Green Cleaning: Make Your Own {Green} Laundry Detergent

Bubbles via NotTooCool on Flickr

One of my sisters gave me a bottle of her homemade laundry detergent a couple of months back and I was super impressed with how well it worked. I've been meaning to share her recipe ever since (hope you don't mind, Pangus!)

It's really easy and these quantities will make you 8 litres of liquid, so feel free to halve everything if you're not in need of so much. Although it does keep well over time.

You'll need:

1 cup Lux soap flakes
1/2 cup Lectric wsahing soda
1/2 cup borax
water
a large bucket
4 x 2-litre bottles or 5-6 empty vinegar bottles (try 2L milk bottles - as long as they're well cleaned)

1.  Using an old saucepan heat 4 cups of water with the Lux and stir until completely melted.
2.  Add washing soda and borax to mix and stir until dissolved.
3.  Add 4 cups of hot water to large bucket.
4.  Add the Lux, water, washing soda and borax mix to large bucket and stir. 
5.  Top the mix up with cold water till you reach 8L.
6.  Distribute mix amongst your storage bottles leaving enough room at top so you can shake your liquid. (The mix will settle and go claggy so make sure you give it a good shake before you use it.)

Tips: 

• For a front-loader, use around 3/4 cup per wash. A top loader may use a bit more. 

• In the fabric softener dispenser I always put 1/2 cup vinegar as a rinse agent/softener, and you can also add up to 10 drops of essential oil, to gently fragrance your wash.

• Still pretreat stains in the usual way (I use this natural stain remover)

Green Cleaning Toolkit: Vinegar

image by Mattia Valerio

The next installment in my Green Cleaning Toolkit is: V for vinegar. (You can see previous posts here.)

I have already posted about some of the top uses for vinegar around the house, but as it is the one ingredient I use multiple times every single day, I think it definitely requires its own Toolkit post.

I buy my white vinegar in 4L bottles from the supermarket for about $1.50. This usually lasts me between one and two weeks, so it's pretty good value. I'm on the lookout for somewhere I can buy it in bulk, to save on packaging, but so far I can only find it by the huuuge drumload.

Cleaning Uses:

General Purpose Cleaner - Dilute 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water and keep it in a spray bottle. You can use this and a damp cloth to clean just about everything. I use it to clean the bathroom vanity, the bath, the tiles (unless they need a heavy clean), the kitchen benchtops, the cupboard doors, the sink (unless it needs a scrub, then I use lemon and bi-carb).

High-Strength Cleaner - Keep straight white vinegar in another spray bottle and use it as a cleaner on stubborn marks like the bath ring or soap scum on tiles. Just spray thoroughly, leave for 15 minutes, wipe over the dirt with a damp cloth, rinse and dry. This is also really good to clean that greasy, dusty layer you get in the kitchen sometimes - particularly on the rangehood or the oven door.

Disinfectant/Cleaner - Spray all over your toilet with vinegar when you spray the bowl (remember the borax and vinegar toilet cleaner?) and leave it till you clean the bowl. This acts both as a disinfectant and cleaner for the loo. You can also spray your wooden and plastic chopping boards with straight vinegar, leaving it for a few minutes, then rinse and dry. This disinfects and gets rid of oniony smells.

Floor Cleaner - When we had our oiled floors laid during the reno, the floor guy told us to clean the floors using a bucket of warm water, half a cup of methylated spirits and half a cup of vinegar. That works a treat with the oil finish, but before the reno when we had floors sealed with polyurethane, I used a squirt of Morning Fresh liquid and a cup or so of vinegar in the bucket and that was really effective too. I think the vinegar cuts down on any soapy build-up and makes the floor lovely and shiny.

Laundry Uses:

Softener/Freshener - I add about a quarter of a cup of vinegar to every wash I do, with the exception of the fabric nappies (the vinegar can effect their absorbency), and it softens and freshens the laundry so much. I can tell if I don't use it, particularly with the linen as it feels all scratchy and rough. And despite the smell of vinegar when you first put it in the washing machine, you really can't smell it much once it's been washed, and not at all once the laundry is dry. Apparently, adding some vinegar to the wash can help alleviate eczema in those who have skin reaction to laundry powder too. I used to wash Isla's clothes in Lux flakes and vinegar before I discovered castile soap.

Other Uses:

Toy Cleaner - Spray the kids toys and board books with the 1:4 vinegar dilution and wipe over with a clean cloth. It lifts off stickiness and is a mild disinfectant too.

It really is just as easy as making one or two changes every couple of weeks, and before you even realise it, you'll be cleaning greener and simpler. I can't promise it will be any more fun though. Sorry.

Green Cleaning Toolkit: Borax

I know I've mentioned bits and pieces about various ingredients I use in my green cleaning toolkit (here, here and here) but I thought I could put together a post on each of the main ingredients I use week-in, week-out. Hopefully this will make it easy if anyone is keen on getting into green cleaning but not entirely sure where to begin.

First up is Borax.

Strictly speaking, borax is a toxic substance, even though it's naturally occuring. So don't go feeding it to your pets or kids, and if using it to clean, it's recommended that you wear rubber gloves to stop any potential skin irritation. I've never had any issues with it, and it sure as hell is better than the highly toxic commercial cleaners you often find at the supermarket.

Cleaning Uses:

Toilet Cleaner - I sprinkle the wet toilet bowl with a handful of borax, then saturate the borax with a good spray of straight white vinegar. I also spray the whole toilet with straight vinegar at the same time, to clean and disinfect. Leave it to sit for 15 minutes or more. Wipe over the toilet with a damp cloth and then dry with an old teatowel and then, using a toilet brush or a cloth, scrub the bowl and flush. Easy!

Tile Scrub/Shower Cleaner - I do this once every few weeks and it seems to get rid of any mould in the shower and stop a lot of it from growing back. Just mix roughly equal parts of borax and straight white vinegar in a tub. You're looking for a watery paste type consistency. Then using a damp cloth just spread the mixture over the tiles in your shower (walls and floor, concentrating a little more on the grout) and leave. 15 minutes plus is fine, and over night would do no harm. Then wipe down/scrub with a damp cloth, rinse and wipe over with a clean, dry cloth.

Disinfectant - A couple of tablespoons of borax in some warm water is a great disinfectant for bins etc. Just wipe over with the mixture and then rinse with clean water.

Laundry Uses:

Laundry Booster - You can add a sprinkle of borax to every wash and it will help whiten your whites and remove soap build-up and odour build-up in your clothes. I personally don't use it in every wash, but have found it does help soften blankets and linen.

Other Uses:

Ant/Cockroach Control - Borax can help to get rid of ants and cockroaches. To get rid of cockroaches try sprinkling the areas most likely frequented by the little buggers (be careful if you have kids or pets though). The borax attaches to their feet as they crawl over it and will eventually be ingested. For ants you can mix some borax with honey or sugar syrup and put it in some upturned jar lids. The ants will be attracted to the sweetness and then take the borax back to the nest with them.

I'm sure there's more tips out there, but they're the ways I've used borax. It's probably the least friendly of the ingredients I use, so it was nice to get that one out of the way!

Maybe next time you go shopping, pick up a tub of borax (it's super cheap, in the laundry/cleaning aisle at the supermarket) and add it to your green cleaning toolkit. Dare ya!

Awesome Uses for Bicarb Soda

I know I've mentioned the lemon + bicarb miracle combination before, but there are about a bajillion other uses for bicarb in your house, kitchen, laundry and bathroom. Some of these are pretty cool:

• Make your own self-raising flour if you're ever caught without, by adding one teaspoon of cream of tartar and half a teaspoon bicarb soda to one cup of plain flour
• Effective as a fire extinguisher (particularly grease and electrical fires)
• Make a paste of bicarb and water and apply to ant and mosquito bites, as well as beestings - it should take the itch out. (Duly noted here because I am super allergic to ants and bees).
• Have a cool bath with a cup of bicarb to take the burn out of sunburn
• Brush your teeth with a paste of bicarb and water - it's antibacterial and makes your teeth shiny
• Wash your fruit and veges in a sink filled with water and 1/4 cup bicarb - this removes traces of insecticides that remain on the skin
• Sprinkle bicarb on your pets between washes if they're getting a little stinky. Just sprinkle, massage and brush it out
• Leave a little container of bicarb in the fridge to get rid of that mysterious fridge stink we sometimes get (hello, old watermelon!)

These are all in addition to the usual suspects, such as making a paste with water and cleaning pretty much any surface in the house, or sprinkling it in the nappy bucket, or adding it to your washing to freshen and soften your clothes.

Maybe I'm a dorky dork, but I found that kind of interesting!

Green Cleaning: Lemon + Baking Soda = Sparkly McGee!

Lemons are nature's zesty cleaning power-bombs and this green cleaning recipe uses that to its fullest advantage.

All you need is one dirty sink (or any metal surface in your kitchen, or porcelain, enamel or fibreglass in your bathroom), half a lemon, some bicarb soda and about five minutes.

Before. Ugh.

Sprinkle the lemon half with some bicarb, and also sprinkle the sink with a little of the powder too - this works best if the sink is pretty dry before cleaning. Use the flesh side of the lemon to scrub the sink. It takes a couple of minutes for the sherberty fizz to take all the grime away, but it absolutely works and smells citrus fresh too!

If you have some tougher grime or stains then use the skin side as a scrubbing brush. I was surprised by how well this actually works, but the skin really does pick up the stains.

After. The plug hole needs a vinegar soak to bring out the stains but its totally clean. Honest!

I actually used the skin and some extra bicarb to scrub some rust spots on the knife I used and they came out straight away. Lovely!

Ol' Rusty Before.

'Ol Rusty no more.

Super easy and super useful. I like this recipe because it gives me a way of using up the shrivelly lemon halves I sometimes collect in the fruit bowl. Plus it smells so good!

As for the rest of the week, we're busy preparing for Isy's second birthday on the weekend. It's a bubble party so should be awesome!

Hope you're having a good week! X