9 DIY Recipes To Help You Save Money On Cleaning Products

It’s easy to get tired of spending serious amounts of money on cleaning products just to be disappointed by the end results. I’m sure you can relate to the many people tricked by false advertisements promoting numerous products with almost supernatural powers that can “scare” every stain away. (Not to mention the muscular man who will do all the cleaning while you are enjoying yourself in the other room.)

I’m also guilty of buying countless cleaning products that turned out to be either useless, or quite expensive for my budget. I used to believe that the stronger the chemicals in the solutions were, the better the results would be from the cleaning. It turned out that not only was my home not “sparkling clean,” but there were way too many harmful ingredients in the products I was using, which only made my existing allergy problems worse.

I was determined to find a better and healthier solution for maintaining my home, which is why I tried to make my own cleaning products from scratch. The truth is that there is a much easier and cheaper way to achieve the best cleaning results with ingredients that you can find in every home. Here are a few DIY recipes for cleaning products for different purposes.

Products For Your Bathroom

1. Toilet bowl cleaner: Use half a cup of baking soda mixed with 10 drops of tea tree essential oil and pour it in the bowl. Add a quarter cup of vinegar and scrub while it’s fizzing.

2. Bathtub stain remover: White vinegar. Just pour it in a spray bottle, and spray the bathtub. Let it sit like that for about 30 minutes, and then use a sponge to scrub all the dirt away. Rinse with water, and you will be good to go. I personally spray my bathtub after every time I use it, which prevents the forming of more serious stains.

Products For Your Kitchen

3. Disinfectant: To quickly disinfect your cutting board, you can scrub it with a lemon (cut in half), and it will be as good as new. I personally like the fresh scent, which also doesn’t make me sneeze every time I do the cleaning chores in my house.

4. Oven cleaner: Turn the oven to 125 degrees Celsius (~250 Fahrenheit) and wait for a few minutes until it is fully heated. Grab your spray bottle with vinegar and spray the oven. Grab some salt and sprinkle it on the stains. Turn off the oven, and when it cools off, use a wet towel to scrub away the stains.

5. Microwave cleaner: Pour some vinegar in a bowl and add a few drops of lemon to it. Put the bowl into the microwave, and let it run for two minutes. Do not open the microwave right away — instead, wait for a few minutes, and after opening it, just use damp cloth to wipe it down.

6. Dish detergent: For this product, you will need to mix one cup of Castile soap and one cup of water. You can also add a few drops of lemon juice if you’d like, to make it smell fresh. Next time you use the dishwasher, just pour this substance in one of the compartments for detergents, and white vinegar in the other compartment.

Products For Your Laundry

7. Laundry detergent: For this recipe, you will need to grate 1 bar of plain glycerin soap and add 1 cup washing soda, half cup baking soda, half cup citric acid, and ¼ cup coarse salt to it. Next time you do the laundry, simply add this detergent to your washing machine.

8. Laundry freshener: Despite having a hard time with strong smells, I still want my clothes to have a nice and fresh scent — so I found a natural way to give my laundry a pleasant aroma. You can scent it by putting herbs such as peppermint, lavender, or lemon verbena in a sachet and throwing it in the dryer with your laundry.

9. Fabric softener: All you need for this is to mix one gallon of white vinegar and about 30 drops of essential oil. If you add about a third of a cup of that solution to your laundry, you can be sure that your clothes will be softened without using any chemicals to do it.

*****

My allergies forced me to try these green recipes in the first place, but I am more than happy that I gave them a chance. I’ve learned that you don’t need a cocktail of toxic chemicals in order to get your home looking great. Not only you can tackle every stain with these products, but they will also help you clean out your shelves, as you won’t need a different product for every single stain.

One of the many advantages that came along with the use of homemade cleaning products has been the money I’ve saved, since I haven’t had to buy every latest cleaning solution that comes out on the market. I hope that you will try at least a few of these alternatives so that you can see for yourself that there is no point in wasting your money on expensive (and not always effective) cleaning products.

Sophia Evans is an owner of a small company that offers cost-effective services. She tries her best to balance the busy working schedule and family life. She is proud mother of two and loves to read and write articles related to cleaning, organizing, and DIY.

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