The Best Unscented Cleaning Products

I'll show you mine if you show me yours

Dear Jolie,

Thank you for all of your delightful cleaning content! I have spent many happy hours listening to and reading it.

My question is about unscented cleaning products. I am afflicted with migraines and strong scents, especially chemical-y ones, are one of my worst triggers. This makes it difficult to be the Clean Person I want to be as many effective cleaning products (and deodorants and lotions and perfumes and etc.) send me straight to migraine-town. Do you have suggestions for products (in any cleaning realm) that are unscented or at least lightly scented, but also work?

Thanks so much.

I do! I do, I do, I do!! And I actually have good suggestions for you!!! How far we've come from the days when I was spiraling over the sponges. (August).

Speaking of those sponges, a quick note before we get into it: After all that carrying on I did, Are You My Sponge made it to the big leagues — a version of it, with illos that will absolutely delight you, was published by the Washington Post! It was so, so much fun to put together, and there are loads of little Jolie-isms in there that I know you'll enjoy. Also, I just filed a piece for WaPo on plumbing disasters so, you know, I'm basically having the time of my life in this new gig. (Speaking of which! GARBAGE DISPOSAL RULES 'N' REGS ARE COMING, I PROMISE. I have a draft in the hopper!)

Thank you for indulging me and my preoccupation with sponges.

Now, let's get into the unscentedness of it all starting with a piece of general advice for people with product sensitivities: Pare your cleaning supplies down to only the most basic products. You all have heard me say this a billion times, so I won't belabor the point but most of us are way, way, way over-purchasing cleaning products when, really, we only need a few basics.

It would be so rude of me not to list out those basics, right? Right. A list:

• Dish soap and/or dishwasher detergent

• Laundry detergent

• All-purpose cleaner for hard surfaces in the bathroom and kitchen

• Glass cleaner

That's really it! You can more or less clean your entire home and everything in it with those four products, though of course most of us have one or two things that call for a specialty cleaner — for example, I have stainless steel appliances that attract smudges like a belle at the ball collecting names on her dance card, so I have a stainless steel cleaning spray in my collection. And since we're here I might as well get this out: A POX ON STAINLESS STEEL KITCHEN APPLIANCES. Who the hell decided on granite and stainless, the two biggest assholes of the fabrications world, as the gold standard for kitchen fixtures??? It's infuriating.

A+ Brands That Offer Unscented Cleaning Products

The great thing about those four or five basics is that you can find high-quality unscented options pretty much anywhere. Here are some brands that I know make unscented versions of their very good products:

Clorox

Dawn

Dropps

Method

Seventh Generation

Tide

(In alpha order so no one gets mad at me for playing favorites. Tide has a wicked temper, and Method can be a bit of a crybaby.)

Good Unscented Dish Soap and/or Dishwasher Detergents

Dish soap, in particular, can be used for a lot more than cleaning dishes: Dilute it to clean hard surfaces, including floors, use it to pretreat stains, wash your wildlife with it … there are loads of possibilities when it comes to the dish soap. Just remember that the thing dish soap cannot do is serve as a substitute for dishwasher detergent!

Okay so! Seventh Generation and Dawn make good unscented dish soaps.

Seventh Generation has a fragrance-free powder dishwasher soap. Method has a fragrance-free dishwasher pod, but weirdly, the brand doesn't offer an unscented dish soap.

Good Unscented Laundry Detergents

Tide Ultra Stain Release is, to me at least, the ne plus ultra of laundry detergents and blessedly, they offer a formula with no added fragrance. Tide rebranded the fragrance-free version — it's now called Tide Ultra Oxi Free. And it's apparently only available exclusively at Target, which is stupid. (Sorry.)

If you want something that isn't Tide, give Dropps a whirl. Fun fact! Dropps is the OG laundry detergent pod brand! (Dropps also has an unscented dishwasher detergent pod, FYI.)

Good Unscented All-Purpose Cleaner for Hard Surfaces in the Bathroom and Kitchen

Truthfully, you don't even need this: You could dribble some dish soap in a spray bottle, add some water, and you'd have an effective all-purpose cleaner that's safe for pretty much every type of surface. But! Not everyone wants to go that route and that's fine! There are loads of good unscented a-p cleaners out there. Before purchasing any of these, however, check the manufacturer's guidelines to be sure they're formulated for use on the type or types of surfaces you need to clean. This is especially true if you have fussy surfaces like granite, marble, or the aforementioned stainless steel.

Last year when I was moving, Clorox was launching a new line called Clorox Free & Clear that they were pushing particularly for households with pets and children; they stocked Lillypad West up for me to try out when I was doing my move-in clean (and sent them to my editor at the time, who has a diva of a cat) and we both gave them an A++. There's a whole line of these — sprays, and mists, and wipes! — and all of them are Jolie-approved.

Some other unscented all-purpose cleaners to look out for are Seventh Generation, Puracy, and Morton Nontoxic Kitchen and Counter Cleaner, which I have not tried but that caught my attention when an editor at BHG wrote glowingly about it. It's on my to-try list for 2025!

Good Unscented Glass Cleaner

Glass cleaner is the one place where finding a good unscented option is a challenge. First and foremost, make sure to avoid formulas with ammonia (sorry ammonia-y, <3 u) because it produces the fumiest fume that ever fumed. You'll also have to skip the DIY options because: Vinegar. You know what is not unscented? VINEGAR.

With that said, you can find fragrance-free glass cleaners out there. Seventh Gen makes one. There's a brand I haven't tried (yet!) called TOUGH GUY which I love because TOUGH GUY is such a Masshole-coded insult and also because we stan A SHOUTY NAME, right? Right. Anyway, TOUGH GUY is both ammonia-free and unscented, so there's another option for you.

Show Me Yours!

Okay now it's your turn! I deliberately did this as a quickie because I know you'll have loads of unscented products you use, love, want to sing the praises of, etc etc etc. Help your sensitive sistren out, go forth and sing amongst yourselves.