Homemade All Purpose Cleaner

Happy March! As you may already know, I’ve made March a green cleaning month for the blog! That means every week I’ll be sharing two green cleaning recipes with you. By the end of the month, you will be more than ready for spring cleaning. I hope you’re excited. It only makes sense to start with a homemade all purpose cleaner. It’s so versatile and easy, but better than that, it only costs 50 cents to make!

After all, you need a cleaner you can grab in a pinch and use to clean any little (and sometimes big!) messes. Sure, you need specific cleaners for different things, but my all purpose cleaner is one of my cleaning staples, and the perfect cleaner to start out with.

I’ve made an all purpose cleaner before- and I loved it! But for green cleaning month I’ve done a lot of research- and I wanted to update my homemade all purpose cleaner to make it even more effective. Plus that was one of my earliest posts, and I like to update my pictures and style anyways. So I hope you like the new and improved recipe!

Ingredients:

Baking soda: dissolves dirt and grease, gentle and non-toxic, deodorizes
Borax: all natural and sustainable cleaner, disinfects, anti-fungal and keeps away bugs
Dish soap or liquid castile soap: surfactant, dissolves dirt and grease
Essential oils: for scent, and depending on the oil, can have different properties like being antibacterial, anti-fungal, etc. (I used lemongrass)

I’ve been trying to keep my cleaners more pH neutral. This cleaner has both baking soda and borax, so it is mildly alkaline, with a pH of about 8.5. This is approximate and based on the pH strips I used to test it.

Ingredients

1.5 tablespoons baking soda
1.5 tablespoons borax
1 pump dish soap or liquid castile soap
2 cups hot water
5-10 drops essential oil (optional)

Instructions

Combine baking soda with hot water, stirring until it dissolves. Do the same with the borax
Once baking soda and borax are dissolved, add the dish soap and essential oils
Using a funnel, pour into a spray bottle
To use: spray on the area that needs to be cleaned and wipe with a cloth or towel

And it is super effective! Just check out the picture below:

I’m always embarrassed to show before and afters like this… my baseboard was so grimy before! But it looks clean and great now. I don’t know where all that grease and grime came from, but it looks so much better cleaned up now. And it was persistent kitchen grease, so this stuff really packs a punch!

Seriously, you can’t get much better than that for 50 cents. And I recycled an old spray bottle for it, which I always love to do. This cleaner is my new favorite!

Let me know how making your homemade all purpose cleaner goes for you!

Want more green cleaning recipes? Check out all of my green cleaning month recipes here!

Ingredients: