Healthy Baby Home Party #healthybaby


I can’t believe it is time to wrap up this mini-series. I hope you have enjoyed reading along as much as I have had putting this together. It has been so much fun sharing all of the DIY recipes I have learned. I am no where near done making the journey to a green home. I am still in the market for a carpet cleaner and possible stain remover. Anyone have a good recipe?
You know I just couldn’t resist the chance to share my favorites. This certainly isn’t every cleaning product I love using but these are definitely my top 8.
I ordered a set of 36 microfiber cloths from Amazon and absolutely love them. I divided them up so that I have a few in each bathroom and the kitchen. Along with that, I have a set of unpaper towels in the kitchen. We have not completely gotten rid of all paper towels in the house!
Spray bottles are great to have laying around if you have cats around the house for a rainy day. I found a wide variety of colors at Walmart. I have ended up using them for cooking, craft projects, travel and now cleaning products.
Baking soda, vinegar and lemons seem to be the latest fad in DIY home cleaning but they have been around for ages. What is great is that they are so versatile that I almost always have them around the house. Baking soda in the fridge, vinegar for when the hubs is craving Old Bay and vinegar fries and lemon for my Diet Coke water.
I like keeping Meyer’s products and a container of Green Works wipes around for those, just in case moments”. You never know when we have an, “uh ho” and I don’t have time to replenish.
That about wraps things up, for now. I can’t explain the feeling I have now when I am cleaning our house. I feel so much better about the choices I have made for my family.
If you were excited about making your own dusting cloths, wait till you see this! I can’t believe how easy it was to remove some of our staple cleaning products and replace them with 2 spray bottles and a jar of dusting cloths!
For both of these cleaning agents, I picked up inexpensive iGo spray bottles at Walmart for a $1 each. I decided to get 2 sets of a few different colors for each room in the house that would need them.
First up is the All Purpose Cleaner that has now replaced Fantastik, AJAX and Soft Scrub. I can use this cleaner for our counter tops, toilets, showers and floors. I felt like a chemist making this one because the baking soda fizzed when it was poured into the bowl of vinegar.
Mix the vinegar, baking soda and hot water together into a bowl. Cut the lemon and squeeze the juice into the bowl. Then cut the lemon into slices and throw them in the bowl as well. Once the water is cool, pour the mixture into your spray bottle(s). You can also put the lemon slices in as well.
Then I moved onto the window cleaner. I was very excited about this recipe because it called for dish soap which meant I could bust out my Meyer’s which I love! This recipe has now replaced our Windex and will be used to clean all of our windows, mirrors and the glass in our stall shower.
Hey now, it’s getting pretty darn clean over here! How is your house looking?
I am very excited to share one of my most recent finds, DIY Dusting Cloths, with you today. There are quite a few variations on Pinterest but I decided to make a hybrid recipe of my own. For this recipe you will need 2 cups water, 1 cup vinegar, 1 TBSP lemon juice, 2 lemon rinds, and a few drops of olive oil.
You will also want to gather some old t-shirts or invest in some cleaning cloths. I found a great deal for a set of 36 microfiber cloths for $21.49 on Amazon Prime.
In a large bowl I mixed the lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Then I threw in 6 of the microfiber cloths and let them soak up all of the liquid.
While those were soaking I cut the rinds off of 2 lemons. For this project I just need the rinds but used the lemons for my All Purpose Cleaner I will be sharing with you on Saturday.
After the cloths were completely soaked I took one out at a time and rung them out so they were still moist but not dripping. Then I folded 2 of the rinds into each cloth.
I placed the cloths in a glass canister I found at Target for about $5.00. Then I made a label for the front to indicated what ingredients I used. One of the things I cannot stress enough when making your own home cleaners is to not only label them but include what is in them. While I am making sure to only use ingredients that are nontoxic if ingested, a family member or babysitter wouldn’t know that. If someone came across P sucking on one of these (yuck!) they could quickly see that it is not made with anything that would hurt him.
I keep our dusting cloths in the laundry room with the rest of our cleaners, out of reach from Parker. You can read more about our laundry room revap here.
What I LOVE about this recipe:
– The recipe calls for common ingredients I usually have around the house.
– The recipe is really easy and only takes about 10 minutes to whip up a batch.
– I am still able to get that lemon fresh smell without the use of any dangerous chemicals.
– When I am done with a cloths I can wash them and then reuse them!
There is nothing I hate more then a smelly sink. It ruins the happy feeling I get when I have a clean kitchen and gives me an extra super icky feeling when I have a dirty kitchen. In the past, we usually bought garbage disposal fresheners Then I read the warning on the front of the package…
“Caution: Contains a bitter coating to discourage children from swallowing. Do not break pod open or take internally. If broken, wash immediately from skin and clothing. If swallowed induce vomiting and call physician at once. Pod will be irritating to eyes upon contact. In case of eye contact, flush eyes with plenty of water and contact you local poison control center. Keep out of reach of children.”
Seriously, why on earth would I want that in my house. Even if I kept it out of reach of Parker, there was still a danger. Next step, Pinterest. I came across a video of Rachel Ray, my girl crush, with tips on how to keep your garbage disposal smelling fresh.
I ended up combining her tips to make lemon vinegar garbage disposal pods. All I needed was 2 ice cube trays, a lemon and about a cup of distilled white vinegar. I cut them lemon and placed a piece in each section. Then filled each section with the vinegar. Once they were frozen, I emptied them into a Tupperware contain to keep in the freeze. Now all we have to do is grab a few and throw them into the disposal!
A bag of 9 lemons cost around $3 and a bottle of vinegar is around $5. The best part is I am using some of the other lemons and vinegar tomorrow when I share how to DIY dusting cloths! If I was only using them for pods, I would be able to make about 288 costing a whopping $.02/each. A generic bag of 12 garbage disposal pods is around $4.50 which factors out to about $.38/each.
While I love the natural yet effective power of vinegar, I have a hard time stomaching it… When I was at girl scout camp one summer (a long time ago), I participated in an activity where you were blind folded and had to identify liquids based on taste (we held our noses). Guess who got vinegar…? Yep, this girl over here. Absolutely disgusting :/ When I was pregnant, the smell was even worse.
I have found that adding lemons help and I hope that over time, I will be able to teach my brain to think of clean when I smell vinegar just like I do with lemon pledge.