Homemade Cleaning Supplies

Carpet deodorizer, works on upholstery too!

Lately I have been trying my hand at some home made cleaning products and wanted to share my success and failure with you all. There are so many advantages to trying to home made route, it's cheaper, it's natural and it's fun! The down side is that it sometimes doesn't work as well as the chemical packed commercial products but I figured it is at least worth trying out some home made options. With me being pregnant again I feel like it's an especially good time to try a more natural option so I'm not exposing my baby to anything nasty (not that I spend enough time cleaning that it really matters!).

I recently tried two natural alternatives to store bought cleaning and household products. Home made carpet deodorizer and home made laundry freshener. Both were made using some lovely essential oils I had ling around and had no other use for.

The carpet deodorizer was a big success and so easy to make and use! All you do is mix a cup of baking soda with 3 or 4 drops of essential oil and mix well (I just shook mine around in my jar a lot). The you sprinkle some of this magical powder on to your carpet and vacuum up after a few minutes. I hate carpet and can't wait for the day when we get rid of all of ours but in the mean time this takes the funky, musty smell away and leaves the room smelling fantastic! I used peppermint essential oil and it smells so lovely and fresh, it's the perfect easy Spring clean to lift your mood.

The other natural product I attempted was a laundry freshener. Since we cloth diaper I can't use sweet smelling detergent or dryer sheets and I really miss having nice smelling clothes fresh out of the dryer. I read a tutorial online for making a dryer ball that would freshen your laundry so I thought I would give it a try. You take some old mismatched socks, ball one of them up inside the other, put s few drops essential oil on the inside sock and tie the outside sock off to inclose the whole thing.

This one didn't really work for me unfortunately. The sock dryer ball smelled really good on it's own (I used my peppermint oil again) but it didn't do anything for my laundry which was really disappointing. I've heard that you can also use bags of dried herbs so i may try that next. If I do I'll let you know how it goes.

In any case, I got one good cleaning product out of my experimenting and am eager to try more. If anyone has any good home made cleaner recipes for me let me know!