Tag Archives: green

How To Make Your Own Dusting Spray

How To Make Your Own Dusting Spray

It was that dreaded time of the month again – time to dust the living room. I really don’t like to dust, and I usually make my kids do it. I should probably dust more often than I do…but I don’t. This time I grabbed my orange scented Pledge dusting spray and thought to myself “Hmmm, can I make something that is as good as this…without the chemicals?

I found three dusting spray recipes online and tried all three. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like any of them. After messing around with the recipe I came up with one I liked. Feel free to change it any way you like. One recipe I found had 1/2 cup of olive oil in it (wow, that’s a lot!) and the other two only had 2 tablespoons (that just didn’t seem like enough). You may like your spray a little more or a little less oily than mine. I would start out with the 2 tablespoons and add more as you see fit.

Here’s my homemade dusting spray recipe:
4 teaspoons light olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 cups water
Spray bottle (16 oz size or larger)
*Instead of using the lemon juice and the white vinegar, you could use 1/2 cup of the homemade kitchen cleaner that I made in an earlier post. I tried it both ways and like the one with my homemade cleaner in it better because the vinegar smell wasn’t as strong.

Simply put all the ingredients in your spray bottle and shake to mix it up. Because it has water and oil in it, you’ll have to give it a little shake each time you use it. This gave my furniture a nice shine and it made me feel good knowing I wasn’t spraying things down with a bunch of chemicals. Plus this recipe is super cheap!

This mixture is much lighter in color than the homemade kitchen cleaner but, just so you or your family don’t get confused, it’s probably a good idea to label your spray bottle. You might even want to include the recipe you used so you’ll remember how to make it next time.

Make Your Own Powder Carpet Deodorizer

Make Your Own Powder Carpet Deodorizer

I love a house that smells good! I used to use a lot of room sprays and carpet deodorizers until they started to bother my daughter. Something in them was causing her eyes to itch and made it hard to breathe (who knows what kinds of chemicals are in those things). I decided to start making my own.

It turns out that making your own carpet deodorizer is VERY simple. All you need is an empty jar with a lid, baking soda, and your favorite essential oil. You can buy essential oils from your favorite health food store or from Mountain Rose Herbs (there is a link for them at the bottom of this article). For more information on essential oils, check my last article about adding essential oils to an all-purpose, make at home, kitchen spray.

Put one cup of baking soda into a jar, add 20 drops of your favorite scent (I added 1/4 cup baking soda and 5 drops of oil and then kept repeating in this pattern to make sure the oil was all throughout the jar), shake it up and let it sit for 12 hours with the lid on. There ya go! It’s done! Sprinkle a little on your carpet or furniture and let it sit for a minute or two and then vacuum it up. Today my house smells like Geranium Rose. I think when I run out, I’ll make a lavender one next!

Mountain Rose Herbs