Recipes For Making Homemade Cleaning Products

Like many of you, I am on a quest for better health. I’ve been making small, gradual changes over the years to improve my health and the health of my family so that we can adopt each change into our lifestyle and hopefully sustain it. Lately, this has taken the form of substituting natural products for products that contain harmful chemicals and toxins.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared some of the  homemade beauty products I am using now that I make with things I always keep on hand anyway and literally, take only a minute or two to create. This week I’m sharing some of the recipes for homemade cleaning products that I’ve been using. These also take very little time to make and contain ingredients you probably already have.

Special thanks to Nature’s Bounty® Earthly Elements™ for sponsoring today’s post. All opinions are my own.

Why our family is making the shift to natural homemade cleaning products

For my beauty products, I used rosemary essential oil because of its tonifying and clarifying properties. For cleaning, I prefer something uplifting and refreshing so I included lemongrass essential oil in all of my cleaning products. For both beauty and cleaning products, I use Nature’s Bounty® Earthly Elements™ essential oils because: 1) they are very reasonably priced, 2) they sell them at Walmart where I happen to shop frequently. I’m way too busy (and okay, too lazy) to drive all around trying to hunt down essential oil and when I find it, I don’t want to have to choose between it and sending my kids to college.

3 Homemade Cleaning Products to Make

You’ll notice vinegar plays a predominant role in these recipes. That’s because the high acidity of vinegar gives it significant cleaning strength. Plus, you can buy it buy the gallon for just a few dollars, which makes it extremely cost effective as well. If you’re worried about using vinegar because you think it will leave your house smelling sour, don’t be.

Though the solutions will have a strong vinegar scent, the scent disappears once the solution dries wherever you use it to clean.

Homemade Glass Cleaner

A nice side benefit of this homemade glass cleaner is that the vinegar scent keeps the kids from using too much like they routinely did with the store-bought ammonia-laden brand we used to buy. Every time the kids cleaned mirrors or windows for me, there would be huge streaks left behind because they had used way too much solution. With the homemade version, they rein in their usage to just what is needed. I’ve read that newspaper works well to minimize streaks, but I prefer a microfiber cloth to clean glass.

Homemade Furniture Polish

I do like the convenience of Swiffer dusters for my regular cleaning routine since they make dusting quick and easy. However, at least once every few weeks, I like to do what I call “wet dusting” where I use a furniture spray to shine my wood surfaces and wipe away more stubborn dirt that gets left behind by the dusters. This homemade version smells great, works great, and just a little of it goes a long way.

Homemade All-Purpose Cleaner

Some days I feel like all I do is wipe down the surfaces in my house. Little fingers make their way around every room in my house every day and leave their fingerprints behind.

I go through A LOT of all-purpose cleaner so I was very happy to make the switch to a vinegar/water based version that costs me almost nothing to make. By the way, you can use almost this exact cleaner to remove rubber cement from clothing, get grass stains out of jeans and to remove water spots from car.

More on Essential Oils

Now that I’ve switched over to using homemade, natural beauty and cleaning products, I’ve become slightly obsessed with essential oils. I know I am late to the party but until recently, I didn’t understand what the big deal was. Sure, I enjoy when things smell good, but I wasn’t about to rush out and spend hundreds of dollars to aromatherapy my life. At just under $6 a bottle, the Nature’s Bounty essential oils have been a cost-effective way for me to explore the potential benefits.

Aside from making homemade products smell good, I’ve found that a small whiff of an essential oil can effect how I’m feeling. The smell of rosemary helps calm me and for some reason, the lemongrass makes me happy. For years I have scented our homemade bug spray with peppermint simply because the scent makes me feel instantly cooler on hot days (probably because it makes me think of Christmas and candy canes). I’m not saying these scents will have the same effect on you, but instead that you might want to open your mind to the possibility. Next time you get the chance, breathe in the scent of an essential oil and see if it has any effect on you. Here’s a chart to give you an idea of what you can expect:

If you do notice an effect on your mood, you might want to experiment with some of these combinations in a diffuser: