Cleaners, detergents and soaps, oh my!

***I don't really know that anyone would anyway, but I ask kindly that you not link this post to pinterest. I don't really want the whole pinterest world being referred back to my personal, family blog, with pics of the kids and such. Maybe someday I'll have a snazzy craft blog and you can pin away! But until then, if you'd like to copy and paste the info to your own computer and pin it from there, feel free! You can even save the photo's from this post if you'd like. Thanks for understanding!***

I've always been a little nervous to make my own cleaning products. I was always afraid that I would inadvertently mix something that would create toxic fumes and poison my family. Or create a massive explosion under my sink. Or melt off my hand like Mario falling into the mystery lava. I realize thats a little extreme. But... ya know. It is scary.

But as I've started to do a little research (and I mean a LITTLE, I'm letting other mommy bloggers do all the work here ;)) I've realized most of this stuff is all made from the same small handful of products. Stuff like baking soda, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, castile, and essential oils.

All of you who've been making your own homemade, natural cleaners for years and are rolling your eyes with a collective "duh!", give me a break! I'm still learning!!!

As promised on FB, I'm going to share all of the recipes for the cleaners, detergents, and soaps I've been making! I've had so much fun making all of these. And on top of the whole safer/healthier/greener reasons, its going to save us so much money. And that was really the reason I wanted to start all of this to begin with.

From left to right....

Stainless Steel Cleaner
I'm using this one on all of my silver kitchen appliances. If you have even one child and a silver refrigerator, you know how that thing needs to be wiped down daily. (The fridge, not the child. Well... the child too.) My tea kettle is also stainless steel and it constantly has splatters from frying. I actually didn't even realize how dirty it was until I cleaned it with this stuff!

2 parts white vinegar
1 part water
a few drops of dawn dish soap
And if you need a little extra scrubbing power, spray the area, then sprinkle it with baking soda and let it sit for a minute. Then scrub. This is how I usually do it with my sink.


Countertop Cleaner
My counters are Corian. I felt like I'd tried everything under the sun to clean them and NOT leave streaks. The only thing that seemed to work was windex. But the Corian website says that windex will dull the surface after a while. *sigh* I researched it on the internet and everyone (even the makers) said that the only way to have it not streak is to dry it. Seriously? I have to clean my counters so many times a day, you want me to DRY them everytime too? I'll live with streaks, thank you.

Until now! I spray them down with this stuff, wipe them down with a wet, hot washcloth and voila! They dry with no streaks! Whoo hoo!!!

1 part rubbing alcohol
7 parts water
a few drops of Dawn
a few drops of lavendar essential oil (it makes it smell good AND its a natural antibacterial agent. double bonus)


Glass cleaner
I actually found a more "natural" recipe for this one, but like I said before, this is really more about cost for me than it is about being natural. We go through a ton of Windex over here. And this one works really good.

1/8 cup ammonia
1/4 cup rubbing alcohol
1 drop of laundry detergent
Fill the rest of the bottle with water

Remember my fear of accidentally making an explosive? Well, don't mix this cleaner with vinegar. Or bleach. Ever.

OK so....


Febreze
I realize this isn't technically a cleaner. But I really love febreze. Its awesome to freshen up carpets, curtains, couches, throw pillows.... Good stuff. And this is so easy to make, I figured I might as well!

1/8 cup of your favorite fabric softener (my fav is Downy Clean Breeze)
2 tablespoons baking soda
Fill the rest of the bottle with water


Antibacterial Spray
I didn't get a picture of this one yet.... because its in a hairspray bottle. ;) Once again, the point is to save money and if I go buy a bunch of pretty bottles, it kinda defeats the point. Anyway, this one was too easy not to make, but I think I'm going to just combine the concept with my Counter cleaner. It already has a little bit of Lavendar in it, I think I'm just going to add more instead of two different sprays.

