Tag Archives: lemons

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.

How to Make Your Own All Purpose Cleaner

How to Make Your Own All Purpose Cleaner

I came across a recipe on Facebook for an all-purpose cleaner you could make yourself. I’m really trying to cut down on the amount of chemicals I use around here, so I thought I would give it a try. Here is the recipe:

*A large jar with a lid (I used a mason jar)
*At least 6 lemons depending on the size of lemons and the size of the jar (you can also use oranges, grapefruit or limes)
*White vinegar

First cut the lemons in half and juice them to make lemonade (recipe for lemonade at the end of the post). Put the rinds in the large jar, fill to the top with vinegar, and put on the lid. Now you just let it sit for two weeks. That’s the hard part. I’m not a very patient person. After two weeks you remove the rinds, strain the liquid, and put the vinegar/citrus liquid in a spray bottle with water. You use one part water to one part of the vinegar/citrus mix. Mine made 1 2/3 cup of the mix so I added that much water.

Lemon rinds in vinegar

I made this two weeks ago, and this morning I got to open the jar and see if this stuff really works. My biggest concern was the smell. I’m not a huge fan of vinegar and I didn’t know if the lemon would over power it enough. To my delight, I opened the jar and didn’t gag! Yay! Good so far! Now the real test – how well does it clean?

I’ve been in my current house for three months now, and since that time I’ve tried and tried to get the shower door in my kids’ bathroom clean. Nothing I use does the trick. I decided to really put this stuff to the test. Again, to my delight (and utter astonishment), it cleaned the soap scum, water spots and mineral deposits off the door when all the many strong chemical cleaners couldn’t do it. Check out my door now!

Shower door with a section cleaned with the vinegar/citrus cleaner

Now for my favorite lemonade recipe:
6 lemons (or one cup of lemon juice – sometimes it takes 7 lemons depending on the size)
1 cup sugar (or one cup honey if you’d like to try something different)
4 cups water
1/2 cup blackberries (optional)

In a small sauce pan add 2 cups of water with one cup sugar. Cook and stir until sugar is dissolved (or use honey instead of sugar if you like). Once dissolved, set aside to cool.

Juice lemons until you get one cup of lemon juice.

Poor lemon juice and sugar water into a pitcher and add 2 cups of water (or more if you like it a little weaker).

If you want to add the blackberries, first put them in the blender, then put through a strainer. Add the liquid and stir. Yum!

*On a side note if you have a left over lemon rind put it in your garbage disposal and turn it on. It cleans and deodorizes while it’s in there!