Budget Friendly Cleaning!!

Hi Everyone! I hope you had a WONDERFUL weekend and our ready for the holidays this upcoming weekend! What a great time of the year. However, what a messy time of the year it can be also, right?! Lots of time in the kitchen preparing to celebrate not only Christmas time but the New Year and lets face it even the best cooks out there get messy. If you are like me when you have to go buy those cleaning supplies to keep your house beautiful, you curse a little since it is NOT nice of the budget. Many of my friends are starting to switch to homemade cleaning supplies and tell me that it works just as well as those Clorox Wipes we all use but for just pennies so it's that much better!!! After much research, asking friends, and testing here are the "recipes" for what I found to be great. Enjoy! 


General Surface Cleaner:

• 1 1/2 cups white vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups water

Disinfecting Cleaner:

• 1/4 to 1/2 cup pine cleaning solution such as Pine-Sol brand
• 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cup water

OR

• 1/4 cup lysol complete clean
• 2 cups of water

Window and Glass Cleaner:

• 1/2 cup rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar

OR

• 1/3 Vinegar
• 2/3 Water
• 2TB Lemon Juice

Tips:

As you use the wipes, they will begin to dry out, so add more water and/or cleaning solution as necessary. Allow wipes to stand overnight before continuing to use them after adding more solution.

You may vary the strength of the cleaning solutions as necessary for your household, using more cleaning agents for a stronger wipe, less solution and more water for a milder product.

Use cut paper towels OR old shirts cut into squares. When I use a wipe, I just throw it into the laundry hamper that I use for the rest of my rags.  They get washed with the other cleaning rags, so it’s really no extra work for me.

Another Option I just found today that sounds really promising is:

Mix a cup of water with a good squirt of castile soap, a few drops of tea tree oil, and some white vinegar. The friend who does this just uses a little of each, mixes it up, and pours the solution over the wipes.

Both tea tree oil and vinegar have disinfecting qualities and the castile soap is just for a little extra cleaning power. The tea tree oil and castile soap cover up any smell of vinegar so if you *hate* the smell of vinegar you don't have to worry about that!

You can find both castile soap and tea tree oil at Target, but  the best deals are online, of course, at Amazon or TheNaturalStore.com