It always seems to happen mid-clean. You reach for the kitchen spray, give it a shake and find it’s empty, so it goes in the bin and onto the shopping list. Repeat that across every room in the house and you end up with a steady stream of empty plastic bottles, each one replaced by another that finishes up in the same place.
Shift takes a different approach. You get a set of reusable amber glass bottles once and keep them for years, with one bottle for each surface. What arrives at your door is a plastic-free cleaning pod, delivered before you run out, which you drop into the bottle and top up with water at home. The bottle stays in your cupboard and only the pod gets replaced, so there’s no empty bottle to bin and nothing to rush out and buy.
It’s a simple idea, but it raises a few obvious questions. What exactly is Shift and what makes it so different from the bottle of spray you’re used to?
What Is Shift and What Makes It Different?
Shift is our home cleaning range, designed to cover the whole house with one simple system. It starts with concentrated pods for the surfaces you clean most, from the kitchen to the bathroom and extends to the rest of the home, from floors and glass to the laundry and dishwasher. Our pods are plant-derived and plastic-free and you can browse everything on offer in our Shift shop.
What ties the range together is that every surface cleaner follows the same routine. Whether you’re cleaning a worktop or a window, you’re doing exactly the same thing, so there’s nothing new to learn each time you switch product. Most people are used to a cupboard of bottles that each work slightly differently and Shift replaces that with one method and a set of glass bottles that stay put. Refills have been around for a while, but ours are built to stay, with an amber glass bottle for every surface that’s made to last for years.
How Do Shift Cleaning Pods and Reusable Glass Bottles Work?
Every Shift bottle works the same way whatever the surface and it takes just a few steps:
1. Drop a pod into your amber glass bottle.
2. Add water.
3. Let the pod dissolve.
4. Spray and clean.
5. When the bottle’s empty, add the next pod from your delivery.
We sum it up as “drop it in, add water, done in under a minute”. Each bottle stays with one surface, so a kitchen bottle only ever holds kitchen cleaner and a bathroom bottle only ever holds bathroom cleaner. That applies to the surface cleaners and the washing up liquid, while laundry and dishwasher pods don’t need a bottle at all. Put together, it’s a cleaning pod kit that you top up rather than replace.
Our pods are concentrated, so the water goes in at home instead of in the parcel. That keeps each delivery small enough to come through your letterbox, with no bulky boxes or missed parcels to deal with. It also means the bottle you keep is the only container in the routine, so there’s never a new one to buy.
What Is in the Shift Starter Kit?
Our Shift Starter Kit arrives in one box with four reusable glass bottles and a first set of pods. It’s the quickest way to try the Shift routine at home without choosing every item yourself. Here’s what’s inside:
● 1 kitchen cleaner bottle with 2 pods
● 1 multi-purpose bottle with 2 pods
● 1 bathroom bottle with 2 pods
● 1 floor cleaner bottle with 2 pods
● 30 laundry pods or 30 dishwasher pods
Every bottle comes with two pods, so the first goes straight in and the second is waiting for your first refill. The laundry and dishwasher pods don’t need a bottle, so the four glass bottles are all for the surface cleaners. The kit doesn’t include a glass and mirror bottle or a washing up liquid bottle, but you can add both from our bottle range.
Right now, the kit is 50% off at £24.75 instead of £49.50 and subscribers get a further 10% off with the option to cancel anytime. After that, the only ongoing cost is the pods, because you’re not buying bottles again. How that compares with your current spend depends on what you usually buy, so it’s worth working it out for your own cupboard.
Will the Kit Suit How You Clean?
Yes, if you want to try the routine across your main surfaces in one go. The kit covers kitchen, multi-purpose, bathroom, floor cleaning and the laundry and dishwasher pods meaning it works best in homes with both a washing machine and a dishwasher. You can choose a mix of pods between laundry, dishwasher or both as part of your bundle. You can choose to build your bundle for either laundry, dishwashing or both if you want.
The kit doesn’t include washing up liquid or glass cleaner, but both are easy to add later. If you wash up by hand, the washing up liquid pods work with a pump bottle that’s sold separately and if you clean a lot of glass, there’s a glass and mirror pod to go with it. You don’t have to buy everything at once, so you can begin with the surfaces you clean most and add the rest as you go.
How Does the Shift Subscription Work?
The subscription starts with a choice. You can begin with the Starter Kit, which puts all three surface bottles and your first pods in one box, or you can build your bundle and pick your own mix of pods if you already know which surfaces and appliances you’ll use it for. Whichever you pick, the pods then arrive at your door in a size that fits through the letterbox.
Subscribing keeps things flexible or you can pause too so there’s no minimum to sit out if it turns out not to suit your home and as a subscriber you save an extra 10%. If you’d like to see the routine from start to finish, and how Shift works we walk you through it.
What Is Wrong With the Old Way of Buying Cleaning Products?
The average UK home goes through 12 to 15 single-use plastic spray bottles a year. That’s a lot of plastic for something you use up and throw away and it’s only one of the problems with the old way of doing things. Here’s what they are and how Shift deals with each one.
Plastic Bottles Piling Up Under the Sink
Every spray you finish leaves an empty plastic bottle behind and a year’s worth soon adds up under the sink. With Shift, you keep a set of reusable amber glass bottles for years, with one for each surface, so a refill never means another bottle to get rid of. Only the pod gets replaced.
Paying for Water You Could Add Yourself
A ready-to-use spray includes a lot of water, which you pay to have bottled and delivered. Our pods are concentrated, so the water goes in at home from your own tap instead of arriving in the parcel.
Harsh Chemicals You’d Rather Not Have at Home
Plenty of people would rather not keep harsh chemicals around the house. Our pods are plant-derived, so you can clean with something you’re more comfortable having in the cupboard.
Running Out Mid-Clean With No Backup
There’s no worse moment to find the spray empty than halfway through a clean. Every bottle in the Starter Kit comes with two pods, so the first goes straight in and the second is ready for the first refill. New pods then arrive before you run out.
Bulky Deliveries That Won’t Fit Through the Letterbox
Bottles of cleaner are heavy to carry home and a bulky delivery is easy to miss. Our pods are small and letterbox-friendly, so they arrive without anyone needing to be in.
The old way leaves you with more plastic and more to carry. Shift swaps that for bottles you keep and pods that fit through the letterbox and the range goes well beyond surface cleaners.
Why Choose Reusable Glass Bottles?
Glass is a good fit for something you plan to keep. It’s sturdy enough to last for years and it doesn’t wear out after a few refills the way a thin plastic bottle can. Amber glass is also the traditional choice for products that are best stored out of bright light, which suits a bottle that lives in a cupboard between cleans.
It changes how you think about the bottle, too. A spray you’re about to throw away gets used and forgotten, whereas one you’re keeping becomes a small fixture of your routine that you refill and put back in the same spot. After a few refills it feels less like a product you keep buying and more like something you own.
The idea behind Shift is simple: keep the bottle and replace only the pod. A few amber glass bottles take the place of the sprays you’d normally bin and rebuy and our plastic-free pods arrive before you run out, so there’s always one ready when a bottle empties. Every surface has its own bottle, while the laundry and dishwasher pods need none, which means the routine barely changes from room to room. Once you’re set up, there’s very little left to think about.
If you’d like to make the shift from spray bottles to pods, our Shift Starter Kit is the easiest place to begin. It’s currently half price, with an extra 10% off for subscribers, which makes it the most affordable way to start!