I ran out of liquid soap this weekend and had to come up with a quick (yet still healthy) replacement.  With the farmer’s market closed for the season and very limited options at the health store, it was time to whip up a homemade recipe for foaming soap.

I happened to have an empty foaming soap bottle on hand (if you don’t have one you can get one from Amazon.com or possibly from a pharmacy). I found this easy recipe and combined one part Dr. Bronner’s liquid castile soap (which we already know is healthy from our easy homemade dish soap) with 5 parts water in the bottle. I shook it well, then added a few drops of grapefruit essential oil so it would have a light citrus fragrance.

You can choose what essential oil you would like to use for the scent and if you want anti-bacterial properties in the soap you could use tea tree oil. You can also adjust the quantities of soap and water if the consistency/”soapiness” is not to your liking; however, I found that the one to five parts was perfect for me.

Using a foam bottle makes soap last so much longer and you still get enough for clean hands each time. Even though I made this recipe in a pinch, I definitely plan to make it again, maybe even with a different scent!

Vinegar is a great cleaning product (as you may remember from previous posts on using it to wash linoleum floors, windows, cat litter boxes, etc. It is an inexpensive, versatile household cleaner and I’ve recently come across a website sharing many more uses for white distilled vinegar than I’d ever thought possible (1,001 to be exact!).

To keep this post as readable as possible, I will share with you a list of only the ones that I thought would be easy, effective, and most helpful in the household:

• Mix equal parts vinegar and water and rub on boots and shoes to remove salt/water stains
• Add 1/2 cup vinegar to the wash machine during the wash cycle to stop lint from sticking to clothing
• Spray full-strength onto perspiration stains on clothing before adding them to the wash machine
• To rid clothes of a smoky smell, add 1 cup of vinegar to a bathtub filled with water and hang clothes over the tub to absorb the steam
• Apply warm vinegar to a cloth and rub on cool iron to remove scorch marks
• Sprinkle cotton clothes with distilled vinegar before ironing them to remove any musty smell
• Spray barbecue, spaghetti, or ketchup stains with a white vinegar and water mixture before washing
• Use vinegar to clean your bathroom (items and sink) by soaking razors, toothbrush holders, etc. in vinegar before scrubbing. For the sink, cover it well with vinegar using a sponge. Let it set for about five minutes, then scrub and wipe down
• Add 1/4 cup vinegar to the last rinse cycle in your wash machine to prevent yellowing of clothes, remove soap, and work as a fabric softener
• Run the washing machine with 1 cup vinegar (and no clothing) to remove soap scum and clean the hoses
• To deodorize and clean a drain, pour 1 cup baking soda, then 1 cup hot vinegar down the drain. Let this sit for about five minutes, then run hot water down the drain (you can also do this with the garbage disposal)
• Use a cloth soaked with full strength vinegar to clean counter tops
• To remove a tough label, put a cloth soaked with vinegar over the label overnight. It should come off easily in the morning
• To clean a sponge or loofah, soak it in a vinegar and water mixture (with mostly vinegar) overnight. In the morning, rinse it well with cold water and let air dry in the sun (if possible)
• Spray full-strength vinegar on door knobs and wipe them with a cloth to remove germs

Hopefully, these tips will make some of your household tasks easier. Please feel free to share if you have any other creative vinegar uses!

We’ve all heard of using baking soda for baking and for deodorizing but it can also be used for cleaning, heartburn relief, and more!  The best part is, because the only ingredient is Sodium Bicarbonate, baking soda is an environmentally friendly and relatively inexpensive product.

I love using it when I clean the bathroom tub.  Instead of scrubbing for what seems like forever, I sprinkle a little baking soda on the wet tub floor before I scrub and cleans relatively quickly without the use of expensive and harsh chemicals.

Baking soda is great for cleaning dried toothpaste out of your toothbrush as well.  Just put the toothbrush, bristles down, into a small bowl or coffee cup, sprinkle baking soda over the bristles, and pour boiling water over it.  The boiling water sanitizes the toothbrush, much like when you boil baby bottles, and the baking soda helps break loose any toothpaste that was left in the toothbrush.

This Old House suggests ten other uses for baking soda around the house, including:

• Removing tape residue
• Putting out small kitchen fires
• Mixing with sugar to get rid of roaches
• Preventing rust
• Keeping drains clear

For more baking soda uses for around the house or garage or for your hair or face, visit the Arm and Hammer website or read Use Baking Soda to Make Your Life Easier Than Ever.

