The Spruce's Cleaning and Organizing Review Board

Meet our Review Board members and learn more about our process

The Spruce Cleaning Review Board — The Spruce / Alison Czinkota

In This Article

Who Is on the Board?
Which Topics Are Reviewed?
Article Life Cycle
How Do I Know if an Article Was Reviewed?
We Appreciate Your Feedback

Cleaning is about more than just ensuring your home looks tidy. Properly cleaning surfaces and items in your home can help prevent pests, preserve the longevity of your possessions, and keep your space sanitary. While you can tidy up easily enough, thorough cleaning requires a good bit of know-how (and the right tools). That’s why we launched The Spruce Cleaning and Organizing Review Board.

We know that finding trustworthy, authoritative guides to cleaning your home and everything in it that help you get the job done in an efficient manner isn’t always easy. To make cleaning as simple as possible, our board is comprised of experts on various aspects of maintaining a neat home, and our goal is to provide you with well-researched, fact-checked information vetted by the best in the industry.

Who Is on the Board?

The Spruce Cleaning and Organizing Review Board is made up of scientists, certified experts, and long-time authorities on housekeeping and organization. These experts have experience in pest control, chemistry, entomology, cleaning, sanitization and disinfection, and other skillsets essential to maintaining a clean and safe home. These members have been hand-picked based on their impressive backgrounds, extensive cleaning knowledge, and ability to communicate sometimes difficult or dense concepts to a broad audience.

Becky Rapinchuk

Housekeeping & Cleaning Expert

Becky is a cleaning expert and member of The Spruce's Cleaning Review Board. She knows how to clean quickly and effectively—and wants you to know her secrets to a clean house. This wife and mom of three kids and two dogs, former art teacher, and pro mess cleaner-upper is a 4x author, and a natural cleaning and home-keeping expert.

Founder of the lifestyle brand, Clean Mama, Becky has been sharing her tips and tricks on the Internet since 2009. Known for her signature cleaning routine, Becky helps busy households find a little peace in their homes with recommended tasks, taking the guesswork out of cleaning.

Melissa Homer

Trained Cleaning Professional

Melissa Homer is a member of The Spruce's Cleaning Review board. She is a trained cleaning professional, consultant, and educator with a two-decade career spanning commercial and professional residential cleaning. Melissa specializes in premium surface care, cleaning safety, cleaning procedure efficiency, cleaning training documentation, and cleaning damage repair.With over twenty years of professional cleaning experience, Melissa currently serves as Chief Cleaning Officer for Microfiber Wholesale, one of the United States’ largest distributors and manufacturers of microfiber cleaning products in the professional residential cleaning industry. She works with their Marketing team to produce all professional cleaning educational content for social media, as well as their R&D team to help in the design of their new microfiber cleaning tools.

Brandon Pleshek

Third-Generation Professional Janitor

Brandon Pleshek of Clean That Up! is a seasoned veteran of the cleaning industry with over 20 years of experience in commercial and residential cleaning.

As a third-generation professional janitor, cleaning is in Brandon's blood. He has a true passion and love for teaching others how to clean things up. Whether it’s how to clean up paint or slime from your carpet or helpful tips and hacks to make cleaning easier, he is here to help. Over the last several years, his cleaning tutorials and cleaning hack videos have reached and helped millions of people around the globe.

Katherine Picott

Professional Home Organizer and Certified KonMari Consultant

Katherine is a professional home organizer and certified KonMari consultant with over 5 years of experience helping clients get their homes in order. She launched her own professional organizing business, Tidy Milso, in the summer of 2020, to help reorient those feeling overwhelmed with both clutter and disorganization in their homes. To date, she has logged over 500 hours of organizing with her clients using Marie Kondo’s KonMari method.

Katherine enjoys helping others transform their lives—and the look on her client's face at the end of a tidy session, which she says is the "avocado on toast for me."

Rhea Mehta

Environmental Toxicologist

Rhea Mehta, PhD, is an award-winning toxicologist and healthcare innovator who for the past decade has worked to empower people to lead healthier lives, starting in their homes. Rhea holds a PhD in Toxicology, with over 15 scientific publications, and a certificate in integrative health coaching.

Rhea is a current practitioner at the Center for Advanced Medicine and the Canadian Center for Integrative Health in Toronto, where she works with patients as part of an integrative care system to identify and eliminate toxins within their homes and lives.

Amanda Rose Newton

Board Certified Entomologist

Amanda Rose Newton is a pest specialist, reviewing pest control content for The Spruce's Cleaning Review Board. She is a board-certified entomologist and volunteers for USAIDs Farmer to Farmer program. Currently, she is a professor of Horticulture, an Education Specialist, and pest specialist.She has a decade's worth of experience in both the academic and professional sides of horticulture and entomology. Her focus is on educating gardeners to use sustainable practices that will lead to improved food security and quality for the next generation.

Katie Berry

Internationally Recognized Cleaning Expert

Katie Berry is a cleaning expert with 30 years of household management experience and 12 years of writing about cleaning methods and routines for Housewife How-Tos. She is the author of several books about homemaking, including 30 Days to a Clean and Organized House.She shares her experienced cleaning methods and systems on her website and in her popular books. Katie’s focus is on helping people develop routines that use their time efficiently to clean their homes.

Which Topics Are Reviewed?

Our editors work in tandem with our review board to fact-check and formalize our robust library of cleaning articles that cover topics such as stain removal, surface cleaning, laundry, folding, organization, pest control, natural cleaning ingredients and methods, cleaning products, and a variety of how-tos and housekeeping tips and tricks. Our review board assesses all the foundational information you need as well as step-by-step tutorials that will take your space to the next level. Your home is a major focal point of your life, and we want to help you feel proud of it.

The Life Cycle of an Article

Each article is written by one of our cleaning experts, who have years of hands-on experience in their respective topics.
Next, our editorial team assigns the article to the appropriate Cleaning and Organizing Review Board member, based on their expertise.
Our reviewers read each article thoroughly, fact-checking and making edits for accuracy, relevancy, and overall helpfulness to the reader.
They pass the reviewed article back to our editorial team to read through for grammar, style, and reading comprehension.
Finally, the updated article is published and receives an official stamp indicating that it has been reviewed by a member of our Cleaning and Organizing Review Board.

Our review board members’ extensive training and experience paired with our editorial know-how come together to give you the answers you need in a format that is easy to understand.

The cleaning review board editorial cycle — The Spruce

How Do I Know if an Article Was Reviewed?

You may notice a badge appearing at the top of some content pages. The badge signifies that a board member has reviewed and edited the article, taking special care to confirm that the information presented is both accurate and up-to-date.

How you can tell if an article was reviewed by The Spruce's Cleaning Review Board — The Spruce

The Spruce’s Promise to You

Our team of editors and review board members strive to vet all on-site information to ensure it is as accurate and relevant as possible. And when we don’t immediately have the answer, we promise that we will research, test, and fact-check until we do. We believe in arming our readers with all available information so that you can make the best decision for your home.

We Appreciate Your Feedback

We are here to serve you, and we strive to provide the very best experience. If you think we could be doing better, we want to hear all about it. If you have any questions about the relevancy or accuracy of any on-site articles, or about our review process, please email us at contact@thespruce.com.