Like Maggie mentioned, many common household cleaners have really gross toxic problems. We don’t want to have those kind of chemicals in our apartment, nor do we want to put those chemicals in our environment. You can go out and buy new, safe alternatives – or if you’re broke like us – learn how to make cleaning products with kitchen supplies like white vinegar, lemon juice, and baking soda! It’s super cheap and creates less waste (especially if you buy a HUGE jug of vinegar).
The internet is FULL of ideas*. We use mostly white vinegar and/or baking soda to clean our counters, shower, toilet, mirrors, and floors (all 3 square feet of them). A spray bottle with half vinegar and half water and a rag or sponge is all you need! As well as some baking soda, which acts as a natural scrub on the stove or counter top. For the toilet, we pour some vinegar in, sprinkle a little baking soda and let it effervesce (remember making volcanoes with this stuff? It makes cleaning the toilet more fun!) for a few minutes before scrubbing it clean. Baking soda can also be used as a deodorant in smelly places (like most people use it for in their fridge or freezer.) Lemon juice is also helpful, especially for its yummy smell. It’s actually kind of fun to create your our cleaning products. :)
Speaking of smells, we use Method aroma spray, mostly because we seem to have an ever-present stench of something in our apartment. We bought some Glade glass air fresheners, but they are kind of overpowering for our small space. They do smell fantastic though (and we’re psyched about the use of recyclable glass instead of plastic). The Method air freshener is much lighter and helps eliminate the Smell. We have also tried boiling vinegar on the stove and putting a cotton ball with vanilla extract in the fridge to get rid of mysterious smells. Both worked pretty well. Oh! I just thought of another trick – pour some vinegar and water in your reusable coffee mug and let it sit for a few hours to get rid of that nasty stale coffee smell. Just don’t forget to wash it afterwards or your coffee will taste funky…I still cringe when I remember thinking the coffee pot was filled with hot water and using it to brew some tea…Yeah, that was nasty.
Time to get our apartment presentable for my sister’s visit this weekend. Happy cleaning!
*Seriously, best website EVER for this kind of stuff. It’s not frilly at all, not actually as much a website as a very long list of cleaning ideas. It’s really great though, honestly!
That website link no longer works, unfortunately. :/
Do you have any other similar website recommendations?