I am one of those icky people who does not use antibacterial products.  In fact, the only places I use hand sanitizer are on airplanes and all day music festivals. And I use it in those instances only because I had the misfortune of picking up a parasite once from the drinking water at a festival. Killing germs on my hands won’t help me avoid Giardia, but it is a mental thing.

For hardcore scouring, I use the old faithful means of vinegar and baking soda. However, I generally only resort to those when we first move into a new place and I need to scrape away the layers left by the previous filthy tenant. Once the first deep cleaning is finished, I use a much more mild approach for maintenance.

In our household, we use liquid Castile soap as a base for all our cleaning supplies. Sometimes I make my own, but often I use Dr. Bronner’s Liquid soap.

Dr. Bronner’s soaps are made with a coconut oil base with olive oil, essential oils, and a few other oils for texture and fragrance. What you end up with are saponified oils and glycerin for easy cleaning. It is highly concentrated so a little goes a long way. In fact, if placed undiluted on the skin, it can be irritating and should be diluted. One bottle lasts a very long time. There is a whole community out there filled with people who use Dr. Bronner’s liquid soaps for all kinds of needs. Some are even pretty bizarre.

I use Dr. Bronner’s for cloth wipe solution, hand soap, general spray cleaner, and occasionally on my floors.

**For these purposes, ANY natural castile soap will do. If you make your own bar soaps with lye and oils, simply shave a piece off the bar and dilute it in water. Or use whatever Castile soap you prefer. Just check the ingredients. **

As I mentioned in a previous cloth wipes posts, my wipe solution is a soap shaving or a couple squirts of liquid Castile soap diluted in four cups of water with a couple drops of lavender oil. I put the mixture in a glass bottle and pour it over my cloth wipes. The solution stays fresh for two weeks or more. Sometimes I skip essential oils. Some people may prefer to add extra oil like olive oil to the soap first and then add water.

For hand soap, I basically use the same formula. I put about an ounce of Dr. Bronner’s in a foaming soap pump and fill it the rest of the way with water. Mr.JustAddCloth often requests a couple drops of eucalyptus oil added to the mixture because he likes the medicinal scent.

Most liquid soaps that come in those foaming pump bottles are full of undesirable ingredients including dyes, perfumes, and preservatives. Saving your foaming pump bottles and making your own solution not only recycles the bottle, but also saves you money. Not to mention helps you avoid additives. You can make a very inexpensive, very diluted mixture that produces plenty of fun hand washing foam.

For general cleaning purposes, I make a solution and keep it in a spray bottle. I have a generic plastic spray bottle from the hardware store. I add a half ounce of liquid Castile soap and several drops of lemon oil. I swish the mixture to get the essential oils mixed into the soap and then fill the bottle with water. I use this mixture on toilets, kitchen counters, floors, and anywhere I feel plain water won’t do the trick. The soap reduces water tension to help release dirt, and the lemon oil has anti-fungal properties and also keeps the mixture fresh smelling. I will warn you though, the lemon oil makes it smell really delicious. I find myself craving a tall glass of lemonade whenever I am cleaning.

One 16 ounce bottle of Dr. Bronner’s lasts me a year. I can usually find the 16 ounce bottle for around $8.00. I am not sure I can break down the cost of my essential oils for just cleaning since I use them for many other purposes as well. However, I could estimate from the few drops I add to my cleaning solutions that I maybe use $4.00 worth each year specifically for cleaning mixtures. So with my cloth rags I use over and over, I can clean my whole home for around $12 a year. Granted, I often just wipe down my home with simple water, so someone who prefers to use a large amount of cleaner every day or week will use more soap.

No one can argue that making your own cleaning supplies isn’t both easy and frugal. I love that I can use mostly organic ingredients, while also avoiding the consumerism trap so many of us fall into when it comes to branding. I always find it amusing when someone argues with me that they like the convenience of fighting traffic to drive to the store, standing in line, purchasing over priced cleaning agents, and driving home again, in comparison to my 60 second mixing routine. Whatever works for them I guess. I like my approach better. I enjoy knowing exactly what ingredients went into cleaning the surfaces my animals and children come in contact with each day. I figure the germs are the least of our problems.

*I really DO NOT recommend using this as laundry detergent. Castile soap will make fabrics a bit gummy and they will feel grimy from build up eventually.

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