Why Use Natural Cleaning Products
Why should try out natural homemade cleaning recipes for the kitchen? The answer is that by making and using your own homemade cleaning products you will not only be helping to reduce plastic waste it will also eliminate a lot of chemicals from your home.
There are so many antibacterial cleaning products on the market now. But the question is do we really need them?
The overuse of antibacterial cleaning products, including disinfectants in the home, may be producing strains of bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Bacteria that are resistant to many antibiotics are known as multi-resistant organisms (MROs).
As a marketing strategy, media advertisements suggest that bacteria in the home are harmful and must be eliminated by using any number of the antibacterial or antimicrobial products available.
These cleaning products are no more effective at preventing infection in the home than good personal and household hygiene using ordinary soap, warm water and plain detergent.
Avoid using antibacterial or antimicrobial products unless you have a specific medical reason to do so. Victoria State Government
It’s obviously down to personal choice but if you are looking looking to reduce your plastic waste and have a greener healthier home with less chemicals then I think you’ll love these natural homemade cleaning recipes for the Kitchen.
Ingredients You Will Need for these Natural Homemade Cleaning Recipes
To start making natural homemade cleaning recipes for the kitchen you will need:
1. Bicarbonate of Soda (bicarb) – this has so many uses and is made from a naturally mined mineral trona, which apparently there is plenty of.
2. White Vinegar – this is basically an alcoholic liquid that has been allowed to sour, it’s bee around for a long time. Apparently around 5000 BC the Babylonians were using the fruit of the date palm to make wine and vinegar to be used as food and a preservative or pickling agent. For cleaning purposes, I would use Distilled White Vinegar. Remember – never use vinegar based cleaners on granite, marble, stone or ceramic surface.
3. Rubbing Alcohol / Surgical Spirit – is usually isopropyl alcohol or in the UK it’s equivalent is surgical spirit. It is used as an antiseptic and cleaning product. All rubbing alcohols are unsafe for human consumption so should be kept out of the reach of children and make sure you clearly label any cleaning products you make that include it.
4. Citrus Peel – Lemon juice is one of the best natural cleaners due to its low pH and antibacterial properties. Lemons also smell great and aren’t likely to cause damage anything.
5. Castile Soap – named after the olive oil-based soaps originating in Castile, Spain. Castile soap can be either liquid or solid bar form, but it is made only from vegetable oils such as coconut, olive, and hemp oils and never from animal fats. Don’t mix Castile Soap and Vinegar as they cancel each other out and won’t work.
6. Essential Oils (or fresh woody herbs) – naturally occurring plant compounds that are useful for adding a lovely scent to your homemade products and are also antibacterial, just be careful not to use them neat. My favourites are lemon, tea tree, rosemary and lavender.
7. Olive oil – surprisingly olive oil is a great addition to your cleaning ingredients, and you only need the basic oil don’t waste your Extra Virgin Olive Oil in your cleaning recipes.
You can find the perfect Natural Homemade Cleaning Starter Kit in my shop, it has everything you need to start making your own Natural Homemade Cleaning Recipes.
5 Natural Homemade Cleaning Recipes for the Kitchen
1. Citrus Vinegar
You can use this citrus vinegar to add to your cleaning recipes or you can just dilute it 50/50 with water as a general cleaning spray for your kitchen
YOU’LL NEED:
- Glass jar
- White Vinegar
- Citrus peel
HOW TO:
- Fill your jar 2/3 full with white vinegar
- Add citrus peel to the jar whenever you have some available
- Leave for at least 2 weeks (the longer the better)
- Strain to remover the citrus peel and it’s ready to use
- You can always have a jar on the go and just keep topping it up with vinegar and peel, you will need to discard the peel every few weeks.
Remember – Never use vinegar based cleaners on marble, stone, ceramic or granite surfaces
2. Stainless Steel Cleaner
This natural homemade stainless steel cleaner works a treat and by rubbing it over with a drop of olive oil afterwards really helps to keep it nice and shiny
YOU’LL NEED:
- Glass spray bottle
- 1½ Cups of water
- 1/2 cup of rubbing alcohol
- 1/3 cup of white vinegar
- Olive oil to polish
HOW TO:
- Add the water (cooled boiled), rubbing alcohol and white vinegar to the glass spray bottle and shake.
- Spray onto your stainless steel appliances and wipe off with a cotton lint free cloth.
- When dry put some olive oil on a cotton cloth and polish.
Store away fro heat and children and always label your homemade cleaning products
3. Floor Cleaner
This recipe contains vinegar so isn’t suitable for Stone Floors but just leave out the vinegar and the recipe will then be fine to clean your Stone Floors as well
Remember not to over wet your floors when cleaning them. Happy Mopping
YOU’LL NEED:
- 2 cups warm water
- 1/2 cup white vinegar
- 1/4 cup rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol (surgical spirits in the UK)
- 3 drops liquid dish soap
- 5-10 drops essential oils (optional)
HOW TO:
- Combine all ingredients into a glass spray bottle and shake gently.
- Spray onto floor and mop.
- You can double the quantity if you want to use it in a bucket with a mop
4. Window Cleaner
Use this for streak free sparkling windows
YOU’LL NEED:
- Glass spray bottle
- 1/2 cup rubbing alcohol
- 1/2 cup white vinegar
- 1 cup cooled boiled water
- 3 drops castile soap or eco friendly washing up liquid
HOW TO:
- Combine all ingredients in glass spray bottle and shake gently to mix.
- Spray the windows / glass and wipe off with scrunched up newspaper or lint free cotton cloth.
- You can reduce the amount of rubbing alcohol and replace with cooled boiled water if you want.
Remember to label your bottle and keep away from heat and out of the reach of children
5. Oven Cleaner
YOU’LL NEED:
- Bowl
- 6 Tbsp Bicarbonate of Soda
- 3 Tbsp water
HOW TO:
- Mix the water and Bicarb into a paste
- Spread the mixture on the surfaces of your oven (don’t put any on the heating elements)
- Leave for at least 30 mins or overnight if possible
- Wipe clean with warm water
- To give it a bit of extra sparkle you can finish over with a wipe over with the general multi purpose vinegar spray
Let's start Cleaning
Happy cleaning but remember to keep all your cleaning products out of the reach of children, even the lovely natural ones.
I hope you find some of these recipes useful and I’m sure there are lots more ways that we can use Natural Cleaning products around the home. I have some more tips in my Natural Cleaning Tips and Tricks Blog.
And, just remember you may need to tweak the recipes a little bit depending on how soft or hard your water is and always test on a small area first.
Please share you favourite recipes I’m always keen to try out new ones.
Great ideas and at a time when that’s to Instagrammers so many people are obsessed with Dettol and Zoflora, having natural alternatives is great. I use white viengar quite a bit for windows and mixed some when I mopped the floor the other day and it definitely brought it up cleaner! I might chuck some rubbing alcohol which we do have in next time!
Thank you for sharing these amazing tips for cleaning purpose. My husband is too much into cleaning and always use thick bleach for cleaning purpose. I am definitely going to show him this post 🙂
Bi carb is such a staple to have in your home, it has so many wonderful uses! I love using it for my oven, which reminds me it needs cleaning!
Thank you for this insightful post , we are also trying to go more natural route in our home – to be more sustainable and actually know what is going into everything we own and do – like cleaning for that matter – for me its going back to basics – it worked well for our grandparents and their methods where the best x i dont really want go use hars chemicals so making my own cleaning products have been a huge turning point
Bicarb and vinegar are great. I have unblocked a plughole using these before. Thanks for all these great tips, I will be trying all of them out in the future.
Thanks for all these handy recipes, have pinned and shared 🙂
I used vinegar and bicarbonate soda a lot in around my home and rarely ever use chemical and would love to reduce the use of plastics.
Brilliant, thank you. I have been making my own cleaners too and I love it. So nice to know its much better for my home and the environment
My oven is filthy so I’m going to give the oven cleaner a go tomorrow. Fingers crossed it works and I have a like new oven on Sunday 😉
Hope it works, you may need to leave it on overnight or do it a couple of times if it’s really ground in 🙂
This is a really useful post, thanks so much for sharing these recipes. 🙂 I’m going to share on Pinterest and try a few of them myself.
Let me know how you get on with them 🙂
I love you pictures and the bottle you use to store your homemade cleaners. Bottles are my strange addiction.