There is no single skill called “cleaning”. There is a surface, whatever has settled on it, and the response that suits both – which is why so many homes and offices in Gaborone end up with dulled granite, clouded shower glass and the varnish stripped off a good table. One all-purpose spray and one tired cloth get carried from room to room, and it is the surface that pays for the shortcut.

Walk through an ordinary kitchen in Phakalane and count the materials. Sealed granite on the worktop, ceramic tiles on the splashback, painted plaster on the walls, stainless steel at the sink, a laminate or vinyl floor underfoot, and a stovetop wearing cooked-on grease. Each of those reacts differently to water, to acid, to alkali and to abrasion. The Botswana Bureau of Standards recognises the point in its own rulebook: the national standard for liquid detergents, BOS 111:2015, is written for hand dishwashing and for hard surfaces “such as painted surfaces, floors, ceilings, ceramic and plastic tiles, and the surfaces of equipment”. The standard-setter does not imagine one liquid for one job. It sorts the job by the surface.

There is a local complication sitting underneath all of this. Much of the country runs on hard, mineral-heavy water, which is why kettles fur up and shower screens grow a white film. That film is limescale, and it yields to a mild acid – the very acid that will etch and permanently dull a polished granite worktop if it strays a hand’s width to the left. The soil and the surface can point to opposite products. Guessing is expensive, and the cost lands on the most valuable things in the room.

What a good product is actually engineered to do

The people who make cleaning products think in these terms even when their customers do not. Jemmie Golekanye, a Francistown entrepreneur who spent roughly eighteen months developing a hygienic washing powder before bringing it to market in early 2025, told Mmegi that her formula was built around named problems: “Unlike our competitor, our product removes stains, is perfumed, has Sta Soft, and has anti-soil redeposition.” That last phrase is the tell. Anti-soil redeposition means the dirt lifted off a fabric is held in the water rather than settling back onto it – a property that matters enormously for a nurse’s whites and barely registers on a dark blanket. She also makes a stricter formulation for hospitals. One maker, one product line, several different answers, because the material and the required standard of hygiene keep changing.

Diagnose before you reach for a bottle

The method that actually works is boringly systematic and takes about a minute. First name the surface: what is it made of, and is it sealed or bare? Sealed stone and painted plaster want a neutral or mildly alkaline cleaner; bare timber wants almost no water at all. Then name the soil: is it grease, mineral scale, ordinary dust, or something biological such as mould in a shower? Grease surrenders to an alkaline degreaser; scale needs a mild acid; mould needs a disinfectant and time to work, not force.

Then match three things to that diagnosis – the tool, the product and the time. A microfibre cloth lifts dust and grease with far less product than a cotton rag; the abrasive pad that rescues a burnt pot will leave permanent swirls on a stainless splashback or a glass hob. Most people also underuse dwell time: a disinfectant or a degreaser does its chemistry while it sits, so wiping it off at once wastes both the product and the result. Two rules never bend – test anything new on a hidden corner first, and never mix an acid such as a descaler with bleach, because the fumes are genuinely dangerous.

The examples repeat across every Botswana home and office. Limescale on taps and shower glass wants a mild acid descaler, left to sit and then rinsed, not a scouring pad. A sealed wooden floor wants a barely damp mop and a neutral cleaner, because standing water swells the joints and lifts the finish. A television or a laptop screen wants a dry microfibre cloth and nothing wet at all. Cooked grease on a stove wants an alkaline degreaser and a little patience. None of these is difficult; all of them go wrong the moment a single product is asked to do the lot.

What it changes, at home and under contract

Handled this way, surfaces last longer, results improve and less product is bought, because the right cleaner in the right place works on the first pass. For a household it is the difference between a granite top that holds its shine for years and one that clouds within months. For a business paying for a cleaning contract, it is the difference between preserving expensive assets and quietly grinding them down while paying someone to do it. It also makes the person doing the work faster and safer, which is worth something whether she is on your own payroll or arriving through an introduction.

Matching the person to the property matters here too. On Kleana, cleaners are listed by skill and duty category rather than a single vague title, and the platform’s shop lists products and equipment separately, so a client can line the right competencies up against the actual surfaces in the building instead of assuming that one person and one spray will cover a stone kitchen, a tiled bathroom and a carpeted office at once.

So before buying another all-purpose bottle, do the cheaper thing first. Stand in the room and name the surface and the soil out loud. The product you need – and, just as often, the product you should stop using – becomes obvious the moment you stop treating cleaning as one task and start treating it as a diagnosis.

Source: Kleana Africa – kleana.africa