Natural homemade Cleaners
Many popular household cleaning products are dangerously toxic and have a big impact on peoples health. I am not only talking about allergies, headaches from fumes (think about those evil-smelling oven cleaners!!) or burning eyes...Making myself more knowledgeable about all the toxic stuff I used for most of my life made me cringe: Daily, weekly, chronic exposure over a lifetime triggers various health issues (hormonal imbalances, cancer etc.) and I started replacing the most common household cleaners with safer, natural options that really work.
All-purpose/kitchen cleaner:
I am using this DIY Cleaner for the last 2 years and it is not only working extremely well, I also love the fact that I always have the (only) two ingredients available for a refill:
2 cups water
2 cups white vinegar
10-15 drops of essential oil (my most favorite: NOW's Peaceful Sleep :-)
1 Spray Bottle
Floor Cleaner/ DIY Swiffer wet pads:
4 cups water
2 cups white vinegar
10-15 drops of essential oil
10 Microfiber cleaning cloth (Dollar Store)
1 empty Swiffer pad container or any other plastic food storage container from the dollar store
Stir well and pour into the plastic container. Place your clean microfiber cleaning cloths in the container, one at a time until soaked. Store with the lid on. To use attach one of the microfiber cloth to the swiffer pad. To clean just throw your dirty cloth in the washing machine. Squeaky clean floors without any residue you usually get from the store bought cleaners. Pet friendly, too!!!!
Update: I bought a Rubbermaid Reveal Spray Mop and fill the attached bottle with the solution mentioned above. Works like a charm!
Tub & Tile Cleaner:
The "Hot Vinegar & Blue Dawn" homemade tub cleaner is extremely popular and all over the internet and Pinterest. I have to say, it works exceptionally well (minimal scrubbing required). I used it for more than a year and it really makes your tub sparkle. What I didn't like were the really strong fumes of this mixture. You can't stay in the bathroom and even spraying it on almost requires a face mask :-( This is apparently the result of HEATING the vinegar. I also do not like the fact that DAWN is part of the recipe, there is nothing NATURAL about this dish soap at all. I used two other options instead - it needs a little bit more elbow grease but works pretty good as well (without nasty fumes and chemicals):
Option 1:
3/4 cup Baking Soda
1/4 cup Lemon Juice
3 TB salt
3 TB Dish Soap ( I use GREEN WORKS or whatever NATURAL dish soap is on sale)
1/2 cup white vinegar
10 drops essential oil (I like lemongrass or zesty orange)
Mix it all together and pour into a squirt bottle. I also use it as a toilet bowl cleaner.
Option 2:
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup Natural dish soap
1 cup water
Essential Oil (optional)
Mix it all together and pour into a spray bottle.
Toilet Bowl Cleaner:
1/2 cup of baking soda
1/2 cup of castile soap
15 drops of Tea Tree Essential Oil
15 drops of Lemon Essential Oil
1 cup Water
Whisk it all together and pour into a squirt bottle or old toilet bowl cleaner container.
Laundry Detergents:
There are quite a few recipes available on the internet for homemade laundry detergents, but nothing (so far) really convinced me to give it a try. I like sticking to my favorite natural laundry detergents
Nature Clean White Lilly & Moroccan Myrrh smells wonderful and is reasonable priced as well. To intensify the nice smell I add reusable White Lilly Laundry Sponges to the dryer (instead of chemical loaded dryer sheets). You need:
1 plastic container (I used an empty dishwasher tabs container)
2 cups Water
2 cups Nature Clean fabric softener (White Lily & Moroccan Myrrh)
Sponges without scrubbing pads (Dollarstore)
Mix the solution with the sponges (make sure the sponges fully absorb the solution) and close the container. To use: pull out a sponge and squeeze out the access. I usually toss 1-3 wet sponges in the dryer (depends on how big the load is). After the dryer cycle just place the dry sponges back in the container.
I also like using dryer balls to minimize the drying time and soften the fabric:
Pre-Treatment for stains:
I really like the old-fashioned stain remover bar (made by THE SOAP WORKS). Just rub the bar on (wet) stain before putting in the washer. The laundry stain remover bar comes without packaging and is available at BULK BARN or WELL.CA
