What do I mean by ‘House Cleaning the Safer Way’. For the past few years we have been working towards reducing unnecessary and/or harmful chemicals from our house. As we grow older we want to create a safe environment to live in and for our family when they visit. So we have investigated ways to clean our household environment using safe products that are also effective!

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The Journey

In the early days of our quest we tried lots of different recipes to make our own cleaning sprays, dishwashing liquid etc.

For a DIY product to be useful it must be:

• • Safe,
  • Easy to make,
  • An effective cleaner,
  • Cost effective and,
  • It must be made from materials that are easy to source.

Ideally the product should also have a reasonable shelf life but this is not always possible with homemade products as it is often the preservatives that we leave out and so we can’t expect our products to keep for years or even for months. We have written a post on shelf life and safety so check it out before you get started.

Using our criteria we were able to make products, test them out and decide if they were worthy of further investigation and use around our house. Not all of them were keepers but many were and we continue to search for improvements.

General Cleaning Sprays

I started my journey towards finding a general cleaning spray by using a mix of water, vinegar and Essential Oils. It can be quite confusing to work out what is the best mix. In the end in our house, I stopped using vinegar because the house started to smell a bit like a pickle factory and there were complaints from family members!!!!! Vinegar also has limited cleaning ability and was not something I missed. What I then used was water and Lemon and Clove Essential Oils (about 20 drops of each) in a 500 mL spray bottle. Lemon Essential Oil is well known for its cleaning properties and I added to Clove Essential Oil because it has anti fungal properties.

When you live in an old house, mould just loves to live in the bathroom so I feel like I am always at war!!! Other useful additions include Tea Tree Oil and Oregano Oil. If you add in all of those you have some of the heavy hitters in the oil world, i.e. they are all great for cleaning and antimicrobial activity. You can add all of these oils in the one spray or you can make a spray for the kitchen and another for the bathroom.

If I apply the criteria I am happy to recommend this simple spray as safe, easy to make, cost effective and if you have the oils on hand it can be made quickly. The only criteria that I hesitate about is the effectiveness. For general wipe downs in kitchen, bathroom and for general freshening up I was happy with this water and Essential Oil mix but it is not very helpful if you have tough greasy jobs to tackle. For these situations I recommend adding some Castile Soap to your spray bottle ( add 100 mL to 400 mL water). This will give you a more effective blend.

A Good Compromise

But of course, not everyone wants to or has time to experiment with cleaning spray blends. If that is you then I would like to recommend a good compromise -Sal Suds.

I mentioned earlier that not all products were keepers. I was particularly unhappy with using dishwashing liquids based on Castile Soap. I use this soap for many other purposes e.g. in a cleaning spray bland, but because it does not contain a surfactant, it just doesn’t do the job I need it to do in the sink. For this reason I did a lot of searching for alternatives and found a commercial product called ‘Sal Suds’. It is a Dr Bronner product. It is versatile and can be used for lots of cleaning jobs.  It does contain a surfactant so if you are an absolute purist when it comes to DIY you will probably reject this product right now. I am happy to use it as it is a gentle cleaner without a harsh scent. In fact it is scented with Siberian Fir Essential Oil which is one of my favourite oils.

Let’s apply the criteria here to Sal Suds:

• Safe – Whilst the product does contain surfactants I personally believe that washing dishes with a soap that does not include a surfactant is ineffective, so I will compromise on this point! Sal Suds is not full of artificial perfumes and that is important to me. I don’t use this product for personal cleaning as it can be a little harsh on the skin (although I personally have not noticed any negative issues or symptoms while using Sal Suds in the sink). I only use it for household cleaning.
• Easy to make: Sal Suds is an actual commercial product so I don’t have to make it but I do use it in different ways, depending on the cleaning job at hand! See below for how easy this is to do.
• An effective cleaner: It is one of the most effective cleaners I have ever used.
• Cost effective: It is cost effective if you dilute the product. A 5L bottle costs about $120 in Australia and lasts for almost 12 months. I use it to wash my dishes every day, I use it to wash floors, as the basis of bug sprays for outdoors, to clean the bathroom, to clean outdoor furniture, the outside of our BBQ, window frames and anything else that needs cleaning around the house.
• It must be made from materials that are easy to source: There are one or two outlets that sell the product in Australia. Some of them only sell 1 L bottles. I avoid this as it is a much more expensive way to buy the product. The only ingredient I add to Sal Suds when I dilute it is vegetable glycerin – I add about a teaspoon of this to a litre of diluted Sal Suds when I make my dishwashing liquid. Glycerin is great for the skin.

So if you are convinced to try Sal Suds for house cleaning this is what I do with it:

Dishwashing: Dilute 100 mL Sal Suds with 900 mL water, add a teaspoon of vegetable glycerin and place in a squeeze bottle. This lasts me for a week. I have a dishwasher that is used once a day but I like to cook and wash as I go so I will fill as many as 8-10 sinks a day so use quite a lot of the diluted mixture.

Washing hard surfaces: Dilute about 25-50 mL Sal Suds into a 500 mL spray bottle and use to wash everything you need to in your home.

Cleaning floors: Add about a dessertspoon of Sal Suds to a bucket of hot water to clean the hard floors of the whole house!

Bug spray/weed spray: Although this is not really cleaning it is an important part of maintaining a home! Add a few drops of Sal Suds to a 500 mL spray bottle full of vinegar and Essential Oils (I use Peppermint to stop weeds, and Cedarwood and Peppermint to stop bugs.)

Happy Safer Cleaning!

What Next?

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Until next time,

 

 

Gillian (and Andrew)