Goodbye Chemicals and Expensive Cleaners

It may surprise you to know that until now, I have used standard cleaning products and chemicals in my house. It's always been on my mind that with my two little people, I should be eliminating them but apart from my surface spray and no longer washing my hair with shampoo (more about that another time), I've never made the full transition.

I follow a few sustainable type pages on Facebook and recently signed up to a free tutorial with one of them. During this tutorial, I learnt how easy it is to create your own dishwasher powder and that got me thinking, if this is so easy, then surely the rest will be too?

So, I've been researching and choosing eco friendly recipes with my good pal Google and yesterday, instead of doing a food cooking session I did a household cleaner cook up!

I made my own dishwasher powder, laundry powder, mould remover, fridge wipe (which is actually a mirror and glass cleaner too) and a trusty batch of surface cleaner. It's a good start but now that I know how easy it is, I'll be tackling the rest of the household chemicals within days.

The supermarket had pretty much everything I needed. Pure soap (4 bars) for $4.40, Lectric laundry soda $4.07 for 1kg, Bi-carb soda $3.70 for 1kg, salt $1.20 for 1kg and white vinegar $1.60 for 2l.

Things I had to find elsewhere were bulk amounts of citric acid $8 for 1kg and pure essential oils (lemon, clove and I already had tea tree from the supermarket). I bought these online but I'm sure the local health food store would have stocked them too.

A cup of this and a drop of that and I have a very good start to a household cleaning kit and whilst the initial outlay for the essential oils was a bit expensive, the rest of it was dirt cheap, certainly compared to the cost of pre packaged dishwasher tablets, laundry powder etc.

It costs less, it's better for my family and the environment, I think this is a no brainer! I only wish I had have done it earlier.

Keep an eye out for future blogs where I share the recipes for my eco friendly products. Or for a look at a past blog I did on how to make surface cleaner, click here.