Cleaning Recipes

Being the bunch of allergy prone snifflies that we are ;), I have to be careful about what cleaners I bring into the house. Even if I could bring those strong chemicals in, I wouldn't. My rule is that if it's full of fumes that make me have to open doors, turn on the exhaust and run fans to be able to breathe, it doesn't belong in my house or our lungs.

I have one universal cleaner that I stick with pretty much. I keep it handy in a spray bottle. In a clean spray bottle (with no other cleaner residue), put about 6-8 drops of dish soap. Any dish soap will do, I tend to use palmolive (the orange one) b/c it's antibacterial and thicker or I use the generic version of it because it's just cheaper. Then add rubbing alcohol about 1/5 of the way up. Next, add vinegar until the bottle is a 1/2 full and fill the remaining space with hot water. This cleaner is amazing. No need to buy cleaner to counters, one for stove, one for your tub, etc. This is universal.

It is also great for getting stains out of carpet. I have to say that the vinegar does have a bleaching quality and I use it on tan carpet, so i would be careful of using it on darker colored carpet. Use your own discretion here. I have actually been able to use this clearer to get an entire bottle of RED paint out of the tan carpet and you can't tell it was ever there! When I use it for carpets, I mix it together in a bowl and use hot water-as hot as you can stand it.

You can use this on toilets too. I buy vinegar in the gallon jugs. I actually get the box of 2- 1 gallon bottles from Sam's Club because we use it so often. Once I have have an empty vinegar jug, I will use it to mix an entire gallon jug worth of my handy cleaner in. I just don't add water to it. I add just the dish soap, alcohol and vinegar. I add the water when I fill up the spray bottles.