After a camping trip this past weekend (and a long lapse since the previous cleaning!), the inside of my car was in pretty bad shape. I was determined to use natural solutions for the dirt, grime, and an unpleasant smell that was beginning to waft through the vehicle.

I decided to tackle my dirty windows first. Somehow in the process of going up and down, they had gotten sticky, almost rubbery black smears up and down the driver and passenger side windows. I’d tried a few tactics in the past to get rid of them including scraping and rubbing with no luck. Even my normal homemade glass cleaner would not do the trick.

Luckily, I came across an easy homemade window cleaner for cars that was tougher than anything I had tried- and it worked right away! I combined the below ingredients in a spray bottle (yes, extra spray bottles are always good to have on hand!) and gave it a good shake. I then sprayed it on a lint free cloth and scrubbed the windows, then buffed with another cloth. Soon all of the windows were gleaming and the black smears were gone!

• 1 cup filtered water
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1/8 cup rubbing alcohol

After the windows were looking nice, I grabbed my delicate disinfectanct cleaner and an old dish towel for the rest of the detailing. I sprayed it on the dash, steering wheel, and used it on just about everything plastic in the car. It worked- and smelled- great. The dust and sticky messes disappeared.

Last, but not least, as it was getting dark I still needed to tackle the smell and vacuuming. I located a great recipe for freshening the carpet and sprinkled baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves on the carpet before vacuuming. Although I was initially weary of this idea, it actually ended up working very well. My car smelled fabulous and it vacuumed up perfectly!

Hopefully these little tricks work for you, too, and if you even decide to go with a natural cleaner for the outside, you can start with just some hot water and liquid castile soap. Happy car cleaning!

While I love my sweet (and sometimes naughty) kitties, there are days that I just want to throw their litter box right out of the house. I’m sure that any cat owner can relate to the constant maintenance required and the difficulty in trying to keep it clean. Luckily, there’s a natural cleaner to help ensure the box is kept “fresh” during routine litter changes.

All you need to make the cleaner is water, white vinegar, and a lemon. After you have disposed of any old litter, mix three parts water with one part vinegar in a spray bottle. Squeeze one or two tablespoons of juice from the lemon and add it to the spray bottle. Shake up your new homemade cleaner and then spray the bottom and sides of the box as necessary.

Use a stiff bristle brush to scrub and remove anything icky from the litter box, then give the whole thing a good rinse. Make sure to let the box dry thoroughly before pouring in your new litter. This should help to keep the box cleaner and fresh-smelling for a longer period of time.

And dog-owners don’t worry, I will be having a canine-friendly post for you later this week. :)

Now that we’ve switched to laundry with soap nuts, we’ll never look back, but we weren’t enjoying the extra chore of boiling tea every time we needed clean clothes (I rarely use hot water for laundry, but hot water is what draws the cleansing saponins out of the soap nuts – hence the tea for cold water washes). A prerequisite chore to a chore is never fun, and led to serious procrastination as clothes piled up in the laundry room.

Enter, solution: Naturoli Soap Nuts concentrated cleaner.  Where have you been all my life?! This is the soap nuts tea already made and bottled – and as a Green Dot award winner, it’s one of the best formulas you can get, pure and free of chemical fragrances and oils.

As you can see, the product is advertised at 96 loads, but when you order, even the manufacturer states you can double or even triple this yield. My approach to maximize it is pretty simple: just pour one capful into a large pitcher and add hot water to about the halfway point. This gives the solution a sudsy light color that mimics what I got when I made the tea from the nuts myself.

A half-full pitcher of soap nuts solution is enough for all the laundry I need to do all weekend – and now it takes only seconds to create and have on hand, as opposed to at least a half hour when you start with the raw materials.

Another bonus – I received a surprise sample of soap nuts body wash with my shipment and I am loving it! This is a great company that knows how to treat its customers well and make it easy to make the switch. At just $18 (I’ll be modest and gauge 200 loads out of this bottle . . . that’s just 9 cents a load!), my laundry is taken care of naturally (for probably at least the rest of the year), I don’t have to lug giant jugs of neon chemical detergents from the store ever again, and it’s so much easier than making tea from scratch . . . even your boyfriend can do it! ;)

I disappeared for a few weeks, “spring cleaning”, and I’m happy to report back with a gentle and effective formula for dusting and polishing finished wood surfaces. It’s super simple too (just be sure to use quality ingredients):

1. Cut a lemon in half, and squeeze the juice from both halves into a non-metal mixing bowl
2. Add a little olive oil and lemon oil to the lemon juice and stir vigorously to create an emulsion
3. Voilà! You have just made your own natural wood cleaner. In every sense of the phrase! You may want to transfer it to a more portable container; I just used it out of the bowl.

