Homemade All Purpose Cleanser

I love to save money. I can spend $1,000 on something and never have remorse but be irked for a couple of hours over wasting 50 cents. It is all contingent on the value (monetary or perceived) value of the item obtained.

For instance, I consider accomplishments to be of value and can wrap what a particular item accomplishes into the value of it. In doing that, I might pay more (monetarily) for the item than usual.

People pay me to help them with their budget and finances, so I have to keep guidelines and a system, but when I budget for things, I consider more than the face value. That is not something that is readily transferred to application in someone else’s budget. So, I have a budget “principle” I use that allows the ability to be used in a real life and not just on paper.

Anyway, we’ll talk about finances and budget in another post, but this one is about saving money, getting deals, looking for a bargain, finding a way to spend less… that type of thing. I love all those phrases!

I’ve mentioned that Shelley (sister-in-law) and I have written an ebook and you should definitely check it out in my previous post. The book is devoted to one spending less concept, which is using coupons as a method of payment. We treat couponing as a viable part-time job. The money savings is sometimes not even believable and whatever you save, you earned.

Some women are finding by applying our extra spin on the couponing strategy that they make more by using the “Keep the Cash” method(s) than they have at their part-time job. Not to mention getting to stay home and take care of their own kids instead of paying for childcare.

Again, I encourage you to look at the info and the link in my earlier post and check into it.

Right now, I’d like to mention some other money-saving tips just for fun and just because I love that sort of thing.

Of course, Do it Yourself is the BOMB! Whoo-hoo, I love making my own stuff. Whether it is figuring out a recipe for some popular dish or doing my own taxes or figuring out my own medical symptoms, I love the DIY stuff.

I recently decided I didn’t like all the chemicals that swirl around us in our homes, so I checked into making some of my cleansers myself. Now I should tell you that I was a bleach person. I’m a natural blonde, but my hair was about the only thing I didn’t use bleach on. I didn’t think anything was truly clean unless bleach in some fashion had been applied to it.

I don’t like the smell of bleach, but I can tolerate it and eventually I guess maybe I couldn’t even smell it anymore because I had gotten used to it. I probably will not ever completely eliminate bleach from my entire life, but WOW! That is one dangerous chemical!

Although sure nothing could get cleaned otherwise, I forced myself to replace bleach with some other types of safer cleaners and was pleasantly surprised. I did not want to hop from one pure chemical (chlorine) to some mixture of equally toxic chemicals that we find in store-bought cleansers. That narrowed down my options considerably. Basically, after all the options, I was left with vinegar, lemon, and baking soda. It just didn’t seem like enough. I tried it and yes, things seemed to be clean but I just wasn’t convinced.

I wrote my friend who is a missionary in Mexico and lives an incredible ALL NATURAL life. I need to insert one comment here: I admire her strength but I probably will never be an “all natural” woman. She has her children in birthing tubs delivered by her husband. I am completely in awe of that strength and I admire and respect it, but won’t ever do it. She makes her own honey, when her husband goes out to their shed, where they have a family of honey bees constantly producing rich and succulent honey combs. Actually, the bees "make" the honey, but either way, I won’t ever do that.

She makes all her own clothes and the clothes for her 7 children. I won’t ever do that. I sew but usually for fun. She uses cloth diapers. Okay, I won’t EVER do that. She scrubs clothes on a washboard and hangs them out in fresh air to dry. Why? She likes the fresh air smell on their clothes. We don’t have fresh air in the states, so I won’t ever do that. Her husband bought a washing machine, but she doesn't always use it.

Okay, enough said. She is WAY fabulous and more “natural” than me. I admire her greatly; I just can’t and maybe won't ever even try to be that. Tammy has wonderful insights into cooking naturally and uses all natural cleansers. She makes her own cleansers and her own soap and her own laundry detergent. Are you ready for this? She makes her own vinegar.

So, I asked her for tips on cleaners. I told her about my vinegar mixture and that I thought things were “clean” but just still felt they could be more …. Something. She had the immediate answer: alcohol. I had not thought of that. She told me to add ½ cup of isopropyl (70%) to my mixture and that is what I did. When I started cleaning with it, I immediately knew what I had been missing: "disinfection." Is that a word?

Disinfected. I didn’t feel like everything had been disinfected and the addition of the alcohol somehow filled that need. Think about it: hospitals use alcohol to keep germs away from incisions into our bodies. I feel so much better about my cleaning mixture. She also told me to add just a drop or two of lavender oil. I’d heard that before and truthfully, I haven’t added that yet, but I may try it sometime.

So that’s my daily all-purpose cleanser. I mix it into empty spray bottles in the following increments; you can adjust up or down however you are comfortable. The alcohol also cuts through the vinegar smell. However, the smell of vinegar is an absorbent, so it doesn’t last long anyway.

In a spray bottle:
3 cups vinegar
1 cup alcohol
Lemon (fresh squeezed)

NOTICE I LEFT OUT THE BAKING SODA. I also increased the alcohol amount just because I wanted more disinfectant properties in my mixture. Most people are aware of this from Science experiments in school, but just in case you didn’t do those experiments:

Vinegar mixed with baking soda will make a HUGE bubbling and will scare you into almost a faint. In school, we built fake volcanoes and then added vinegar and a touch of baking soda to make them “erupt” with lava that we colored red with food color.

So, if you are going to add the baking soda (sometimes I do), make your mixture in a bucket and then when the lava stops bubbling, pour it into the bottle.

