Home made cleaning products are easy to make, cheaper than bought ones and work just as well! I have been making my own for quite a long time and have had no problems with them at all. I reuse the commercial bottles and when they finally give up on me, I raid my (unenlightened) friends who still buy cleaners, for their old spray bottles! So my labels aren't always what they say they are - although I try to put the same type of thing into the bottle with the right label, just in case some else in my house takes upon themselves to clean....
Here's what I do...
Score card:
Green-ness: 5/5 for not buying chemicals you don't need
Frugal-ness: 5/5 for spending next to nothing on keeping your house clean
Time cost: About 3 minutes to make up or top up all 4 bottles - the same ingredients in different proportions!
Skill level: Easy as!
Fun-ness: Great fun to whip up a batch of cleaners from stuff you have in your cupboard already!
Here's what I do...
My basic homemade cleaners are (L-R)
Watered down bleach, glass cleaner, spray and wipe and air freshener.
Glass Cleaner is made up from a mixture of half water and half white vinegar. Then add two small drops of detergent and one of blue food colouring! If you add too much colouring, it can stain your benches so go easy on it! Spray it into a white sink and if you can see a lot of colour, Id water it down a bit more. Its the splashes that you don't see at the time that will stain. Go easy on the detergent, it will smear if you have too much. I use a microfiber cloth which will often clean all my glass without any cleaner - just water!
Spray and wipe type cleaner: 1/2 a spray bottle of water, 4-5 tablespoons of detergent, fill to the top with white vinegar and then add a splash of tea tree oil for disinfectant (and scent!).
The tea tree oil will "cloud" the mixture. If you don't like that look or don't need the extra power of the tea tree, leave it out.
Air freshener- Fill spray bottle with water, add about 10 drops of your favourite essential oil and one or two drops of detergent to keep the oil dispersed.
Bathroom Soap in one of those foaming dispensers - I do a 60 water and 40 normal dishwashing detergent mix and then add a drop of colour to complete the expectation! You could add essential oils as well, but I don't bother. Detergent is cheaper than "dispenser soap" and I suspect, the same stuff with colour and fragrance added! At any rate - it cleans hands well enough and no body has complained about it yet!
Shampoo and conditioner - Yes, you can make them at home!
I used to dissolve 3-4 tablespoons of bi-carb into an old sauce bottle full of water and use that to squirt on my head under the shower, massage and rinse off. Now don't get me wrong, its worked a treat for a long time. But, I ran out of bi-carb one day and decided to use my home made laundry powder as a replacement for the bi-carb and it works even better! - more ingredients (and a small amount of lather) so if you are a purist stick to the bi-carb mix. The laundry powder is made up of a bag/box of bi-carb, a bag of washing soda and a bar or two of grated sunlight soap!
As the shampoo will be alkaline (which is why it gets the dirt out - better explanation at the bottom of this post) so the conditioner is just a 60/40 mix of water to white vinegar in another squirty bottle - this time courtesy of the local PCYC. The acid in the vinegar neutralises the residual alkaline shampoo and, once rinsed out, leaves your hair soft and shiny. I use plastic bottles in the shower so you don't end up with a shower full of glass if you manage to drop it...
Citrus vinegar - Good for heavy cleaning jobs. Simply pop any citrus peel into a jar, add vinegar and leave in the sun for a few weeks. Remove the citrus peel and use with a cloth. Have a look at this post for more detail (the slow cooker is not part of the citrus vinegar recipe - I was cooking at the time of the photo shoot!)
Sticky stuff remover- Eucalyptus oil! just rub some onto the sticky thing and wipe!
I live in the sub-tropics and mould in the shower is a real problem. I have tried bi-carb and vinegar but I find the mould grows back the next day. At least with a 50/50 mix of bleach and water, some time to soak and a bit of a scrub - its a week between cleans, which suits my cleaning desires a lot better!
I do have some gumption in the cupboard that hardly gets used and other than the ingredients I've listed above, there are no more commercial cleaners left in our house. Our place is clean in a liveable sense rather than clean in that you might decide to do a spot of surgery on the dining table since its that clean type clean! I have friends who are not happy unless their house is sterile, but I think that can lead to lots of health issues and takes way too much time and mental energy for me!!
Have a try of one of these next time you run out of a cleaning product - pop it in the same bottle and see who notices...
Please share any of your home made cleaner recipes in the comment section!
Score card:
Green-ness: 5/5 for not buying chemicals you don't need
Frugal-ness: 5/5 for spending next to nothing on keeping your house clean
Time cost: About 3 minutes to make up or top up all 4 bottles - the same ingredients in different proportions!
Skill level: Easy as!
Fun-ness: Great fun to whip up a batch of cleaners from stuff you have in your cupboard already!
Comments
Bo Tolbert @ HJS Supply
Delbert Powers @ Minute Man Intl
washroom disinfectant spray
Commercial Cleaning LBI
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It was a great information and Its really worth reading it. The author did an mind blowing work by describing each and every concept of cleaning.
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