Green Cleaning your Tub, Microwave, and Dishes

One of the things that I have been doing more and more frequently is finding cheaper, more natural alternatives to many of the harsh and expensive cleaners that we use in our day to day life. And I have found a few fantastic replacements that have helped save us some considerable money! I’ve been collecting idea on my “Homemade Cleaners” board on Pinterest. Note: I haven’t tried all of these as of yet.

Here are three of my favorites:

Tub Scrub (from Martha Stewart)

• 1 c. Baking Soda
• 1 tsp. liquid soap (I use Dawn)
• several drops of antibacterial essential oil (I use Eucalyptus Oil)
• Add water to make paste

This tub scrub is the best tub cleaner I have ever used. It works as well as Soft Scrub (which is what we used to use), but since you make the batch fresh each time, you don’t end up with clumpy hardened residue at the bottom of the bottle that is near unusable. I found that I didn’t have to scrub nearly as hard with my scrub brush using this tub scrub mix, and as a bonus, I find the process almost relaxing because of the eucalyptus oil.

And, because it’s made with safe ingredients, Goober can help me mix it up, since he isn’t prone to sticking just anything in his mouth. He loves helping by adding the water in!

I have also used this to scrub the nastiness off my shower mat.

Water + Vinegar to Clean Microwave (from Crafty Little Gnome)

The site recommends using a bowl of water, with a splash of vinegar, and heating it in the oven for 5 minutes. I have done this and it works great!

However, thanks to a friend, I have modified this slightly.

I take our current dish sponge and soak it with water. I set it on a plate and add some vinegar and water to the plate itself as well. THEN, I microwave it. Not only does this clean the microwave, but it disinfects your sponge.

WARNING: Let the plate/sponge sit in the microwave briefly after the 5 minute heating, or make sure you pull it out with something other than your bare hand.

Dishwasher Detergent

This one was actually one of the first cleaners that I started making at home, but also the one that I found the hardest to find the right mix for.

Initially, I started with this mix

• 1 c. borax
• 1 c. washing soda
• 1/2 c. citric acid
• 1/2 c. kosher salt

But, I found that this didn’t get my dishes quite clean. It left an odd residue on things – especially plastics (and with a toddler, I have a LOT of plastics).

On top of that, I found some information indicating that Borax can be a hormone disruptor (see here and here for additional information).  Since that’s the sort of crap that I was looking to avoid in switching to natural alternatives, I obviously began to quest for a better detergent.

In my new search, I found a far more simple detergent recipe on the blog Little House in the Suburbs, which included a wonderful series of explanations behind why and how certain products work, and recommendations on how to find the right mix. After reading the post, my detergent now looks like this:

• 1 c. washing soda
• 1/4 c. citric acid (I buy food grade citric acid, not Lemi-Shine like the blogger does)
• 1 (SMALL!) squirt of Dawn **Updating with Note: The Dawn doesn’t go into the powder mix. It goes directly into the dishwasher along with a Tbsp of the above mix**
• For rinse agent: Vinegar (if you’re having trouble seeing the fill level in the rinse agent dispenser, try adding some food coloring to the vinegar to make it more apparent)

I can’t emphasize the SMALL squirt of Dawn enough. I usually put the Dawn in, but not always. In particularly, I make sure it’s in there if I have a lot of greasy dishes. My husband has also learned to underestimate how much Dawn should go in, since I came home one day to Goober telling me “Bubbles from dishwasher, daddy make mess! Clean it up!”

For the record, if you DO overestimate the amount of liquid soap, spray vinegar in your dishwasher to help kill the bubble mess.