Spring Clean the Homemade Way – 5 Recipes for DIY Cleaning Supplies

Use lemon essential oil and other natural ingredients to make nontoxic, homemade household cleaners.
Image: Shutterstock

It’s time for a little spring cleaning—the nontoxic way. Have you ever noticed how cleaning with many store-bought products can leave the entire house smelling chemically? I accepted this for a long time as “just the way it is,” but as I’ve gotten a little older, I’ve also gotten a little wiser.

That nasty chemical smell smells bad because, well, it’s bad for you! As well as chemical compounds made wit bleach, ammonia, and other solvents might get the house clean, they can also be toxic for us to breathe in.

Luckily, there are some super easy and super natural (see what I did there?) homemade cleaning supplies that can get rid of the dirt, grime, and germs just as well as those toxic mixes. I borrowed the following 5 recipes from this Yahoo! Shine article, which also has recipes for three additional cleaning mixes, so be sure to check it out!

Surface Spray

Instead of Lysol, mix up this disinfecting solution for all your home’s hard surfaces. It even smells good!

Ingredients:

7 oz. distilled white vinegar

7 oz. water

7 drops tea tree essential oil

7 drops lavender essential oil

7 drops lemon essential oil

Soft Scrub

Clean grimy surfaces with this simple scrub and they’ll be shining in a jiffy! Keep it in a glass mason jar.

Ingredients:

½ cup baking soda

½ cup castile soap

15 drops antimicrobial essential oil (rosemary or sage both work well)

* If you don’t use it all, add about a teaspoon of vegetable glycerin to hold in the moisture. Don’t forget to seal it up tight!

Antibacterial Soap Spray

Ditch the bleach. Instead, use this mix to get the bathroom back in order. Castile soap may leave a little residue, so follow up with some surface spray (above).

Ingredients:

14 oz. water or rosemary hydrosol

3 Tablespoons castile soap

15 drops tea tree essential oil

15 drops oregano essential oil

Wood-Floor Mop Formula

Wood floors can be tricky, and harsh chemicals can often damage the wood and finish. Spray down the floor with this gentle mix, mop, and buff dry to keep floors clean and healthy.

Ingredients:

½ cup distilled white vinegar

1 teaspoon vegetable glycerin

20 drops lemon essential oil

Water (enough to fill a 20 oz spray bottle with the previous ingredients)

Linoleum and Tile Floor Mop Formula

Have tile or linoleum floors? Mix these ingredients up with 2 gallons of hot water and you’re all set.

Ingredients:

¼ cup castile soap

½ cup distilled white vinegar

20 drops tea tree essential oil

20 drops sweet orange essential oil

I dare you to check the back of your cleaning supplies for the ingredients list—are any of them as short as these (barring just plain old “bleach”)? Likely the answer is no. It’s certainly possible to get “green” cleaning supplies that are far less toxic and more natural, but those are often expensive. Stock up on a few basic ingredients at home instead, and you can make your own cleaner for far less money in the long run.

Surprise: It’s Not 100% Juice After All

Today’s post comes to you after reading a disturbing article from Food Renegade about orange juice. I’m not much of a juice drinker, but when I do drink it I always try to shoot for the 100% juice kinds, like Simply Orange or Tropicana. Now I might just have to buy a juicer and make my own.

100% orange juice? Not likely.
Image: Shutterstock

According to the article (which has multiple sources), orange juice labeled as 100% juice isn’t what it claims to be. I don’t know about you all, but when I imagined the making of these so-called juices, I naively thought of millions of oranges being squeezed, immediately packaged, and sent off to stores in individual cartons. But that’s not how it works.

After oranges are squeezed, the juice is sent to huge storing tanks. It’s there that the oxygen is removed from the mix. This does two things: first, it allows the juice to be kept without going bad for up to a year; and second, it strips the juice of flavor. Those huge vats, then, are essentially holding large volumes of tasteless “juice.”

