This is gonna be a fun Tuesday project! And a yummy one, too.
I really like cleaning with natural products as much as possible. My general all-purpose cleaner is an all-natural one:
1/2 c vinegar
1 c water
7-10 drops of essential oil (I use lavender a lot- but I'd also suggest lemon or peppermint!)
I found this recipe to bump up the cleaning power of my all-purpose cleaning solution- add orange peels!
Here's how it works. Peel one or two oranges (and well, you'd better eat the oranges, while you're at it) and put the peels into a Ball jar. Then, fill the jar with white vinegar. Leave the jar in a cool, dark place for about a month.
After about a month has passed, remove the orange peel and toss it, saving the orangey vinegar! Then, I make my all-purpose cleaner with the recipe above, using the super-orange-vinegar! I don't use the essential oils, since the vinegar already smells so good and has great cleaning properties with the orangey-ness.
Have a great Tuesday, making your home a happier, healthier place!
Nice! I shall try that since I have oranges and an unused bottle of vinegar...and I love vinegar...for EVERYTHING.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you! I should write a whole post about all the ways I use vinegar around my house... I use it all the time.
DeleteI do the exact same thing! And the kids have even started saving their orange peels and sticking them in jars every time they eat an orange :) I mix it with a little dish soap and water and keep it in one of those squirty dish sponge wands in the shower so that I can clean it when I'm in there :)
ReplyDeleteBrilliant! I gotta get me one of those!! (I hate cleaning the shower- I always get my socks wet).
DeleteOkay, so I have actually tried this - although with lemons - and I have to say, I was kind of disappointed. I found that things didn't get as clean as they normally do with commercial cleaners and that it seemed to leave a film on things. Did I do something wrong??
ReplyDeleteAlso, the smell wasn't fantastic. It didn't smell rotten or anything, but it didn't smell "lemon fresh" either, if you know what I mean. It smelled more like pickled lemons - which is essentially what it is.
I would love for this to work, I just didn't get very good results...
Haha pickled lemons!
DeleteI've never tried it with lemons... but I don't think that would be a huge difference, right? I don't use this solution "straight," actually- I use about, oh, about 2 Tbs or so, mix it with a little more vinegar (I have a two-cup spray bottle I use, and I fill it about an eighth of the way with vinegar) and then fill the bottle the rest of the way with water.
Of course, I use a lot of vinegar for cleaning, so the pickle-y smell doesn't get to me much... it was an adjustment at first, though. I think after I cleaned the bathroom with my vinegar solution for the first time, Zeke asked why everything smelled like ketchup!