How Make Your Own Organic Cleaning Products

Many people want know how to make their own organic cleaning products.  The process, like that for Laundry Detergent, is quite simple.  You'll need a few simple, common ingredients to make your own household cleaning products, plus a few extras. 


Common ingredients include: Vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda, washing soda (aka sodium carbonate), Borax (sodium borate), table salt or kosher salt, olive or vegetable oil, beeswax and a liquid vegetable or castile soap.


Extras are essential oils, like tea tree, sweet orange, lavender, rose, eucalyptus and sandalwood, for scent.


To create simple homemade, organic cleaning products, some recipes have been provided below:

All Purpose Spray Cleaner: ½ tsp Washing Soda (sodium  carbonate), ½ tsp Borax (sodium borate), ½ tsp vegetable based soap, 2 T vinegar and  2 C hot water.  Shake until well-blended and all small bits have been dissolved.  You can add essential oil to give it a pleasing odor, like sweet orange, lavender or tea tree.


Second All Purpose Spray Cleaner:  In a straight spray bottle, combine three tablespoons Dawn dish detergent, 1/2 cup white vinegar and fill the rest with straight water.  Cuts grease on appliances and countertops.

Drain Cleaner: ½ c baking soda and 1 c white vinegar.  Pour the ½ c baking soda in and slowly add the vinegar a bit at time until the fizzing stops.  Rinse drain with hottest tap water from faucet.

Window Cleaner: ½ tsp vegetable based soap, 3 T vinegar, 2 cups water.  Put inside a spray bottle and shake well to blend.  Use old newspaper for a streak-free shine.

Disinfectant:  2 C water, 3 T vegetable based soap, 20-30 drops tea tree oil.

Stainless Steel Sink, Oven and Countertop Cleaner:  Make a paste of baking soda and water and apply to surface areas.  Let set for 15 mins and then scrub off.

Silver Cleaning: Line sink with aluminum foil, put your tarnished silver in the sink.  Pour boiling water over, a cup of baking soda and a dash of salt.  Let sit for a few minutes and the tarnish will transfer from silver to the aluminum foil, which can be recycled.

Creamy Soft Scrubber:  Pour ½ c baking soda into a bowl and add enough vegetable soap to make a texture similar to a glaze.  To keep it moist for future use, add 1 t olive oil to the recipe, or just make as much as you need for any particular occatsion.

Furniture Polish:  ½ c oil, like olive or vegetable, 1t lemon juice.  Mix ingredients in a glass jar.  Use a soft rag to wipe onto wood surfaces.

Dishwasher Liquid:  ½ c castile soap, ½ c water, 1 t lemon juice, 3 drops tea tree extract, ¼ c white vinegar.  Mix ingredients and store in a squeeze bottle, use 2 T per load.

So, there you have it.  Some easy, simple and very green recipes for organic cleaning products that anyone can make for pennies and using common household items that anyone can easily obtain.  Many of these homemade cleaning product recipes can be made and stored in bulk, with a minimum of planning. All of them work as good, if not better than their non-organic, store-bought counterparts.  Good luck with the organic cleaning product recipes and happy cleaning!

Readjusting Priorities

It's been about a year since I started this blog, with (as always) the best of intentions. In some things (eating locally, healthfully, naturally) I've been fairly successful. In others, not so much.

Organic gardening was fun, but driving across town 3-5 times a week no longer became practical when my daughter went to middle school. First off, I have to take half my lunch break to drive her to school in the morning due to scheduling conflict, so the remaining 30 mins only allows me enough time to eat quickly and not enough time to drive across town to water my plot. There isn't a branch of the organic gardening co op on my side of town, so I had to let it go. I still have the herb garden, and potatoes and lettuce in pots on my porch. Right now, that will be the best I can do, besides shop at the farmer's market down the road from me.

I don't have a suitable spot in the yard to create another one, but I might co-opt one of my former flower beds and try it there if I can figure out how.

The recycling and reusing project has gone much better. We are recycling and reusing a majority of our waste, with plastics going into the bin and glass jars being reused. We fill up our bins almost weekly now, and we only put out one small bag of trash a week, so that's not too bad. We still buy a lot of second hand stuff, and generally most things bought have more than one use most of the time.

All in all, it isn't possible in today's society to be 100% green without significant effort, but strides are possible. Different choices can be made, I think, to make a life less consumptive, and more environmentally friendly. It may not be possible to grow your own food all the time, but it is possible to make sensible, thoughtful choices like fair trade, organic coffee (pay the true price of those beans!), and free range eggs or local produce.

Where I came from, where I am now, and where I am going...

Hi, This is an introductory post. I wanted to update myself and any newcomers on what I've achieved so far on my own.

With costs of fuel and food rising, it had become clear to me that the lifestyle my daughter and I were leading was not only increasingly expensive and wasteful, but also something that we were not going to be able to sustain indefinitely.

We came, just a few years ago, from extensive poverty. I am a single parent of limited means, whose paycheck is the only money we have. I've managed to do well enough so far to put us just slightly above working-class. I purchase a small home this year; nothing fancy, it's a mobile home on a lot. But, it's mine. It also affords me a place to garden and compost, and it has a pool, tennis court and a pond. That's important because a lot of our recreational activities take place close to home in our new lifestyle.

The other thing that was bugging me was quality of life. Both my daughter and I have been struggling with weight; mine as a result of quitting smoking 4 years ago and hers because her diet was overloaded with high fructose corn syrup and convenience foods (which I am convinced are from the devil! lol).

It was hard to decide to voluntary increase our food budget, and decrease our expense elsewhere, but I began to think differently about it as time went on. It is an investment in ourselves, in our health, and that was something that seemed more valuable to me than the temporary enjoyment of a few french fries. With health care expenses rising, it makes more sense to do this now to pay less in the long run.

Once we moved out of our bad neighborhood, and into the new place, I figured I'd make some needed changes. I received a couple of bikes secondhand that were in good shape, and I taught my daughter to ride hers in a single afternoon. We began to make more regular use of tennis courts and the pool. I planted a garden. I bought more things secondhand, primarily books and household items. I bought a book on learning to become a tightwad, another on composting. I received a free wire compost bin from the city solid waste department and set that up. We've given up 90% of the meat in our diet; only seafood and the occasional piece of chicken remain. And I instituted a pretty rigorous home recycling program.

But that's not enough, is it? And that's the great thing about this lifestyle; it's a constant challenge. I recently decided to give up plastic containers in favor of glass ones, for health reasons. We no longer use paper goods of any kind, except toilet paper. I've give up paper napkins, paper towels, disposable plates. We have changed my daughter's aftercare program to one much nearer to the house and it cut my commute and my fuel bill in half.

Yet, the challenges and temptatiosn are constant. There is still much debate over these practices and if they do any good at all. I will attempt to explore that here. I may or may not get the answers I seek, and if I do they may not be the answers I want. However, this is an attempt at thinking differently. Learning to live in a new way is never easy, but I figure if I quit smoking, I can handle this, right? Right?!