The post today is a linky one to all kinds of places with home made cleaning materials for your house or your person. I haven’t yet tried many of these personally, but I am intriqued by many of them, want to, and will do.
Most home made cleaners use the same few ingredients in different combinations. Vinegar, borax, washing soda, bicarbonate and essential oils crop up over and over again.
There are many other home made cleaners still to come. Doing linky posts takes ages!
6. Home made Febreze
Febreze is not just a nicely perfumed room spray, it also removes the smell completely and will do the same function on fabrics. This is one of the easiest things in this series to try.
Find an empty spray bottle. In a jug, put 1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda and a pint of water, mix well and pour into the bottle. Very useful in the loo to remove bad smells. The spray itself doesn’t smell of anything much. If you would like it too, add a tsp of fabric softener, a swoosh of perfume, a tsp of disinfectant or even a tblsp of Febreze.
7. Dishwasher detergent
The Home Made Experiment has several really good sounding recipes, including this one for dishwasher detergent.
Jen at My Make Do And Mend Life had variable results when making hers
Whilst this American version uses fresh lemons and vinegar, the smell would be amazing! If I try homemade dishwasher tablets, this is probably the recipe i would go for. I have a huge box of tablets still to use!
8. All purpose cleaner
There are many recipes for all purpose cleaners on the internet. The simplest I have tried is just half vinegar and half water. I put that in a spray bottle and add just a few drops of washing up liquid. You can use any vinegar and I often use cheap malt vinegar. The vinegar that you use needs to be acidic enough to do the job. This mixture is brilliant on our glass shower screen, on the bath and in the basin and for the bathroom cabinet mirrors. I also use it on the glass hob in the kitchen.
This mixture, or any vinegar on its own, is very effective at getting rid of water stains on taps. If they are very bad, soak a couple of sheets of toilet paper in vinegar, wrap the sheets round the tap and leave to soak for a couple of hours and the vinegar will dissolve the hard deposits.
The vinegar seems to get rid of soap scum and general grease. I spray it on wall tiles and swoosh it around a bit with a washing up brush.
The vinegar smells a bit, so I rinse any surface I’ve used it on, give them a quick wipe and the smell soon goes.
Wiki says
One test by Good Housekeeping’s microbiologist found that 5% vinegar is 90% effective against mold and 99.9% effective against bacteria
Which is great for bathrooms and kitchens
9. Soap
Those who have been readers for a while will know that I don’t use soap, shower gel or any other cleanser for my skin whilst showering, and haven’t done for over 40 years. My skin seems fine, and I don’t smell! It was on one of my many economy drives, I heard about a chap, on the radio, who never washed. He didn’t not wash, that was just their way of catching attention, what he did was the same as everyone else, but without the soap part. So I tried it, and found that I felt just as clean, didn’t smell, or indeed notice any difference much at all.
I know that this isn’t for everyone by any means, and mention it only as a possibility, so that you are aware, you don’t need to use soap to be clean. If you want to have a go at making some, there are lots of resources out there to help you. Jen, has a good recipe that is well explained. Jen starts her recipe by saying that soap is at the base of many home made cleaning recipes, so you may want to make it for just that reason alone.
And here is another post with lots of good instruction
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