Baking soda and vinegar are staples in any natural cleaning arsenal, but what else can you use that is effective?
I’ve talked a lot about not being a slob and decluttering, but today I want to share what we use around the house to clean our clothes, our dishes, and…everything else. (You already know what I use to clean my face and hair.)
Why Natural?
Aside from the environmental effects of using harsher chemicals, I have a toddler who likes to help me clean. He also likes to explore cabinets and play with whatever is in those cabinets. More natural cleaning products are safer to use around him (and around me when I was pregnant with him).
Why Homemade?
(I don’t use all homemade products, but I do use a bit. Semi-homemade, if you will.)
Save Money. Since we got married, I’ve been using baking soda and vinegar to clean almost everything. It saves use so much money and is only a few minutes of work a month.
Less Waste: I use the same bottles over and over to store spray cleaners.
Less Trips to the Store: When I run out of a cleaner, I don’t have to run to the store. For example, I can just refill the window cleaner spray bottle with vinegar and water.
But aren’t natural cleaners less effective?
I’ve been playing with what natural cleaners we use for five years in hopes to get the balancing point between affordability, effectiveness, and most natural. The following products are what I’ve settled on. In my experience, this combination is highly effective, affordable, and quite natural. (And I should note that we don’t need our apartment to be a 100% sterile place. I don’t use bleach, for example, but hospitals need to.)
The products
Where I Use Them
Here’s what you will find in the cabinets in my house:
In the laundry room
I use soap nuts in our laundry and Trader Joe’s laundry detergent for Gabe’s diapers. Soap nuts are the ultimate hippie experience – they are biodegradable come from a tree, and have no packaging. They work well, but I’ll be real – if I have a super dirty load, I’ll sprinkle a little laundry detergent in, too.
A cup of baking soda in the rinse cycle makes diapers smell good.
We mostly line-dry our clothes now, but when we use the dryer, we use this freaking awesome product from Trader Joes – it reduces static and infuses a lavender scent into your clothes and linens. They can be used 10 times, the you open the pouch and sprinkle them on the carpet before vacuuming – a second life!
In the kitchen
We use pretty standard products for washing dishes – Method dish soap (with refill pouches) (I LOVE Method and am still incredibly bummed that they stopped making soy candles) and Trader Joe’s dishwasher soap. We also use vegetable cellulose sponges (instead of plastic).
Vinegar works well as a rinse aid in the little compartment in the dishwasher and diluted with water in this refillable spray mop.
The soap nuts concentrate with water in a spray bottle (just a teaspoon or so of concentrate – it lasts forever!) is used to clean cabinets, the fridge, and any hard surface.
Elsewhere :
With a mixture of lemon juice and olive oil, Mike polishes wood furniture.
In the bathroom
I use baking soda liberally in the sink against soak scum and in the tub. (Who cleans the tub? Uh, Mike. He just uses a lot of baking soda, I think.)
And, um, this is toilet bowl cleaner. Not sure what else there is to say about it.
Every day (or almost everyday) I spray the counter, sink, and toilet with the solution on the left, wait a minute, then wipe down with one of Gabe’s old prefold cloth diapers.
We were using bar soap for washing our hands, but the soap scum buildup was annoying. So we switched to using Dr. Bronner’s in a foam soap dispenser (I think it was a gift from Bath and Bodyworks) and voila! Very cheap, very effective handsoap that doesn’t cause any buildup in our sink. The ratio we use is 2-3 tablespoons Dr Bronner’s and fill up the dispenser with water.
So! That’s what we use. I don’t want to spend lots of time or energy creating elaborate cleaning potions these days, so our simple little methods are working well for us.
I love all your cleaning products – you really have simplified how many products you need in the house to clean all your nooks and crannies. Cleaning products is probably one of the biggest changes we made when we started thinking about getting pregnant. We started using vinegar to clean almost everything well before I got pregnant (and by “we”, I mean our cleaning lady – I cannot tell a lie). When we decided to get pregnant, we switched the Method hand soap, Seventh Generation dish soap and laundry detergent. We use dye and chemical free fabric softener. And, in particular for Gavin’s diapering, we’ve been using dye and chemical free diapers and we’ve been making our own wipes (both disposable-boo, but both gentler on Gavin’s skin-yay). I think the only place we could still stand to make additional changes is our dishwasher detergent … we use those Dawn/Cascade dishwasher tablets for their simplicity and ease of use (the soap dispenser in our dishwasher sucks, quite literally, and half the time doesn’t dispense the soap properly).
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We have a very similar arsenal in our house! Haven’t tried soap nuts before. I’m definitely looking for a more natural laundry alternative (we’re in the process of trying to use up a giganto sized Costco detergent) :-) Question: I only use cold water for laundry, but I don’t have dirty diapers to wash. Do you use hot water for the diapers, or do you find cold does the trick just as well?
I also do use bleach. It’s not as harsh as most people think it is. It actually breaks down really well, and quickly, and isn’t even close to being harmful like other household cleaners (Scrubbing Bubbles and things of that nature are terrible).
I adore Method products. I also like Mrs. Meyers products.
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Thanks for sharing. I’m suprised you don’t use homemade laundry detergent. Any reason why not? I was looking into making my own here after we use up what we have. Also some vinegar in the wash can help with clothing/towel odors. I just recently learned that.
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This is super helpful! I already have most of this stuff at home, I just need to get it together. I didn’t know about soap nuts but they look great! To get the stink out of my diapers I’ve tried putting a half cup of white vinegar in the rinse based on a friend’s recommendation. It works okay for a little while, but does baking soda work better? I don’t know all the chemistry, but they seem like opposites!
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I love how our cleaning pantries are nearly identical! I do go through an embarrassing amount of hydrogen peroxide when I don’t feel like using any muscle, but other than that, it’s about the same.
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Ooh, how does he make the olive oil/lemon juice polishing stuff? My husband always wants to polish the wood furniture, but so far we haven’t found a commercial polisher that doesn’t give me a migraine, so he can only do it when I’m gone for awhile. I can’t believe I never thought of making some, considering I make homemade detergent and all-purpose cleaner.
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Let me ask Mike and email you! :)
Thanks for this. I never gave a second thought to what cleaning supplies I used until we got a dog and had a baby…a baby who likes to lick floors, windows, mirrors, etc. We use vinegar and water on a lot of surfaces now, baking soda on grubby and greasy stuff in the kitchen especially, and have a steam mop for doing our hardwood and ceramic floors. Pinterest has a ton of good ideas for green cleaning products and methods too – this one is the next on my list of things to try: http://www.growinghomeblog.com/2012/01/lemon-dustcloths.html
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This is really cool! I never knew that you can use stuff like olive oil and lemon juice to clean your home. Thanks for sharing!
Awesome round up. I wanna start using some of these now!
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The castile soap in the foaming soap dispensers has been a LIFE CHANGER for me! Just a few months ago I made the switch and my sore finger has totally cleared up and I can wear my wedding rings around the clock!! Great post! I LOVE COMMENTING SO MUCH IT IS AWESOME!
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I gleaned a couple great tips from this article thank you so much. I was pleased to see that most of the things I’m doing are correct and along the lines of this well done article. Thank you.
Such an Awesome post! Thank you! I was wondering how exactly Mike cleans the tub with baking soda? Does he add water and make it into a scrub? Also what do you use to clean bottles/nipples, etc? Thank you! Dana