We're Just in Cleaning Heaven Over Here!

My plan was to come on here and blog about my new window cleaner (homemade with my fellow HHH ladies, of course) but I thought I'd save it for another time since it is yet another homage to vinegar!! I guess it goes without saying that we're obsessed with vinegar here at HHH, but it just works so well. I use it on my hair as a conditioner, I use it as a primary ingredient in my window cleaner, I use it on laundry cycles to disinfect towels, I run it down the drain with baking soda to clear back-ups in sinks AND I mix it with baking soda to form a volatile little paste, which I then scrub into carpets to remove stains. This last use comes in very handy in Ohio winters and springs, when it's nearly impossible to enter the house without dragging mud or dirty water onto the carpets from your shoes, even if you do take them off right away! I'm sure, if pressed, I could think of other uses for vinegar that I happily engage in.

My endorsement of vinegar notwithstanding, I thought I'd talk about the lovely and wonderful All-Purpose Spray Cleaner I recently made. Without being melodramatic, I'm in love with it! It cleans so amazingly that I just made a second bottle of it. Another perk along that same line...it is insanely cheap to make. It requires 2 teaspoons of Borax (and Borax comes in a ginormous sized box at the store...so far I've used it for several batches of laundry detergent, and there's still a ridiculous amount in there) and 1/4 teaspoon of Dr. Bronner's Liquid Castile Soap in peppermint or lavender. This soap usually comes in huge bottles as well, but while at Target the other day I spotted them in travel sizes. These are perfect! They're only $1.99 each, and a 1/4 teaspoon is an insanely tiny amount. Even after using it to make my bottles of cleaner, it looks like I haven't even broken into it properly. From a very cheap investment in the materials, you can easily make a bajillion batches before running out! (yes, I used science to calculate that end number)

This cleaner is the opposite of commercial cleaners. After reading Megan's post about how she cleaned her newly-acquired house with water and vinegar, I remembered back when Carl and I bought our condo almost 7 years ago. The first day we got the keys, I went crazy and scrubbed the whole place down. The woman we bought the place from was a smoker AND a cat owner, so I was determined to erase all traces of grime. On numerous occasions, I would have to actually leave the room I was cleaning, coughing up a storm with my lungs burning and my eyes watering. It's crazy that the chemicals in those cleaners are so strong that they can induce that type of reaction in a person. Not worth it! I wish I would have used vinegar and water, or even this All-Purpose Spray.

This spray truly fulfills the All-Purpose requirement in my house and environs. I keep one bottle in the kitchen, another in the guest bathroom. I use it to wipe down all surfaces in the kitchens and bathrooms, and the other day I ventured into my car and used it to wipe down the dashboard, seats and panels. Worked like a charm! And do you have any idea how amazing it is to thoroughly clean a room and have it smell like lavender after? Instead of coughing and being exposed to toxic levels of chemicals, it smells absolutely perfect. You can create how it smells by adding a different essential oil at the end of the mixing process. I used lavender for both bottles, but lemon would be a good choice for a kitchen cleaner. Vanilla would be great, peppermint too. The possibilities are endless. Without further ado...

The One-and-Only All-Purpose Spray to End All Others

1 16-oz spray bottle
2 tsps Borax
1/4 teaspoon Dr. Bronner's Liquid Castile Soap (I've used lavender and peppermint versions...again, check out Target to get these in travel sizes)
Hot water
Essential oil, if desired

Mix the borax, the tiny amount of liquid soap and the hot water together vigorously. If desired, add 10-20 drops of essential oil. Shake/mix vigorously again. You are ready to clean!