Cif Power Cream Trigger Spray Kitchen

I do not enjoy cleaning my house very much but I do like my house to be clean and fresh so I always look for cleaning products that work well with the minimum of effort. I use Cif Fizz Action in my bathrooms and have always been very pleased with how well it works so when I saw Cif Power Cream for Kitchens I thought it would be a good product so I purchased a bottle.

The product is presented in a bright yellow trigger bottle which contains 750ml of the Power Cream. The bottle is very eye-catching and I think it was about £3 when I bought it from Tesco on offer.

The front of the packaging shows a sparkling clean kitchen inside a shield shape which states that the Power Cream contains Active Shield. It says that it is “effective on tough grease and sticky residues and helps prevent further grime from sticking”. Turning the product over there are all of the usual warnings about using in well ventilated rooms, irritation to the skin etc. It does also state that it shouldn’t be used on porous surfaces such as marble (I am not lucky enough to have any marble!) and also to rinse off plastic immediately to avoid any damage.

The instructions are very straightforward, it tells me to rinse a cloth thoroughly and then spray onto a surface, leave for a few seconds and then wipe away with a damp cloth, easy!

I rinsed out my cloth then twisted the trigger to the “on” setting and sprayed the product across my worktops. The trigger is nice and firm, it doesn’t twist around loosely as I have experience with other cleansers and it has a good spray which dispensed ample amounts of product but doesn’t dribble any down my hands. The product itself was more watery than I thought, I expected it to be creamier, it was just a frothy liquid. The smell was quite citrusy but also a bit caustic; it didn’t really smell particularly “fresh”. My worktops are cleaned every day and I would not say they get particularly dirty so I expected this product to easily produce good results. I wiped the product around with my cloth but found I had use quite a hefty scrub to move even small marks like drops of squash concentrate or water splashes. I rinsed my cloth several times whilst cleaning the surfaces and once they all appeared clean I left them.

On returning to my kitchen about half an hour later there was no residual fresh smell which was a disappointment but more importantly the work surfaces looked awful. My worktops are quite dark and they looked dull and I realised that some marks still remained. It was easy to see all of the cloth marks even though I had rinsed it several times and knew it was clean. I thought that perhaps I had used too much product so the next day I used less but I still found the results were similar. The Power Clean just didn’t get the surfaces clean and then seemed to leave a layer behind (perhaps this was the Active Shield?) which made everything look a bit grubby. I tried using it on my Stainless Steel sink and that gave the same results, it was left with a streaky surface, just as if I had wiped it with a grubby dishcloth. The only place it seemed to work well was on my cooker top which is white, it cleaned up the grease well and you couldn’t see any residual marks.

I have since worked out that I have to use the cleaner as instructed but I then have to get a dry cloth or towel and completely dry and buff the surface to make it look clean and shiny. I have also found that I have to use the scourer side of a cleaning sponge to actually get the surfaces clean first.

One advantage of this cream was that I found it didn't seem to have an irritating effect on my skin.

I have two charming cats who never go on the worktops whilst I am in the house, however when I return home from work I can easily spot the odd paw print on the draining board so I know that they do get on the surfaces when I am out. For this reason I like my kitchen cleaners to offer anti-bacterial properties as well so that I feel happier about food preparation. It wasn’t until I got this product home that I realised that it does not offer any anti-bacterial effect at all. I was disappointed that this wasn’t offered in a general kitchen cleaner, I know that some people go overboard with sterilising things but I like to think that my cleaner offers a basic level of hygiene.

I suppose I am about a third of the way through the bottle as a little goes a long way (unfortunately!). I will use it all as these products are expensive and it seems silly to waste it. However I will never buy another bottle and cannot recommend it. My surfaces look dull even straight after cleaning unless I dry the surfaces thoroughly and buff them which is not my idea of easy cleaning. I do give my kitchen a really thorough clean weekly but what I want from a daily cleaner is a quick freshen up, a shiny worktop and a hygienically clean surface so unfortunately Cif Power Cream falls down on all those points.