Grab a “soft cloth” (old rag) and you’re ready to go. Add a tiny amount of your mixture to the cloth and smooth it over your wood surface where you have dust or just want a natural shine and fresh scent. I tried it out on a cherry side table and was so pleased with the effect I proceeded to polish the entire living room floor. Give it a try today!

A quick and easy alternative to chemical-based sink cleaners is simply a mix of  baking soda and salt paired with a little hot water. I found this great tip on ThriftyFun and like that I can have it stored ready to go for anytime cleaning.

I added approximately 1/3 cup baking soda and 1/4 cup sea salt to an old glass peanut butter jar, covered it and gave it a good shake. I sprinkled some on the porcelain sinks in our laundry room and kitchen and then used a sponge and hot water to give to give them a good scrub.

The salt & baking soda worked well on the sinks as well as the faucet and handles. If you try this, just make sure to rinse everything you srub well so as not to leave a dry film on anything (especially the faucet). The scrub worked well to cut grease in the kitchen sink as well as remove dust and grime from the laundry room sink. Hopefully, you already have the ingredients in your house now to give it a try and enjoy the results!

Last summer when I saw this article on NaturalNews.com I was inspired to visit my local health food store and find a good haircare line with nothing to hide. This proved to be a tall order indeed. Not only did the store carry several of the brands named in the article above, but I spent the better part of an hour picking up a bottle, turning it around, scanning the ingredients label, and then returning it to the shelf. No lather, no rinse. Repeat.

As discouraging & scary as that was, my search finally ended and my efforts rewarded with Aubrey Organics. I started out with their Rosa Marquetta and Glycogen balancing formulas, and I have loved many things about them, but lately felt I was wanting more. Then I finally found my match when I noticed a new color on my store’s shelf this weekend: Blue. Blue-green, to be exact. The BGA Protein + Strengthening shampoo and cream rinse are already my all-time favorite shampoo and conditioner cream rinse, ever. Not only is the scent divinely invigorating, but it’s the perfect formula for my hair (oilé). With moderate use (about every other day), I am noticing my hair stays much better looking for much longer – usually it becomes weighed down by oils and its own length way too soon. But ~36 hours later, it still has lots of movement and shine. I use the cream rinse on my ends and they look healthier too.

I am so excited to have found such a great product that is reliable and safe too. I did a quick check in the Cosmetics Safety Database and these products had the safest scores. Aubrey Organics is also a vegan line and is not tested on animals.

The best ingredients in the BGA formulas include:

• Organic blue green algae (amino acid proteins)
• Organic aloe vera
• Extracts of: chamomile, red algae, fennel, hops, balm mint, mistletoe & yarrow
• Vitamins A, C, & E
  

There are a few ingredients that seem a little iffy, but they still appear to be relatively harmless:

• Coconut oil-Corn oil soap
• Lavender water

I don’t have a problem with either of these two per se, but both of these “ingredients” imply they have ingredients of their own. So really, they are compounds and should probably be broken down. What is in the soap? What is in the water?

• Hydrolized soy protein
  

According to truthinlabeling.org, this is code for MSG, which can cause a reaction in some people. But, I haven’t completely given up Chinese food yet either, so I’m not going to worry about it now. In fact, time to relax in a hot shower! A great, easy source of negative ions, by the way.

Although I love my cats dearly, I despise the mess they make with their litter box and food/water on the linoleum floor in our laundry room. I browsed the web a bit for a “greener” way to take care of the near weekly mop job that needs to take place. After today, I’ll be replacing my throw away Swiffer wipes in favor of an extra bottle of vinegar (much cheaper!) at the store.

This afternoon, I mopped the linoleum floor using approximately 3 parts hot water and 1 part vinegar. The smell was strong, but it did a great job cleaning the floor and my hope is that it worked as a much better disinfectant than the name-brand wipes. After the floor dried, the room did not smell like vinegar at all and there were no other odors in the air.

I definitely recommend trying out this chemical free and economical cleaner you may already have on hand. Hopefully you will enjoy the same results!