Best Homemade All Purpose Cleaner Ever.

Ok, I guess it's entirely possible that this is not actually the Worlds' Best Homemade Cleaner Ever, but it would have to be pretty close I think. And if you know of a concoction that perhaps could take out the Worlds' Best Homemade Cleaner Ever title, then share the love and pass it on to me.

A couple of months ago, I set out on a quest to minimize the amount of chemicals and artificial ickies in our life and home. I started with general household cleaning goodies. I looked at a lot of different methods and concoctions via the internet.

Of course, two of the cheapest and easiest natural cleaners available are vinegar and bicarb soda. Seriously, there cannot be a person alive who does not know that. I've known it for a long time, but I haven't been doing it! Crazy. I would do it sometimes, but I wasn't consistent. If, say, my mother-in-law was due in an hour or so and things were a bit grimy (they often are) and I hadn't noticed till the very last minute (I usually don't), I would just grab that Pine O'Clean 4 in 1 or whatever it is, and get wiping. But while doing my natural cleaning research I became very, very aware of just how efficient vinegar and bicarb are, in getting the cleaning done. Especially in the bathroom, love it.

But still, I do love the convenience (I know, I know, it's really not hard or time consuming to go the vinegar and bicarb route all the time, but even to shave seconds off the cleaning is attractive to me) of just grabbing the old spray bottle and squirting that grimy crap away.

Finally I have it. It's cheap, it's free of chemicals, it's easy.

Awesome All Purpose Cleaner

1 teaspoon washing soda

2 teaspoons Borax

2 tablespoons white vinegar

2 cups hot water

10 drops of essential oil, whatever you like, lavender, orange, lemon, mix them up if you want (I just used lavender)

quarter of a cup of liquid castille soap (I used Dr Bronners)

Use a funnel to pour all ingredients except for the castille soap into your spray bottle and shake to mix them up. Then add your castille soap and shake it all up again.

You're good to go. Spray. And wipe.

I use this on the kitchen benches and I think it is awesome. I used this to get rid of some truly disgusting grime, the kind of ick you find on top of the cuboard that is located above your stovetop. Do you know the one I mean? The thick, sticky stuff, like dirt mixed with oil. Sprayed this stuff on there, left it for 5 minutes and just wiped it all off. Too easy.

And while it would be nice to be able to tell you that I've got that stuff all packaged up looking as pretty as these below (from Murchison-Hume)...........

this is my stuff here. On the subject of those plastic spray bottles also, I do actually find these Hills brand ones, which you can find in the gardening section of hardware stores, to be 100% better than those crap things they sell in the supermarkets and at the $2 shops.

On the left are my stunningly gorgeous Orange Infused Cleaning wipes (again, convenience).

I simply used already-used Chux for these, soaked them in hot water/vinegar mix with a few drops of orange essential oil added. After a 5-10 minute soak I squeeze them out and stick them in the bottle, they're ready whenever you need them.

For the first batch of these wipes I actually did the orange oil myself (covering torn up orange peel with boiling water and squeezing the oil out of the peel), but all subsequent batches I just use essential oil straight from the bottle and have found that to be just fine.