Natural Household Cleaners

I'd like to find some recipes for cleaning solutions made entirely of natural products you can easily find in a grocery store. I'm not looking for biodegradable store bought products as they're much to expensive, i mean solutions i can make at home....like the vinegar and water solution.
what do you kids use?

 

we get our water from a well, so it's untreated and hard, so eventually we get hard water stains on sink or tub and stuff, I use a cloth dampened with vinegar for them, or it it's a lot, like a bath tub - i scrub with baking soda (like arm and hammer boxed stuff, but soda is sodano matter the brand) and it works great. rubbing alchohol is great for making stainless steel sinks shiny, but it usually lasts until the first use of the sink. the only soap I use is dawn original (no ultra, or antibacterial crap). the best scrubby I found for my bath tub is a dollar store nilon puff lufa thingy, and it's washable, so it can be reused.
I know that lemon and rought grain table salt work great together to get rid of the burned on stuff on the bottom of the pan inside and out, but you can also substitute lemon with vinegar (i preffer to eat lemons and not clean with them).
just be consideret with water use, too.
that's all i can think of right now, no special recipes, use determined by the situation. I know that lots of these reciepes work great while camping too. While camping at the beach we used sand to scrub our pans and then rinsed with soapy water and clean water, worked like a charm.
hope it helps.

 

I clean most everything (including my hair and body) with either baking soda, lemon juice, vinegar, or homemade (lye) soap, or a combination of some of those ingredients.

 

hey check out this site i found last year
http://eartheasy.com/live_nontoxic_solutions.htm

 

i'm a really big fan of microfiber cloths, you know the kind that clean up everything really easily with just water. even bathtub scunge.

oh, and vinegar kills as many germs as bleach and is so much more environmentally friendly

tea tree oil kills mold in the shower.

and i think i'm going to try this recipe on my new-to-me hardwood kitchen furniture. i'll probably just make a 1/4 recipe at first to see if it's actually any good:

 

my omi uses vinegar and plain dishsoap to wash the floors. Vinegar is great!

 

if you burnt something in your pots or pans, boiling some water in them with a little bit of lemon juice will break down the charred bits really quickly.

 

^^^thanks for the info. I once burnt kraft dinner to my pot and still have the noodle prints on the bottom:&

 

^lol...I have done the same thing with some noodle thing and you can still see the prints too. lol You're not alone.

 

If you guys have bettas or heck fish tanks in general a great way to clean up that hard to get off built up water deposits or whateva is to use vinegar. It wont hurt your sensitive fish. I know I have been using vinegar and a paper towel to clean my bettas tanks for like over 5 years and I have a 10yr old betta I just got from a friend who lived in florida and hes doin just fine with it too. All you have to do is rinse the tank out. You wont have to worry about hurting you little guys either

 

i use dr bronners to clean everything, my dirty clothes, my counters, my bath tub, it gets old grease off dishes in like 10 seconds =)

 

^ which one of dr bronners do you use? i am in love with the lavender.

 

have been using peppermint, we bought two huge bottles of it, i want to buy the lavender next =)

 

do you wash all of your dishes with it?

 

just the pots and pans that have grease on em, other dishes i use cheapo crap, i love green porducts but I am on a tight budget =(

 

Yeah, I know what you mean. I always have that struggle. I've recently cut back on stuff so I can buy green. And still I can't do as much as I'd like. I'm going to have to try dr. bronners on greasy dishes. Thanks for the idea.

 

no problem, i went on a dr bronners spree one day just to see what i could do with it and washed just about everything as an experiment HAHA, even put some in my carpet cleaner =) not too much tho, but the house smelled nice

 

That's awesome. I'm about in need of another bottle myself. I wanted to try another kind, but I am soo addicted to the lavender. lol

 

You should watch "How Clean Is Your House". They re-vamp homes and use a lot of natural solutions, and household solutions. (banana peels to shine shoes, etc.)

 

If you aren't already involved in this GREAT site, You MUST!!!! They have a million green living ideas that range from cleaning, cooking, and political petitions.......etc. Here is the link for the green cleaning but PLEASE check out the rest of the site!!! Oh and ^^^^ that show is so funny, and they do use a lot of natural methods for VERY filthy houses. Must be these work good enough...hmmmmmmmmm :/

http://www.care2.com/channels/lifestyle/home#51