Homemade Green Cleaning Products That Work

From Associated Content, by Ester November

If you want to clean green but don't trust plain baking soda to do all the heavy lifting, here are some simple recipes for homemade green cleaning products that work.

Many folks have jumped on the homemade green cleaning product wagon, only to discover that nothing cleans a bathtub like an old-fashioned can of Comet. If you want to clean green, but don't trust plain baking soda to do all the heavy lifting, here are some simple recipes for homemade green cleaning products that work.

Disinfectant All-Purpose Spray

There are tons of recipes floating around for all-purpose sprays that claim to clean everything from your shower tile to your coffeemaker. What you should know is that unless the recipe for an all-purpose spray contains either lavender or tea tree oil, it's not antibacterial. This may not bother you in the slightest, but if you're especially prone to colds, you might want to put the extra oomph in your homemade cleaning products.

Lavender and tea tree oil probably won't kill every germ that comes into your house, but they are known for their antibacterial properties. To whip up the closest thing you can get to a homemade disinfectant, squeeze a couple drops of liquid castile soap into two cups of hot water. Stir, don't shake. Then add 30 drops of either lavender or tea tree oil, or a combination of both. Pour it into a spray bottle and use on everything but glass.

Air Freshener

Commercial air fresheners don't really clean the air; they just cover the existing odor with a stronger smell. Use lemons combined with other household ingredients to draw odors from the air instead.

To make a general air freshener, squeeze the juice from a fresh lemon into a dish with baking soda. Leave the dish uncovered. If you want to get fancy (or miss the decorative look of a plug-in), stick a dried flower sprig in it, or mix some pretty pebbles into the powder.

You can squeeze lemon juice into vinegar for a similar deodorizing effect. Use vinegar with a squeeze of lemon to clean kitchen utensils and pans after cooking fish or garlic.

Lemons are also great for killing mold. When you're done squeezing the juice into homemade cleaning products, grind up lemon leftovers in the garbage disposal to clean it out and get rid of lingering food smells in your kitchen.

Degreaser

Degreasing is one of the toughest sells for homemade green cleaning products. If your grease is too tough for an all-purpose spray, get your kitchen shining again with white vinegar. Mix a pinch of washing soda, a couple drops of castile soap, and two tablespoons of vinegar into two cups of boiling water for a general degreaser. Or use plain white vinegar diluted with water in proportion to the toughness of the spot.

The inside of your oven can get pretty gross if you're not paying attention. For a good deep clean, mix baking soda and water to form a thick paste. Coat the inside of your oven with the goop before you go to bed and scrape it off in the morning. Then clean as you normally would with some water and castile soap, or with your all-purpose spray.

For a greasy kitchen spill, dump salt directly on top of the oil or grease. Let it sit for a few minutes to absorb. Then wipe up the mess and clean as normal.

Plant Cleaner

If you're like most people who are concerned with air quality in the home, you've probably got some foliage that needs occasional dusting. Put a little bit of mayonnaise on a rag and use it to polish your plants' leaves. For some mysterious reason, mayonnaise makes houseplants look wonderful and leaves no smell behind.

Sources:

"Non-Toxic Home Cleaning": Eartheasy

"25 Safe, Non-Toxic, Homemade Cleaning Supplies": Tree Hugging Family

"Antibacterial activity of essential oils and their major constituents against respiratory tract pathogens by gaseous contact": The Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

"Homemade Green Cleaning Products": Go Green & Save the World

"Alternative Cleaning Recipes": Ecology Center

Comments

[yamaniyama]

10:48 PM on 11/11/2009

Seventh Generation Free & Clear Laundry Detergent works awesome! And don't let major brands who jump on the natural product bandwagon fool you. I was buying Palmolive Pure dishwashing soap and just read an article that it tests positive for Dioxan, a proven carcinogen.

[heroine addict]

10:51 AM on 11/11/2009

My recent favorite is a stellar leather cleaner. It's easy to make and more effective than any expensive product I've used. Just mix up any size container with 1 part white vinegar (not red or balsamic) and 2 parts olive oil, then shake thoroughly, kinda like salad dressing. Rub it into your leather and buff with a clean cloth, microfiber works best. The vinegar cleans the leather while the olive oil conditions it.
Voil?

[Katie Young]

06:41 AM on 11/11/2009

Please remember that Tea Tree Oil is deadly to cats, so only use it if you don't have any kitties in your home...Check the web to make sure that anything you use is safe for animals.

[Collielady]

12:28 AM on 11/11/2009

Here are my favorite green "recipes" from an article that appeared in the Detroit Free Press. I've been making these concoctions for quite some time now and I must say they're the best cleaners I've ever used.

