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.

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!

Supplies Used in this post:

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There’s lots of good reasons to make your own laundry detergent. It’s less expensive, it has less irritants for the skin, it’s better for the environment, it has more natural ingredients, you name it.

When I started looking at homemade laundry detergent recipes, I noticed that they pretty much all use Fels Naptha laundry soap. Well, I went to read the ingredients in it and I wasn’t a huge fan. It contains titanium dioxide, which is harmful to the environment, and also has artificial colors and fragrances, two of my big no-nos.

Not only do I want to avoid artificial colors and fragrances for the reasons listed in my 13 ingredients to avoid, but for laundry-related reasons I have very sensitive skin and wouldn’t want to get irritation or a rash from the artificial fragrance. So I looked into recipes that had no Fels Naptha in it. I found this recipe from Measuring Flower that had no Borax or Fels Naptha. It mentions that it sometimes clumps, so I thought it was the perfect candidate to make into a tab!

And it only costs $3.23 to make 28 tabs. You can adjust the size to make them larger or smaller. I made mine on the larger side. So they’re definitely a good value.

I like to explain why I use each of my ingredients. Do you ever look at a label and wonder, what the heck is that and why do they need it in there? Well you won’t need that with my products.

• Baking Soda: Removes odor from clothes, removes a variety of stains
• Washing Soda: Alkaline compound that complements baking soda to remove stains. Also reduces the effects of hard water. (You can make it yourself from baking soda- see the tutorial here!)
• Castile Soap Bar: Removes dirt and stains from clothes. Made from vegetable fats and will not damage your washing machine or septic system
• Salt: Helps soften hard water and reduces mineral build up, and also helps clean dirt off clothes
• White Vinegar: Fabric softner and binds the tabs together
• Essential Oils: For scent, depending on the oils you choose may also have other beneficial properties like anti-bacterial or anti-fungal

I decided to grate my soap bar because I wanted to use my food processor to make the crust for my gluten free strawberry pie on the same day and I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to wash it. Well, let me tell you, it would have been a lot less work to wash the food processor than it was to grate the entire bar of soap. My arms got a little work out! So I recommend using the food processor unless you really like grating.

Here you can see what the tabs looked like before they were mixed and then after the vinegar was added. You can see it starting to clump up as the vinegar was added.

Be careful when you mix this, as washing soda can be an irritant if you breathe it in. I made the mistake of leaning over the bowl as I was mixing it and it was a little unpleasant.

Unfortunately, the heart-shaped tabs didn’t turn out. I think the silicon mold just wasn’t hard enough and I wasn’t able to press the tabs well enough so they didn’t take shape.

I filled the ice cube tray tabs about half way full, and the tabs were still pretty big. So you could do even less than that. Just make sure to really compact them down, or you will end up with powder instead of tabs!

I think my first attempt at making my own laundry detergent was successful. And I’m a fan of anything that saves time and doesn’t require me to measure out amounts. Just grab a tab and that’s it. Fast and easy. Oh, and the vinegar is a natural fabric softener, and it’s built into this recipe. Pretty awesome.

I am so excited to be rid of the chemicals in my laundry. You wear clothes and uses linens every day. And now I can rest assured knowing exactly what ingredients mine were cleaned in. That’s my favorite part of making my own cleaning products.

The tabs did a good job cleaning and didn’t leave any residue or odor. Exactly what I was looking for. And all natural and inexpensive to boot! Successful new creation.

Try making your own laundry detergent tabs and let me know how it goes for you!

supplies used in this post

Like this tutorial? You should check out my homemade dishwasher detergent tabs!

The post How to Make Laundry Detergent Tabs (Without Borax and Fels Naptha) appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.

The leading store-bought window cleaner includes plenty harmful impossible-to-pronounce ingredients:

• 2-Hexoxyethanol causes severe skin and eye burns
• Sodium C14-17 Sec-Alkyl Sulfonate is hazardous to aquatic environments and also causes eye and skin irritation
• Propylene Glycol can cause skin, liver, and kidney damage
• Artificial Fragrances are protected trade secrets that can contain up to 4000 separate ingredients that can be dangerous to health and the environment
• Artificial Colors are sometimes derived from petroleum and are a potential carcinogen

At the very least, you should want to avoid the eye and skin irritation when you clean by making your own green window cleaner. I’m telling you, green cleaning can actually be enjoyable when you aren’t worried about feeling dizzy from chemicals or getting cancer. If you want to learn more about switching to green cleaning, read my 5 step guide.

This window cleaner is guaranteed to save you money and expose you to less chemicals than any cleaner you can buy in the store. One batch of this cleaner cost 32 cents. I could definitely clean all the windows in my apartment with that one batch. You can’t beat that price. And it will also give you a streak free clean!

Here is how you make the cleaner:

The picture above is the before picture. Sorry my photography skills aren’t amazing so I couldn’t totally capture just how dirty the window was- but you can see the line of grimy fingerprints and water spots across the top.

I’m kind of glad you can’t see just how bad the window was because it is kind of embarrassing how dirty we let the windows get!And here is the after picture! You wouldn’t even know it was a window if not for the reflection and screen behind the window. Perfectly clear, clean, and awesome. No more fingerprints or water spots!

What is it about newspaper that makes them so good for cleaning windows and glass? Does anyone know? Because they really do an amazing job of getting rid of streaks.

So, try this window cleaner out. You won’t be disappointed. Your health, environment, and bank account will thank you!

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