Gaia Rodale - DIY Cleaning Products: Homemade Cleaning Recipes for Sustainable Living

DIY Cleaning Products

Homemade Cleaning Recipes for Sustainable Living

Gaia Rodale

2014

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Printed in the United States of America

I want to thank you and congratulate you for downloading, DIY Cleaning Products: Homemade Cleaning Recipes for Sustainable Living.

If you havent really considered making your own cleaning products before now, it is very likely that by the end of this guide, you will be wondering why you waited so long. Doing this yourself is easy, saves a ton of money, and ensures you know what chemicals and other substances are entering your familys environment.

From a self-sufficiency and sustainability perspective, using homemade, natural ingredient based cleaning products simply makes the most sense. But as a homesteader, one of the other things I am always interested in is doing things in ways which require the least amount of resources. In my house, money is definitely a resource we dont want to squander. Once I realized just how much money I could save by taking the time to make things myself, learning to make everything I need in order to keep things clean became a priority.

This guide introduces you to DIY cleaning products, provides a list of the most common ingredients in cleaning product recipes, and lists any special tools and equipment you need to get started. The majority of the guide is packed with recipes for all the different kinds of cleaning solutions you need to clean your house from top to bottom.

With the information here, you will be able to start making your own laundry soap, furniture polish, glass cleaner, and everything else you will need to keep the inside of your homestead looking and smelling cleaner than ever before.

Happy Homesteading!

Gaia Rodale

W hen new homesteaders, or really anyone, ask me why I make my own cleaning products, my answer is always the same why wouldnt I make my own cleaning products. This is a skill and a task that fits right in with my view of the world that made me become a homesteader in the first place.

I n an average month, we can go through one and a half bottles of traditional, commercial, eco-friendly laundry soap. At around $12 a bottle, that is almost $200 a year. Might not sound like that much until I tell you that I can make 6 months worth of laundry soap for about $20. Laundry soap is the most extreme example, but when you add up the cost of all the sprays, powders, scrubs, and special cleaners found in most houses, you would be shocked at how much of your hard earned money you are spending to have a house that isnt any cleaner than mine but probably smells a lot more like chemicals than mine ever will again.

S ome people might consider my need to have a couple months worth of supplies on hand to be a minor case of hoarding. I consider it to be one of the best ways I can take care of my family. My little stockpile means I can buy things when they are on sale and that we rarely run out of anything. But stockpiling takes space and, using the laundry soap example above, it takes the same amount of room to store the supplies needed for one 6 month batch of laundry soap as it does to store 1 commercial bottle. I could store enough raw materials to keep my familys clothes clean for 8 years in the space it would take to store the number of commercial bottles I would need to equal the cleaning power of that one 6 month batch.

Additionally, when we buy into the commercial cleaner racket, we start believing what the companies that make those products want us to believe. We start believing that we need one type of cleaner for the shower and one type of cleaner for the tub and one type of cleaner for the bathroom and one type of cleaner for the kitchen. But guess what?

Dirt and germs are the same no matter where you find them in the house. And while you do need different kinds of cleaners of some specific purposes, you dont need 3o different bottles of cleaners, powders, and scrubs to clean the house. Imagine how much space you could free up in your bathroom closet or under the sink if you made the cleaning products you actually need rather than the products someone wants you to believe you need.

B y researching and learning to use the kinds of ingredients my great-grandmother used to clean her house, I have reduced my dependence on the commercial supply chain and lessened the commercialization of one more aspect of our lives. While I do still need to procure the basic ingredients from which to make my cleaning supplies, I can easily stockpile these items for future use without turning my pantry into a household cleaner storage room. My understanding of which things do what when it comes to cleaning also makes it possible for me to make my own recipes for specific cleaning needs.

W e are only now beginning to really understand the long term ramifications of the chemical revolution on our local environment and on the planet as a whole. Commercial cleaning products are packed with chemicals and provided in large plastic containers that, even when recycled, take time and resources to reuse. I like to reuse plastic containers from other things like 32 ounce yogurt tubs, bottles that used to hold rice, and 5 gallon buckets to hold my homemade cleaning products. Since all but two of the main products I use come in cardboard boxes, which can be reused/recycled/burned in the wood stove, using the cleaning products I make myself is almost a zero sum game when it comes to producing waste.

I have read too many examples where chemicals that were once deemed safe were later found to cause everything from birth defects to cancer to ever embrace the idea that all the chemicals we are being exposed to on a daily basis right now are harmless. Making the products I use to clean my familys home is one way I can work to reduce our exposure to potentially harmful chemicals.