All Natural Cleaning Stuff...without spending so much money!

A previous blog compares two wonderful cleaning products...Mrs. Meyers and Method.  They are expensive.  I am unemployed.  Refusing to cave in to chemical yuckiness and after feedback from friends who do not even buy commercial cleaners, I decided sometime back to try noncommercial cleaners. 

I am hooked.  First a disclaimer.  There is ONE ingredient here which is all-natural, Borax, but some people really do not like it one little bit.  More on that later.  Now for the good stuff...

First, I figured out a decent stock of cleaning products to MAKE everything I need.  Here's the list:

Borax
Super Washing Soda
Baking Soda
White Vinegar
Citric Acid (or you can do what I did, and get unsweetened lemon kool-aid)
Essential Oil of your choice (I used Rosemary and Mint)

...and here's a picture:

Clockwise from back left:  Borax, Super Washing Soda, White vinegar, baking soda, Shepherd's Harvest Stain Stick, Rosemary and Peppermint essential oils, a shaker container with the finished basic mixture--
I use this all the time, and wish you could smell it!

Next, I make what I call my "basic mixture"...

4 parts Borax
2 parts Super Washing Soda
1 part Baking Soda
a little essential oil (a few drops works just fine)

This mixture forms the basis for everything else, and has some great uses on its own.  Here are a few:

-Sprinkle on the rug before you vaccuum to make the rug smell fresh.
-Use to keep bugs away--Borax is a natural bug repellent!
-Scrub sinks, tubs, and toilets with it

To make a spray, dissolve about 1/2 cup in 16 oz white vinegar.  This makes a terrific disinfecting cleaner for the bathroom and kitchen.  You will not smell the vinegar!

For dishwasher detergent, add a packet of unsweetened Kool-Aid to a cup of mixture.  Fill the rinse dispenser of your diswasher with white vinegar.  Since I have a terrible dishwasher, it didn't work very well in mine, and I am still perfecting this recipe...I ended up breaking down and buying Seventh Generation, which works a little better.

For laundry detergent, grate 1/3 bar of laundry soap (I use a home made stain stick soap...you can buy mine in the Shepherd's Harvest Store or use a bar of goat milk soap) into a pan.  Pour 6 cups of boiling water over the soap, and heat it on a low setting until the soap is melted.  Add 1 cup of the basic mixture and stir until it is dissolved.  Pour 4 cups of hot water in a large bucket, add the soap mixture, and stir.  Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups warm water and stir well.  Let the entire mixture sit for 24 hours.  It will gel, and end up looking like a gloppy "egg noodle soup," but it works very well!  Use the rest of your laundry soap as a stain stick.  You may add a few drops of essential oil for fragrance if you like.

For windows, mix vinegar with a few drops of essential oil...lemon works well for cutting grease.  Works like a charm.

And now...drum roll please...I promised you some good information about Borax.  The very best source-of-all-sources I could find was from my favorite blogger, Crunchy Betty.  Here are her very well documented thoughts on Borax: http://www.crunchybetty.com/getting-to-the-bottom-of-borax-is-it-safe-or-not

Sooo...I am pretty happy with all  my new spiffy cleaning "inventions" and am spending literally a FRACTION of what I previously spent on cleaning products!  My home smells terrific--all minty and stuff--and I feel pretty good about using more natural ingredients in my cleaning routine. 

Let me know if you try it...off to make some soap.  The clean-up will be nice this time!