My neighbor Emily (who is also an amazing fabric crafter, and you should check out her website and buy her gorgeous homemade things) passed along a wonderful resource to me the other day. Remember how excited I was to find a recipe for homemade laundry detergent? Well, here is a whole array of homemade housecleaning products. These are on the website of the David Suzuki Foundation, downloadable from this page as a .pdf. I’ve tried a few of these, and so far my favorites are the carpet deodorizer and the all-purpose cleaner #1.
The great thing about these recipes is that they call for ingredients I just have around the house anyway — stuff like baking soda, borax (my new favorite cure-all — sprinkle it around the exterior of hour house to keep those annoying sugar ants out), castile soap, lemon juice, vinegar.
Here is the carpet deodorizer: baking soda, corn starch, bay leaves, and ground cloves. I heated the tip of an ice pick over the gas flame and poked holes in this plastic container (these come from the DeKalb Farmer’s Market when you buy parmesan cheese) to create a “shaker” for it. Worked perfectly for sprinkling over my carpets and rugs. I’ll store it by stacking it inside another identical plastic container.
And here is the all-purpose cleaner: castile soap (I used peppermint), white vinegar, hot water, borax. And an old plastic spray bottle.
I used it on my kitchen counters and bathrooms. Right now, my house smells like cloves and peppermint instead of wet dog. Nice!
The Southern Urban Homestead 