For quite a while it has annoyed me that too much of our household budget goes to cleaning supplies. I know a lot of people make their own but I wondered if they actually worked. I’m getting tired of spending the money, plus I’m trying to find relatively easy ways of being a bit more envrionmental friendly,  so I’m going to give it a try. Looks like most of them involve inexpensive household ingredients such as rubbing alcohol, baking soda and vinegar. I’m going to try making a few and using them, with a few rules in place:

1. We tend to buy bleach to use for some things, so I won’t have ammonia in the house. I don’t like having both hanging around. I did find some recipes for glass cleaners that used rubbing alcohol and not ammonia, so that’s what I’ll use.  The smell of ammonia alone really gets to me, makes me lightheaded and fuzzy, so I’ll stick with bleach. I actually like the bleach smell — reminds me of chlorine and my competitive swimming days, lol.

2. Depending on how much so-called “elbow grease” it takes for some of these to work, I still may use store-bought cleaners when needed for tougher cleaning when I procrastinate. Of course, the way around that is not to procrastinate, but I’m also trying to be realistic. My wrists, hands and now elbows aren’t as good as they should be and huge amounts of scrubbing will haunt me for days. I’d honestly rather pay a little and not be as “green” on those occasions then pay physically for days afterward.

3. I found some inexpensive essential oils at the Puritan’s Pride website that I think I’ll use for some cleaners so that everything doesn’t smell like vinegar. I’m going to research if there’s anything I shouldn’t mix the oils with, but I think it should be OK. I’m thinking of going with lemon or orange as a start.

4. I will still use store-bought laundry detergent. There’s no way I can get Tim to use homemade stuff for his clothes. He works in a factory and won’t use anything but Tide.