Sometimes I pour vinegar and baking soda into my kitchen sink with the intention of it bubbling its way down the drain and acting as a type of abrasive rinse.

So there’s a tip for today: New all purpose cleanser without harmful chemicals.

Cleaning House

And then, the not so fun things… like cleaning. Oh come on, be honest. We ALL love having a fresh, clean, sparkling, spotless, perfect house but who likes to make it that way? Truthfully, I actually enjoy cleaning the house once I get started. But that is the problem: getting started. It is like getting up when the alarm clock sounds… hit that buzzer as many times as possible!

Some cleaning I do NOT enjoy even after I get started. I have 4 French Bulldogs and they never clean up after themselves! I also have a 9-year old daughter who would not dream of cleaning up her own mess without my constant prompting. But we will cover that later in another section called “Kids.”

All right, so admit that your house could be a LITTLE cleaner, a LITTLE more organized. Come on, you can say it. It will be like therapy to admit it so we can move on. Come on, SAY IT!!

I’ll just tell you a couple of things about me so you will feel safe to talk with me. I grew up in a poverty-stricken home that was not clean. As a young adult and into my early 30’s, I was a fanatic about cleaning and used every chemical that hit the market, searching for the one(s) that would eliminate all dirt and dust from my vicinity. After that, I was really involved in my career and cleaned house in “spurts” which is nice word for “sometimes.”

I never let the house get filthy or stinky, but I might leave the dishwasher loaded and just use it as a cupboard where some of my dishes were stored. I might have had a junk drawer or two. Still, I kept my house clean, just not sparkling every moment. And after a few days, I would feel guilty and have a cleaning spurt, where I CLEANED for hours and everything shined again.

Now, I will just go ahead and admit that I absolutely hate carpet. I hate vacuuming carpet. There is nothing about carpet that I like. I have always felt like carpet is dirty. Have you ever pulled up carpet to lay new flooring? Wow. For years now, I have had hardwood or Pergo flooring and every day when I sweep, I remember that I don’t like carpet. If you could see how much dirt sweeps up in one day, you would have to wonder where all that dirt would be if you had carpet. Surely you don’t think the vacuum cleaner is getting it all? Okay, enough of my soapbox and back to my story.

So in my 30’s I got married and had an immediate family with stepchildren and my firstborn within a year. Suddenly, cleaning was a never-ending part of my life. No matter what was up on the agenda for any given moment, something needed to be cleaned prior to or right after. There was no such thing as a series of days or even a series of minutes that my house was “clean.” Junk drawers? What a laugh. I used to feel guilty about unloaded dishwashers and junk drawers. HA!

I met myself all day long, running with sponges and cleansers hither and yon, back and forth. I did laundry every day all day and sometimes into the night. Dishes. I’m not even going to describe what that word included. I had gone from single woman to not-very-super Mom. My house was a wreck and I could never catch up with the cleaning. It was an awful feeling. It followed me around to other places. I would be at fun events and be thinking about what I needed to do when I got home.

And then, I just stopped worrying about it and learned to live in a “lived in” house. It was a really big transition for me. Eventually, I taught the girls to clean and learned to chill out a bit and things weren’t so consuming, but WOW, what a time that was.

In my 40’s, I had to go through a divorce and now, I am a single parent with my 9-year old daughter and our 4 French Bulldogs. I work a full-time job and have some church ministries I am involved with, plus I just bought a new house last year. So, my life is pretty busy. I am on the go a lot. As I mentioned, my dogs don’t clean up after themselves and seem to have no intention of ever doing so. My daughter is “in training” and does a good job trying to clean. But, she still sees nothing wrong with putting a tablecloth onto a table that is sticky. You know what I mean?
She knows Mom wouldn’t like it, but she really doesn’t relate to why.

So here we are. Working, schooling, living, learning, and trying to keep the house clean in the middle of everything. Sometimes it is tough to get everything finished. Any single moms out there? I never thought I would be a single parent; it just wasn’t on my list of things to be. I love being a parent and am blessed to have that honor, but let’s face the fact that going it alone can be… tough.

With all that said, cleaning house doesn’t need to be another hurdle for us. Having a dirty house would only cause stress to an already overloaded life. That would be problematic to say the least. So, I’ve had to come up with ways to keep the house clean and still manage to work, help with homework, cook, teach, spend time with my daughter, run errands, shop, manage finances, serve in church ministries, maintain family and friend relationships, and sleep somewhere in there. This list is nowhere near comprehensive, obviously. There is always more to do.

So cleaning is important for health and for my sanity, but sometimes does not make it to the number one spot for the moment. Sometimes I have to budget time. And speaking of budget, guess how much money I’ve spent on miracle cleaning techniques and products. So, some of the things I will present to you will be time-conscious and some of them will be money-conscious and some of them will be just great tips I’ve learned from trying so many things. You can use what works for you; I don’t plan to come by your house for inspection any time soon, so you’re safe.

I will be posting cleaning tips once a week in this section. Some of the things I will cover are:

Cleaning Tips vs. Cleaning Habits
Spot Checks
What Kinds of Cleansers Should be Used?
Secrets of Cleaning
Vinegar, Epsom Salt, Baking Soda, and other Helpful Solutions
Mixing Cleansers
Cleaning up Dog Areas
Budget Cleaning – Making Your Own Cleansers and Soaps
Homemade Air Fresheners
… and more!

I’m very excited about this section. Well, I’m excited about all the sections. But this one is a real eye-opener. Stay tuned… it’s gonna be fun.

Connie