Homemade Cleaning Products

There are really only 3 ingredients you need to clean your entire house: white vinegar, castile soap and baking soda. Add to that list borax, citric acid and vegetable glycerin and you've got all the ingredients you need to make the 4 recipes below, and my homemade dishwasher detergent and dishwashing liquid.

Many of the recipes I found online use essential oils. These products are mostly added for their scent. If you're like me and you don't want to buy a lot of new products, you can use products you already have at home such as lemon juice, orange peels (and dried lavender).

Counter Cleaner:
Ingredients:
1 cup water
1 cup vinegar
2 tsp citrus castile soap
3 tbsp lemon juice

To reduce the smell of vinegar, I actually ended up using a 1/2 cup vinegar and a 1/2 cup citrus infused vodka (Taken from Soap Making Essentials, although they just use plain vodka). The infused vodka is made by placing orange slices into vodka and letting it sit in a cool dark place for ~ 2 weeks (if you sterilize your container before using it, you can actually drink it -although I'm not sure how long you should let it stand, some places say 3 days, some say a few weeks- or you can make extracts).

Next time I make this, I'll probably just infuse the vinegar (and keep the vodka for drinking!) and I want to try to use thyme infused water next time as thyme is supposed to disinfect (see Tipnut and Livestrong).

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Floor Cleaner:
1/2 cup vinegar
2 cups lavender infused water

I used to clean with just vinegar and water, but since that has a really strong smell I've started adding lavender. You can use a few drop of lavender oil or just boil water and add fresh lavender to create lavender infused water.

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Bathroom Cleaner:
I used the same ingredients as the floor cleaner to wipe the counters (You can also use the Counter Cleaner, I just prefer citrus in the kitchen and lavender in the bathroom). Then when I clean the sink and bathtub, I just sprinkle some baking soda, then scrub with the vinegar/water/lavender.


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Toilet Bowl Cleaner:
1/4 cup vinegar
2 tbsp baking soda (or borax).

Make sure you mix the ingredients right before you pour them into the toilet and be aware that baking soda and vinegar foam when mixed. Clean with a toilet brush and flush. For hard stains, use more baking soda.

Homemade Dishwashing Liquid

There are a lot of recipes available for homemade dishwasher soap, but I also wanted to make homemade dishwashing liquid. After much searching, I finally found a recipe that works. We're on our second batch and have made a few modification, but it seems to be working well. We are still getting used to the fact that it doesn't foam. I actually added an extra tablespoon of castile soap to the recipe (the original recipe can be found at Towards Sustainability) to add some foam and give the dishwashing liquid some extra power.

 Ingredients:

2 cups warm water

4 tbsp citrus castile soap (Dr. Bronner's)

2 tsp vegetable glycerin

2 tbs vinegar

1 tbs lemon juice

Directions:

Mix the ingredients together (preferably in the order listed), so they dissolve into the water.

Castile soap is a great all-purpose cleaner, vinegar kills germs and bacteria, vegetable glycerin helps break down oils, lemon juice is also a grease cutter and a stain remover.