I've turned my kitchen into a test lab the past few days. Good thing this stuff has cheap ingredients!
I've been on a mission to create or find some spray cleaning recipes that smelled great, were incredible cleaners, and weren't complicated to make. I'm really happy with the recipes that I ended up with.
Again, there are sooooo many recipes out there online and even in the little tiny book of The Naturally Clean Home. There are some recipes as basic as vinegar and water (ick!) or some as extensive as adding 2 or even 3 essential oils along with 3 other ingredients. I was looking for something more in the middle.
I didn't want something that smelled terrible but was cheap such as the vinegar and water.
But, I also didn't want something complicated and expensive like the extensive recipes.
When you use essential oils with your cleaning products, you are getting their natural powers (sounds like a superhero) and also their natural smells. I feel like that is what separates some of these recipes from what is out there.Using essential oils is not a must. It is a preference. I've tried making cleaners without them, and I wasn't near as thrilled with the smells or the results.
Here is a chart of some of the essential oils that I've mentioned and their uses (taken from The Naturally Clean Home- I ain't that smart:). These are just a few on a really long list.
Peppermint- antibacterial
Eucalyptus- antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antibiotic
Lavender- antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antibiotic
Lemon- antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antibiotic
Mint- antibacterial
Orange- antibacterial
Patchouli- antibiotic, antifungal
Lime- antibiotic, antifungal
Tea Tree- antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antibiotic
The fun part about all of this is you get to make up your own and come up with cleaners that suit you the best. With a little bit of knowledge on what ingredients and oils are used for, the possibilities are endless.
The book and the internet have A TON of recipes in it for many different things. But, I feel like these 3 are the ones that I will use most often. Keep in mind when you are creating your sprays that less is more in using essential oils. If you add too much of the essential oils, you will have a greasy mess on your hands.
Herbal Appliance Degreaser (taken from The Naturally Clean Home)-
This recipe is excellent. We use our stove for practically all 3 meals and use olive oil a lot too. So, needless to say, our stove gets lots of grease build-up on it. I never even thought about using Murphy's to clean my stove. But, I was amazing at how well it work compared to 409 (which I used all of the time).
2 cups warm water
1/4 cup Murphy's
10 drops of citrus oil or lavender oil
Combine all ingredients in a spray bottle. Mix well. To clean, spray surface and scrub with a sponge. Wipe off with a towel or cloth.
*depending upon how big your spray bottle is, you could double this recipe.
Herbal Disinfectant
Did you know that Borax is a natural disinfectant that has been around for almost 4,000 years? I sure didn't. I wanted a cleaner that was a great disinfectant as well in order to have an alternative to using bleach. So this is what I came up with using the research and information in the book.
2 cups HOT WATER (so Borax will dissolve correctly)
1/4 cup Borax
3 tablespoons of white vinegar
5 drops of lemon oil
5 drops of lavender
Combine all ingredients in a spray bottle. Spray and wipe clean with a cloth.
All-Purpose Spray
This is my go-to spray. I use this all of the time! It smells wonderful and cleans incredibly. I even used this to spray down the inside of my car. You can use liquid castile soap to clean just about anything.
2 cups warm water
2 tablespoon of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Magic Soap
2 tablespoons of white vinegar
4 drops of patchouli oil
4 drops of orange oil
Combine all ingredients in a spray bottle.
I ONLY own a grand total of 5 essential oils as of right now. I have lavender, sweet orange oil, peppermint, lemon, and patchouli. So that is the reason for the repeat of the oils. But, you can see that you don't need to spend a whole lot of money on the oils to get great cleaners. Overtime, I would love to have a variety of essential oils, but these are the ones that I have on hand.
I have a gift for you that just might motivate you to come up with something on your own...........
LABELS!
These were created in photoshop and I saved them as a .jpg so you should be able to download them and print them off your own computer. They are 2 inches x 4 inches so you can put these on shipping labels or just print them off on cardstock, cut them out, and put some shipping tape over them to protect them from water. I think they have waterproof labels somewhere out there, but not here in our little town of Brenham!
****If you find any cute spray bottles while you are out and about, let me know. I'm not too thrilled with my bottles, but it was all that Wal-Mart had that were halfway decent. I would love for the surface around the bottle to be smooth and not bumpy to help keep water out even more when putting on the labels.