ALL PURPOSE CLEANER
Mix thoroughly in 1 qt. spritzer bottle:
1/4 C. white vinegar
3 1/2 C. hot water
1/4 C. liquid dish soap

WINDOW CLEANER
Mix thoroughly in 1 qt. spritzer bottle:
1 T. white vinegar
1/2 C. isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol
Water to fill

DAILY SHOWER CLEANER
Mix together in spritzer bottle:
1/2 C. hydrogen peroxide
1/2 C. isopropyl alcohol
6 drops dishwashing liquid
24 oz. water

TOILET BOWL CLEANER
Mix together:
1 C. Borax
1/4 C. white vinegar
Pour in toilet bowl and let sit for a few hours, then scrub with bowl brush.

SURFACE SANITIZER
isopropyl alcohol
Spritz surface and wipe dry for additional sanitizing.

THE BEST SCOURING CLEANSER
Baking soda
Sprinkle onto a damp cloth and scrub surface.
(I've bought tons of cleansers, powders, and gels through the years and have finally learned that plain baking soda makes everything shine, from sinks to chrome, stove tops, stainless steel, pots and pans. Works great.)

Vinegar kills up to 99% of harmful bacteria.

Hint: You can purchase large quantities of isopropyl alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, white vinegar, and large bags of baking soda at your membership warehouse.

[Victoria-nola]

09:30 PM on 11/10/2009

Many of us have been on this quest for decades. A really EXCELLENT antimicrobial spray that is foodsafe (was developed for foods) but works on any surface, is a spritzing of hydrogen peroxide followed by a spritzing of white vinegar. As nontoxic as it gets, and totally works.

http://realneo.us/content/how-disinfect-your-salad-food-non-toxic

This protocol was developed by a scientist looking for a practical method to sanitize salad greens. I found out about it from a home health worker in an AIDS-hospice situation. It turns out that many hospitals and other medical environments are using this protocol because it works better than their chemicals, they're just not reporting it because there are laws about the chemicals they have to use, chemicals that have been shown to be breeding superbugs within them.

What I learned is that hydrogen peroxide is light-reactive, so take the spray mechanism off a spray bottle and screw it directly onto the brown plastic bottle the hydrogen peroxide comes in. The sprays have to be kept separate, they can't be mixed ahead of time.

[DavidMG]

12:03 PM on 11/10/2009

"Clean & Green" is the BEST BOOK on nontoxic cleaning.

[BannedNBoston]

11:56 AM on 11/10/2009

White vinegar 1 part.
Ethanol 3 parts
10 parts water. good for showers toilets windows etc etc.

[Collielady]

11:41 AM on 11/10/2009

As a horticulturalist I would not recommend putting any product on foliage, whether it be commercial or homemade. These things clog plants' pores. The easiest and best way to clean foliage is to put the plant in the shower, temper the water so it isn't cold, and let it rain! This is also an excellent way to leach excess minerals and impurities from the soil

[Collielady]

11:32 AM on 11/10/2009

Agree. I've been making all my cleaning products for quite some time which include either hydrogen peroxide, white vinegar, or isopropyl alcohol for their disinfecting qualities.

I keep a spritzer bottle of pure isopropyl alcohol, just for extra disinfecting of surfaces. Spritz on, wipe dry. The surface is now sanitary!

I've had great success with my products and prefer them over any I've ever purchased. They're simple to make from things most of us already have in our homes.

I'll post my recipes later, when I have more time. Gotta run now.

[Collielady]

11:37 AM on 11/10/2009

The above post was meant to be a reply to Wozzeck's comment. I agree with Wozzeck that hydrogen peroxide and white vinegar are good disinfectants. I disagree with the writer, ThienVinh Nguyen, that a recipe must contain lavender and tea tree oil to have antibacterial qualities. According to everything I've ever read, that's just not true.

[AmandaHumes]

11:03 AM on 11/10/2009

I hope they really do work as you say, I have tried many homemade solutions but they never worked, either I am terrible at this or my dirt is too much for them. Anyway in case they shouldn't work I will use a natural cleaner that I love, Citra Solv, it's natural, biodegradable, it smells great and it cleans everything, my personal best solution.
Thanks.

[Wozzeck]

10:35 AM on 11/10/2009

The efficacy of hydrogen peroxide spray followed or proceeded by a white vinegar spray is described here: http://www.michaelandjudystouffer.com/judy/articles/vinegar.htm

[whatbox]

12:39 PM on 11/10/2009

If you're going to spray hydrogen peroxide, be very careful not to breathe-in the airborne droplets. Hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizing agent, like chlorine bleach, and long term exposure can be very harmful to lung tissue, including, possibly initiating carcinogenesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide#Safety

[Collielady]

05:17 PM on 11/10/2009

Your comment has piqued my interest, since I use hydrogen peroxide in my cleaning "recipes", one of which is a shower spray.

The Wikipedia link says that it is dangerous in concentrations over 70%. The label on the kind I buy in the drugstore says 3% hydrogen peroxide. I don't know how these numbers equate (apples to oranges?), but I dilute the 3% peroxide further in my "recipe". However, I'm going to do more research on this to determine what is really safe.

Thanks so much for the information.