I've seen a lot of "green cleaning" pins on Pinterest lately, and while I'm not a control freak when it comes to what ingredients are in my cleaners, I do like to save some money when I can and a lot of the recipes being pinned use really simple (and cheap) ingredients that pinners rave about. So, I figured I'd give it a try!
I've found several recipes for all-purpose cleaner, window/mirror cleaner, furniture polish, and bathroom cleaner but I haven't gotten any spray bottles yet so those will have to wait a little while. This week I focused on dishwasher detergent.
I started with this recipe for homemade dishwasher detergent cubes. My grandma got me started on Cascade Complete dishwasher packs a while back and they work really well, but those little things are dang expensive! I knew there had to be a better way :-) This recipe is really simple and I was able to find all of the ingredients in one place. The ingredients and amounts are:
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
1/4 cup epsom salt
lemon juice
plastic ice cube trays
Louise says to mix the borax, washing soda, and epsom salt together in a bowl until well combined. Then, scoop out one cup of the blended mixture into a separate bowl and add 4 tablespoons of lemon juice to it. The mixture will fizz while you stir it, and then it turns into a paste. Take the paste and press it down into your ice cube trays. Just repeat that process until you're out of powder, then let the ice cube trays sit for a few hours while the paste dries out. Once it's dry, just pop the cubes out of the trays and they're ready to use! This picture is from Louise's blog - mine looked the same.
So far they're working very well for me! They even got all of oil out of some empty sugar scrub jars I washed so they're good in my book :-)
Our apartment is so small that it really doesn't take very long to clean, but I got a surprise while vacuuming this last time! My dog Axel has short, fine hair that blends pretty well with most anything so it doesn't stand out. Don't get me wrong, he sheds and you can see it but it's just mildly noticeable and easily cleaned up. This is my first time experiencing "the Spring shed" with Joe's dog Tank who has long black hair that gets ALL OVER EVERYTHING (those of you with labs, you know what I mean) and he has that soft fluffy undercoat that comes out when the cold weather goes away.
So, Tank has to stay in a crate during the day because he's a spoiled brat "handful" and gets into things while we're gone. We cover the crate with a sheet because he's scared of EVERYTHING and likes to hide in there, so we can't really see the bottom of said crate very often. Axel used to have to be in a crate when he was younger and I never had an issue with it getting overly hairy, so I haven't really paid Tank's crate as much attention as I should have, apparently. While vacuuming the apartment, I decided to move his crate so I could vacuum the carpet underneath. I was greeted by this disgusting mess:
This picture really doesn't do it justice - it looked so much more hideous in person! I'm pretty sure I shrieked and made a face something like this:
At first I thought Tank had defied all laws of nature and given birth to hairy black puppies behind his crate, but luckily it was just the largest collection of hair off of an animal I've ever seen. Needless to say, now that I know he's hoarding enough hair to make 100 toupees for Donald Trump behind his crate, I will be moving it every time I vacuum.
YUCK!!!!!!!!
I have officially joined the "I own a fuzzy dark-haired shedding machine" club. I guess this was the initiation ceremony?
Happy cleaning everyone!
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