Four Homemade Cleaners

Four Homemade Cleaners

http://www.macheesmo.com/2011/01/four-homemade-cleaners/

January 12, 2011  |  By Nick  |  This was easier than I thought it would be.

One of Betsy’s goals for the year was to ditch some of our standard cleaners that we use around the house and make them! Honestly, I was a bit skeptical about this project mainly because I wasn’t sure that homemade cleaners would really get the job done.

And my lovely wife is a bit of a neat freak so there’s no way she would use something that didn’t perform well.

So a couple of weekends ago she went out and bought a few staple ingredients and some empty spray bottles and we spent a few minutes mixing up four different homemade cleaners that have since replaced 90% of the cleaners we use around the house.

For the last few weeks we’ve been using them now and I’ve been so impressed by how well they are working, I thought I’d share them all with you in case any of you are interested in ditching the chemicals.

The Cost of Cleaning. The thing about homemade cleaners is that the initial start-up costs might seem a bit high. A tiny bottle of lavender oil (.5 ounces), for example, will run you $7-$8. But the thing to remember is that for each batch of cleaning solution, you’ll be using literally just a few drops of oil.

I would guess we spent around $30 on our homemade cleaning supplies for these four solutions, but now we have enough supplies to last us years. By the time we run out of lavender oil, for example, our cost per bottle for these cleaners will be reduces to cents.

Basic stuff.

Really Clean Cleaning. After using these solutions for a few weeks, what I’m most impressed with is their cleaning power. They really work. Not only do they work, but I get the strange impression that they are even cleaner than the standard products.

When you clean a counter with the all-purpose cleaner it’s squeaky clean and the whole room smells awesome, not chemical at all. I hate to say this, but having these easily accessible actually makes me like cleaning. DON’T TELL MY WIFE.

My ultimate decision to post on these solutions was just because they worked surprisingly well.

The Basics. Betsy and I did some research on books for home cleaning solutions and I would recommend these two to anyone who wants to learn more:

- Green Clean including vinegar, citrus fruits and baking soda (I guess unavailable for now on Amazon)

- Homemade: How to Make 100′s of Everyday Products

As far as ingredients go, a good number of ingredients you will probably have on hand already at home. Things like vinegar, baking soda, citrus, etc. Those are easy.

The tricky stuff are these items:

Some of these are a bit expensive.

Most of the recipes involve castile soap and a few drops of essential oils. These are the pricey items and the ones that you won’t need to buy very often even if you make a ton of these solutions.

Page 1 of 3 | Next page