1 cup water
20 drops lavendar essential oil


Hand Soap
Now, my first batch was kind of a failure. It was WAY runny. And because its green, it basically looked like a huge pot of snot. Sick. But I later found out its because I used Dove bar soap. And thats when I read that you can use this recipe for almost ANY bar of soap BUT Dove. Because its truly 1/4 moisturizer, it doesn't firm up the way other bars do. But since I now have a gallon of it, we're using it anyway!!!

1 8oz. bar of soap (some are around 4.25 ounces, I would just use 2 of those)
2 tablespoons glycerin
Grate the bar(s) of soap while you are heating up 1 gallon of water on the stove. Add the soap shavings to the water and stir till its all melted. Then add the glycerin. Let the mixture cool, uncovered, for 10-12 hours. If the mixture is too thick (which mine was NOT), you can add water slowly while mixing with a hand mixer/beater thingy. If its too runny, you have to heat it up again, add more glycerin, let it cool another 10-12 hours and pray that its thicker next time. Its a lot of work, I know, but once you get it down, just follow your same recipe each time.

The snot batch

Now, I had to search high and low for liquid glycerin. The site where I found this recipe said it could be found at any Grocery or drug store. THEY LIED. Ok, maybe they weren't lying but they don't live in my town, that's for sure. I tried Target, Kroger and Walgreens. Walgreens was the only one that told me they could order it but it was like $8 for 4 ounces. Uh, no thank you. I finally found some in the (duh) soap making aisle at Hobby Lobby. $3.47 for 8oz. Much better.

My super cute assistant

You know.... technically I could just add a little castile soap with water and put it in a pump and it would make a perfectly fine hand soap. But again, I'm really going for CHEAP here. Not trying to get all organicy. Its just a nice byproduct of some of these recipes.

Also, you should note that whatever the consistency of the liquid soap recipe above, it will not quite suds up the way that store soaps do. They add weird extra ingredients to make them lather up more than they naturally would because dumb consumers people think that more bubbles mean they're getting cleaner. But I did find one recipe that I really like (and is way more complicated) for body wash that is supposedly really rich and lathery.

Is lathery a word? Is organicy?

Whatever, moving on...


Laundry Detergent!
I'm SUPER excited about this one because obviously, its the one we go through the fastest. Like, eight-people-in-our-family kind of fast. And I found like 439 million recipes for this online and from friends.

Yes. 439 million. :p

After looking over several I realized that its all basically some variation of the same recipe. So I decided to start with one that is tried and true by America's favorite large family, the Duggars. :)


4 cups hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 cup Arm&Hammer super washing soda
1/2 cup borax

Grate bar of soap and add to a pot with the hot tap water. Continue to heat and stir until its all melted. Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Stir in the melted soap, washing soda and Borax until its all dissolved. Then fill the bucket to the top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let it sit overnight to thicken. 

This is what it looks like before it thickens. 

What results is a massive vat of nasty looking gelatinous goop. If you've got that, you're on track. I didn't get a picture... gross.

Stir it up up good and try to break up the thick jello-like chunks. Then with a funnel, scoop it into empty containers for storage. (I used milk jugs and old liquid detergent containers.) At this point you still have a concentrated mix that still needs to be halved with water! Wow, that's a lot of laundry detergent.

Add half of the concentrated detergent and half water. 

Because of the gel consistency and the need to add water and because you have to shake it before each use, I decided to use my "pumper" pitcher.

There you have it!

This recipe makes 10 gallons, but I halved it because I didn't have a 5 gallon bucket.

-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)  <-- Thats what I'M talkin' about!!

Whew. You made it. Thanks for reading all my recipes and soap making, money saving adventures! Please feel free to comment with thoughts, questions, or your own recipes!

Next week I'll be making the next few things on my list: dishwasher detergent, body wash, and wrinkle releaser! But first have to pick up some epsom salts and guar gum. Whatever the heck that is. More posts coming soon! Happy cleaning!