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Making your Cleaning Supplies on a Budget

One of the ways we were able to help drastically cut our budget was to start making our own cleaning supplies. For the last five months or so I have been making our laundry detergent, soap (hand and dish) and all purpose cleaner.

The common ingredient in most of these cleaners is Bronners Liquid Castille Soap and it is my favorite! This stuff is amazing and we are able to get the peppermint scent at Trader Joes for about 10 dollars (it will last about two months when making all these cleaners). The other scents are available other places and are great too but cost a bit more. Vinegar is also used a great deal and can be bought in bulk at places like Costco.

In addition, I like knowing exactly what is going into my cleaners. Ingredients are listed below for each cleaner. I hope you find this as helpful as we do and thanks for stopping by!

All Purpose Cleaner20140725-212907-77347556.jpgWhat you will need and how to make it:
– Juice from 1 to 2 large lemons
– Rinds from large lemons
– Sealable glass jar filled with vinegar
– Let these above ingredients soak for at least 24 hours and they can keep for a long time
-using a fine mesh strainer, strain the vinegar/lemon mixture (so you will not clog the sprayer) into a empty spray bottle with 1 part lemon/vinegar solution to one part cold filtered water.

Dish Soap

20140725-213758-77878738.jpgWhat you will need and how to make it:
– an empty spray foam bottle (we use recycled bottles from previous cleaners).
– 1 part Bronners
– 4 parts cold filtered water

Laundry Detergent

20140725-214610-78370309.jpgWhat you will need and how to make it:
– first pour 1 tablespoon of Bronners soap (put into the soap dispenser of your machine)
-1/2 cup baking soda (also into soap dispenser of your machine)
– then pour white vinegar into the softener dispenser of your machine up to the fill line
Note – we have a front loading machine and this has worked perfect for us. If using a top loading machine I believe (not positive) you would put the soap and baking soda into the water as it is filling and add the vinegar into the softener dispenser.

Hand Soap

20140727-205012-75012743.jpgWhat you will need and how to make it:
-1 part Bronners soap
-5 parts filtered cold water

Note- these amounts are not an exact science and we find that if the mixture is not soapy enough or foamy enough we just add Bronners until it is the consistency we like.

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