease
• Effectiveness score 3.5/5

Astonish Ultimate Limescale Remover

• Tested on bathroom and kitchen sink
• Smells lovely
• Effectiveness score 5/5
• Would definitely recommend – “Highly impressed!”

Astonish Bathroom Cleaner and Floor Cleaner

• Tested on bathroom and floors
• Lovely smell – “I’m really please with how Astonish smells”
• Effectiveness score 5/5 – “strong and very efficient”
• Definitely recommended – “I’ve already recommended it to a few of our customers”.

Astonish Window & Glass

• Tested in the kitchen
• Smell okay
• Effectiveness score 5/5
• Recommended

Astonish Mould and Mildew Blaster

• Tested in the bathroom
• Smells okay
• Effectiveness score 4/5
• Recommended

Overall verdict

We got some great comments about these products from our Just Helpers Team. Everyone agreed that the cleaning products were economical to use. They used about the amount they would expect, to get results.  Most of the team also liked the smell of the products.

Where to find Astonish Cleaning Products

We bought our Astonish products in Dunelm Mill, and Poundland. For more stockists, click here.

Hoping to take on an oven clean? Here’s a couple of tips we’ve gleaned from years of experience.

Everyone knows that smell.. the pool of a sticky or fatty spillage smoking in the bottom of the oven when it gets hot. Even if you haven’t got time to go for a thorough clean, get a few pieces of kitchen towel and mop up the worst of the spillage before you turn the oven on again – the more times you ‘cook’ that spillage the harder it will be to get off. Better still, prevent spillage by putting a baking tray underneath the usual suspects.

Stick it to the sticky stuff

A Which? Best Buy report from 2012 rates the leave-it-over-night gel cleaners as generally the best performers, heralding Oven Pride as the most widely available top product for its removal of tough baked on grime, a little bit of scrubbing will still be needed on the oven walls of course. In my time, when I had to get an oven done without the luxury of leaving it over night I used to use Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner and leave the spray foam to soak but this still requires a lot of elbow grease to help Mr. Muscle’s muscles along. All of these products use caustic chemicals to dissolve the dirt, leaving a very bad smell in the air and risk of damage to your clothes and any other surfaces that are not the inside of your oven. It can also mean that your oven will smell for a few days while the chemicals in your oven burn off, even with plenty of rinsing this is hard to avoid.

Eco alternatives

To eradicate the need for chemicals you must to start as you mean to go on: cleaning your oven on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. Although there are many eco-alterntives on the market, none of them can cut through hard burnt on grease to the same extent as sodium alkyl ethoxy sulphate and sodium hydroxide.

There are a few brands who offer a mineral based paste that you can spread on and wipe off, normally made of a vegetable soap and mineral abrasive, here’s one from Astonish. Or you can make your own paste with bicarbonate of soda and ‘bake’ it on. If you are planning on doing the scrubbing regularly, you might want to soften the grime first by putting a bowl of water in the oven and setting it to 100℃ for 30 mins to steam, this also works well in microwave ovens on a short 4 or 5 minute setting.

Oven cleaning is one of our Helpful Add-on Services.

When you speak to your cleaning manager they can arrange for this to be added to an existing clean for an extra cost, some of our other add-ons include cleaning blinds, taking duvets to the laundry or washing down walls; those jobs that no-one ever seems to have the time to do.