Day 14: cleaners that work

About 5 years ago, I was invited to an activity at church to learn about making your own natural, "green" cleaners for your home. I didn't go because it sounded like a load of crap to me. I had just been working at a custodial job cleaning apartments and loved how effective our commercial use only, must wear gloves, "will die if ingested" cleaners were. I couldn't imagine that something "natural" like vinegar could really get anything clean. At that time, I also thought that midwifes and water births were for hippies and it that would be insane to nurse a baby for 18 months. Oh how I've changed!

I've come to really embrace natural cleaners, not necessarily out of concern for using chemicals, but because I've found that often they really do a better job. And with kids often clawing at my legs while I'm cleaning, I feel much better if Connor accidentally gets his hands covered in my homemade orange oil-infused vinegar cleaner than covered in 409. Here are some of my favorite homemade cleaners that really work:

Dish Detergent:

I just started making my own dishwasher detergent.

The water here is really hard water. With all the calcium and rust in the water, things can be a real pain to clean. My dishwasher (brand new with our house, mind you, so it's only 2 years old) was getting gross stains and build up on it. Shouldn't dishwasher be self-cleaning?!

This is what it looks like today after having used my homemade detergent for a month. It used to look a lot worse than this. There was calcium stuck on almost the whole entire inside of the door. My dishes looked cloudy and my dishwasher itself was dirty. Something must have been up with my soap!

This post has the detergent recipe that I use and it talks about how dishwasher detergent you buy in stores now doesn't clean as well as it used to because of a phosphate ban. I tried this homemade soap and could tell a big difference within a few days. My glass cups look great now (no rinse aid required) and the calcified nasty on the door is slowly going away. I haven't done the math to figure out how the cost of homemade detergent compares to store-bought. I can only imagine that it's at least the same price or cheaper to make my own. And everything is a lot cleaner with this recipe so I'm sticking with it.

Bath/Shower cleaner:

I've always hated cleaning tubs and showers because they never come clean. There's still soap scum and the textured tub bottom seems permanently stained. I still don't like cleaning showers, but this cleaner recipe actually worked on the soap scum and perma-stains in my shower. I've tried everything: Bar Keepers Friend, every "cleaner" that Pinterest has to offer, nothing has really done the job until this one. It's a mixture of vinegar and Dawn dish soap. The vinegar is undiluted, so it can smell pretty strong when you spray it. I usually hold my breath, spray the shower down, then run and wait for the stench to go down a bit before coming back to scrub. 

I've found that vinegar and/or baking soda can clean just about anything. When my shower head starts spraying skiwampus, I soak it in vinegar for a day and it's good as new! A baking soda and water paste will get crayon off of most hard surfaces, including painted dresser drawers (learned THAT one the hard way).

I'm thankful to have found some cleaners that really work and are inexpensive. I'm glad that I'm not too prideful at times that I can't change and try new things.