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Last Updated March 5, 2022
Having children made me much more conscious of the products in my home. When I first became pregnant, I started reading all sorts of books about raising children. I’m a type-A person, so of course that would translate to preparing for a baby.
We have so many chemicals in our cleaning products. I distinctly remember the strong smell of toilet cleaner as a child, after my mom cleaned the bathrooms. Over the years, we’ve been marketed to believe we need a specialized cleaner for shower doors, mildew, toilet bowls, granite counters, wood floors, and the list goes on and on.
But do you really need 50 different bottles of chemicals to clean your house? Nope.
So, what do you need?
It’s simple. Baking soda, vinegar and liquid Castile soap. That’s it.
I clean my entire house with these three cleaning agents. No unpronounceable chemicals, no closet full of bottles, just three ingredients, two spray bottles, rags, and a brush.
For the bathrooms, I use diluted vinegar to clean the mirrors, metal fixtures, sinks, and toilet.
Vinegar can kill E.coli, Salmonella, and other gram-negative bacteria. It can even kill the flu virus! It kills the bacteria by crossing the cell’s outer membrane and disrupting the cell’s inner structures, causing it to die. Muahahaha.
Glass & Disinfectant Cleaner:
You can also add 10 drops of essential oils to add a scent to the spray. Some great scents are mint, lavender, and orange. I add this mixture to glass spray bottles.
You can also use a leftover spray bottle from any previous cleaning sprays you’ve purchased. Or my best friend showed me that you can take a spray top from a leftover bottle and screw it onto a glass sparkling water bottle.
To clean the mirrors and metal fixtures, I spray diluted vinegar and wipe dry. I use some old organic cotton baby onesies as rags. They’re the perfect size and a great way to reuse something old. I simply cut the snap buttons off the bottom and sewed the bottom shut.
For the toilets, I sprinkle baking soda into the bowl and spray some diluted vinegar. I let the baking soda and vinegar sizzle while I clean the rest of the bathroom. When I return, I use a toilet brush to scrub and then flush. My toilet brush is plastic but I’ve had it FOREVER. So, there was no sense in buying a new one just because I want it to be plastic-free. But whenever my current one breaks, I’ll definitely replace it with a wooden option.
I sprinkle baking soda and spray the sinks with diluted vinegar and scrub with a wooden brush.
We have quartz counter tops in our bathrooms, so I do not use vinegar on them because it could eat away at the sealant. Instead, I used a diluted liquid castle soap.
All-Purpose Cleaner
Distilled water is just water that has been boiled and then cooled. You do this to avoid any bacteria growth in the mixture.
I love Dr. Bronner’s Liquid Castile Soap. This Citrus scent is perfect for cleaning my house. I buy the gallon-sized bottle because I cannot find a shop that sells it in bulk locally.
There are more and more refill stores popping up that have multi-gallon containers of Dr. Bronner’s soap and allow you to bring your own container for refill.
But since I haven’t found one nearby, I opted for the largest bottle I could find online. While it is a plastic bottle, I only use about a quarter cup a month which means this bottle will last me over 5 years. And considering the number of all-purpose cleaner bottles this replaces over 5 years, I’m not going to sweat it.
However, if I had found the Refill Shoppe before buying my gallon-sized bottle, I would have gone with this option. They send you a pouch of various liquids, like Castile soap, and you dump the liquids into your own container and send the pouch back in a pre-paid envelope. The shop cleans, sterilizes and reuses them!
For any sort of surface that needs to be disinfected, I used the diluted vinegar spray. This includes cutting boards, knives or anything that has touched raw meat.
By making your own sprays and using simple ingredients you avoid harmful chemicals and disposable plastic cleaning bottles.
As I talked about in Plastic-Free, Zero Waste, and Minimalism, one of the unintended benefits of plastic-free living is the beauty. By making my own cleaning sprays, I avoid a bunch of marketing screaming at my eyes when I open my cabinet.
Instead of 10 different bottles of assorted colors and brands, I have two beautifully brandless bottles in a bucket with rags and a brush. The simplicity of it makes me happy which makes cleaning the bathrooms a little less crappy (pun intended).
What do you think? Can you ditch the specialized cleaning sprays? (After they’re used up, of course.) Or do you already clean with vinegar and Castile soap? Tell me in the comments!
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I live a generally plastic-free lifestyle but I’m not 100% plastic-free…yet. So, to see where the last 1% of my trash was coming from, I started keeping track of all of it. Here’s all my trash for February!