That won’t sell, though. Before that juice can go to market, it has to have flavor added back in. To do this, flavor and fragrance companies (yes, like perfume makers) come in and create “flavor packs.” These flavor packs are made from ingredients derived from oranges (like orange essence and oil). But they also contain high amounts of chemicals that add a fresh orange fragrance and taste (like ethyl butyrate or valencine).

The worst part of this is the betrayal factor, at least for me. As a consumer, when I’m shopping for and purchase 100% juice, I want something that is 100% juice—not a chemical mess. The flavor packets don’t have to be listed because, technically, they are made from orange by-products. Labeling laws allow this even if the ingredients have been chemically manipulated.

Fresh squeezed orange juice.
Image: Shutterstock

I am not that person who has to buy everything organic (though if I could afford it, I probably would). But I am that person who reads the labels of the foods I buy in an effort to be food-conscious and know what, exactly, I am consuming. Sure, I buy things like doughnut holes and sometimes I even drink Coffee Mate in my daily cuppa. I don’t do it often, but when I do, at least I know what I’m eating or drinking.

That said, the fact that chemically manipulated ingredients are being included in my “100% juice” orange juice is more than a little upsetting. Perhaps it was naïve of me to assume all ingredients had been included on the label, but that still doesn’t make it acceptable for such an omission. It’s these sorts of things that make me want to just grow all my own food. Perhaps someday I will.

Cosmetic Chemicals: Yet Another Reason to Avoid Fast Food

Do YOU know what you're eating? Hint: It's not always food!
Image from fitbodylife.com

If I needed another reason to avoid fast food (other than all the reasons I already know about), I just found it: fast food often contains chemicals found in cosmetics. If you’re thinking, “Wait, what?!” you’re on the same page as me. And yes, I’m totally serious. Here are some cosmetics chemicals you can also find in fast food:

Ammonium Glycyrrhizin—

• Ingredient in facial masks

  

  Ammonium Glycyrrhizin is found in facial masks--
  and in fast food.
  Image: Shutterstock

• Flavor enhancer, flavoring agent, and sweetener 

Benzoyl Peroxide (banned in China)—

• Active ingredient in acne creams
• Used in fast food to bleach wheat flour white (e.g. buns and breads) 

Calcium Disodium EDTA—

• Used as a stabilizer in skin products and hair conditioner
• A “flavor protectant” in fast food sauces, dips and dressings 

The active ingredient in Proactiv is Benozyl Peroxide.
It's also used to bleach flour white.
Image from clearclinic.com

Disodium Phosphate—

• Used in mascara and mouthwash
• Food preservative

Propylene Glycol—

• Found in shampoo, mouthwash and hand sanitizers
• Used in sodas, salad dressings, and spice concentrates

Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate—

• Used in shampoo and soap
• Widely used in baked goods, cereals, pastas, instant rice, desserts, icings… and more

OK, first of all, you should know that all of these are FDA approved additives. That means the FDA has studied them and determined that in specified quantities they are “relatively safe” to eat. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have negative impacts on our health. Propylene Glycol, for example, is a toxin at any level of ingestion. Though it would be extremely difficult to reach serious toxicity levels, it is nonetheless still a toxin.

They may be FDA approved, but I don't want these chemicals
in MY food. Do you?
Image from blog.fooducate.com

Ammonium Glycyrrhizin can also cause hypertension and edema (water retention) since it inhibits our cortisol metabolism. Benzoyl Peroxide is a whitener and researchers have long argued over the safety of its use in food.

Perhaps I’m too big a fan of natural living and eating (can one be too big of a fan?), but I don’t think I want to put any unnecessary chemicals in my body. There is so much we still don’t know, and I for one don’t want to wake up and find out one day that the chemical the FDA said was safe really isn’t. Call me paranoid if you’d like to, but I think there’s no harm in being safe.

Besides, what “flavor” are they protecting? The processed, bleached, over salted and sweetened flavor? Because I think I can go without that.