wrenb | Entries tagged with cleaning

We're running low on toothpaste and I won't get to the store for more until at least tomorrow. So I decided to try a recipe I found on the internet. After some searching I found two that appealed: this one with coconut oil and a simpler one.

Since there's no coconut oil in the house I opted for the basic baking soda, peppermint oil, and water formula. It was very easy and cheap to mix up and simple to use. Unfortunately it tasted pretty bad. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate and it tastes unpleasantly salty, especially while brushing my lower teeth.

Next time I might try the coconut oil version. I first heard about homemade toothpaste with coconut oil on my favorite crunchy mama blog, Clean (I buy her soaps) but since I don't stock stevia and coconut oil in the house I never tried it.

Why would I replace store-bought toothpaste with homemade?

Cost. I buy toothpaste every month or two, and it's $5-$6 a tube. That's $35/year for what Alton Brown calls a unitasker. My 12 lb bag of baking soda cost $8 and it cleans my whole house for over a year.
Knowledge of what I'm exposing myself and my family to. I don't know what all the ingredients in toothpaste (or any other commercial formula cleaning product) are. I buy them with the expectation that they are safe, but I don't know that for certain. Using food grade ingredients reassures me that we aren't swimming in a toxic soup when we clean our teeth.
Fluoride is not a concern. We drink lots and lots of tap water.
Because I can! It makes me feel like a very accomplished, self-sufficient person when I make toothpaste or dishwasher soap etc etc.
Environmental impact. No toothpaste tube, just a reused jelly jar.

Last week the weather was just horribly humid and hot. Our house doesn't have air conditioning, and many of the cabinet doors are made from solid wood. The end result was that the child safety latch on one side of my kitchen sink cabinet didn't latch for several days. We tied a ribbon around the two handles, and that's doing the job for now. I can't wait until the latch works again.

Since the cabinet was no longer reliably child-proof, I cleaned out the cabinet. I pulled all the almost-empty bottles of cleaning formulas out of the cabinet and arrayed them on the kitchen counter. Anything that hadn't been used in a year was thrown out. I know they should have gone to the Household Hazardous Waste place but I just wanted them OUT, you know? I threw out:

Ammonia
Soft scrub
Window cleaner
CLR
Fantastic
Several kinds of "cleaner with bleach"
Toilet bowl cleaner

I moved to the laundry room:

Bleach
Rubbing alcohol
Goo Gone

Now under the sink I have:

Borax
Dishwasher soap (homemade formula)
Bon Ami
Shaker bottle of baking soda
Vinegar spray
All-purpose cleaning spray (homemade formula)
Lemon oil
Murphy's Oil Soap
And tucked away at the back, silver polish and furniture polish
Dustpan and brush

Once I get the laundry room organized and get all of my old housemate's stuff (like the stinky Febreze laundry detergent) out of there I'll probably move the silver polish down there. I just tried cleaning silver with baking soda and it worked, so I can phase out the silver polish.

I've just made my second batch of laundry soap. The last batch lasted 7 months and I made this one with the remaining ingredients -- how's that for economical? :)
Today's version was inspired by my new copy of The Naturally Clean Home (Karyn Siegel-Maier). Since I have a front-loading washing machine, hard water, and usually wash in cold water, I thought I'd better stick to the gel method commonly available on the internet. So I used the ingredients in the book and the method from the internet. Which ended up going as follows:

Ingredients

1 cup grated soap (I use Zote brand -- in the future I'll look for something less scented)
1 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borax
10-15 drops essential oil
A whole lot of water!
3-5 gallon container

Heat 6 cups of water, then dissolve the grated soap into it.
Once dissolved, turn off the heat and add the washing soda and borax, stirring until those are dissolved.
Put 4 cups of hot water into your storage container
Add the soap mixture to the water and mix.
Add another 1 gallon plus 6 cups (that's 22 cups) of cool water to the mixture. Stir to combine.
At this point the soap is cool enough to add 10-15 drops of the essential oil of your choice. I used lavender.
Let sit 24 hours to gel. Or you could pour it into old laundry bottles and then let it sit to gel.

This stuff is a little sludgy, like thick egg drop soup. I use 1/4 cup of soap per load and put vinegar into the fabric softener cup of my washing machine. It works well for us! I have seen notes that say not to use this formulation for cloth diapers since the soap (rather than detergent) can negatively impact the absorbency of the diapers. So we will just be using this for household laundry once the baby comes.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Digging Up The Daylilies

Butterflies of Thought

Entries tagged with cleaning

Homemade toothpaste experiment

I cleaned out under the sink

Homemade Laundry Soap

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