Homemade Kitchen Cleaner
Friday, January 27, 2012 at 12:00PM I am never buying kitchen cleaner again. I had recently converted to Caldrea cleaners, because (a) I'd found a ton of them at a local TJ Maxx for el cheapo, and (b) they were the yummiest smelling, eco-friendly-ish cleaners I had found for less than $9.99/bottle at William-Sonoma, oh, and (c) the bottles/lables were pretty cute, and I'm a packaging whore, and that matters to me.
But - I had also recently stocked up on all the necessary ingredients for making pretty much any home cleaner that I would want to make - I have all the requisite essential oils, glycerine, vinegar, baking soda, washing soda, borax, etc. So, when I started to run out of my last bottle of Caldrea Plum Nutmeg (which was the least yummy smelling of the bunch) I made some of my own.
First, I started with this book The Naturally Clean Home: 150 Super-Easy Herbal Formulas for Green Cleaning by Karyn Siegel-Maier.
In it is an ultra easy recipe for an all-purpose kitchen cleaner/degreaser she call's Lemon Blast Cleaner, which calls for:
- white vinegar
- borax
- lemon juice
- eucalyptus, lemon, lime or orange (I used eucalyptus) oil
- liquid Castile soap
Cirrus seed extract (I use grapefruit seed)
Now, I'm not going to give you the exact recipe - becuase it's not mine. It's from the book - but if you buy the book, or get it from your local library, you'll need the above items on hand. I found that this receipe worked fine, but smelled nasty. I thought it would smelly like lemon and eucalypus - but it was like sour vinegar.
So, I added two full droppers of Lavender essential oil, at approximately 10 drops per dropper, and another full dropper of eucalyptus oil. And, the result of THAT is the best smelling cleaner I have ever had the pleasure to clean with. AND, it SERIOUSLY cleans the counters. It cuts grease and food and everything else from the stove to the counters. I use it on our granite countertops and they absolutely don't have a streak on them.
Love. It. LOVE. IT.


