Spring Housecleaning The DIY Way!

For my semi-annual rip-the-house-apart-and-clean-everything-behind-it-and-put-it-all-back-again cleaning, I decided to try some earth friendly and homemade cleaning products. I've always wanted to try it. They're cheap, easy to make and better for the environment than the store bought chemist-made stuff. But do they work? Well, let me tell you how it went down...

After some extensive research, I decided to go with baking soda, white vinegar, castile soap and some essential oils. Obviously, you can find baking soda and vinegar at the grocery and everybody knows what they are (and if you've answered no to both, maybe you shouldn't be trying this). Castile soap is a plant based soap that is good for the environment and tough on dirt (haha, I sound like a cheesy commercial). You can find it in the organic aisle of your grocery store and in some stores in with the cleaning supplies. Mrs. Meyers and Dr. Bronner are two good brands and they have some wonderful scents. I got Mrs. Meyers lavendar this time around, but I'm thinking next time I'm going with Dr. Bronners almond. My grocery store carries essential oils in the organic aisle, but you can also find them online. Amazon has TONS of them. I picked sweet orange and spearmint for this because the were two of the cheapest and I wanted to be sure this worked before I tried the more expensive oils. One of them was $25.00 for a 1/2 ounce! It will be a cold day in the underworld before I ever spend that! I do not care how fantastic it smells!

Let's start with castile soap. I've been using castile soap for a year now as a countertop cleaner and I love it! Castile soap is concentrated, so it needs to be diluted. About four tablespoons to eight ounces of water is a good ratio. I also used it to scrub down my cabinets, floors, walls, bathroom counters, microwave, fridge, outsides of the toilets and my wooden bannisters and railings. Mix it with a little baking soda to make a paste and scrub down sinks, tubs and tile showers. This stuff smells great and everything is so clean! 

I used the vinegar in a spray bottle with some newspaper to clean my mirrors and windows and they looked amazing! And the vinegar smell really doesn't linger too long, so you don't feel like you're living inside a pickle jar. You can also use 1 part vinegar to 1 part water as an all purpose cleaner, but you need to be careful as to which surfaces you use it on, because vinegar can damage some surfaces. Me, I prefer my castile soap. It smells soooo good.

I cleaned and freshened my sink and tub drains by pouring some baking soda down the drain (I'd say a couple of tablespoons), then pouring in some vinegar and watched it bubble and foam. Which was so cool to watch. You let it sit for half an hour or so then you rinse with hot water. It seemed to work. My kitchen drain smelled better. 

Next I tried apple cider vinegar in the toilets. You just pour it in and let it sit, then swish and flush. This is supposed to leave your bathroom smelling like apples. I was really skeptical about that. And guess what? My bathroom smelled like apple cider vinegar! Color me surprised. And it cleaned ok, but for the toilet bowls, I'm sticking with chemicals. 

I made my own vacuum-up carpet powder with baking soda and essential oil. Just mix together one 16 oz. box of baking soda with approximately 20-30 drops of essential oil. Mix it well and make sure you do not have big clumps. I put mine in a mason jar and used a hammer to pound holes in the lid. I liked that part. Stress relief. Sprinkle generously all over your carpet and let it sit for 15-30 minutes, then vacuum it up. It worked great! I couldn't smell dog! As much as I love my fuzzy huggable puppy dog, I am not all that thrilled about dog smell. It also works great on your mattress! Just sprinkle and vacuum as you would the carpet.

Finally, I made my own Febreze. I like Febreze, but my kids go nuts with it. Really nuts. As in I get a bottle Saturday and by Tuesday, it's gone. Just mix two tablespoons of baking soda with 20 drops of essential oil. Mix it very well, then put it in a spray bottle with 2 cups of hot water. Shake to dissolve and BOOM, you've got yourself some DIY Febreze! I used it just like I would the store bought stuff. Now, the scent of the sweet orange oil didn't really last that long, but odors were gone. The spearmint lasted longer. And the house smelled minty fresh, like it just gargled with Scope. But I liked it.

So, my experiment with DIY cleaners turned out pretty well (except for the apple cider vinegar toilet). I'm going to keep on cleaning the DIY way because it's cheaper and environmentally friendly! And I like a minty fresh house. Except I then crave a stick of chewing gum.

Until the next project, 

Chris :)