Good old soap and water...

Go into any variety store or grocery store and you will find a bewildering array of products for cleaning your home.  Look around online and you will find many companies eager and willing to sell not only the typical cleaning products, but "natural and safe" products as well, all at an inflated price.

Being a confirmed penny pincer, I am generally skeptical of most of these items.  Not only are they expensive, but in general, most of them are not needed at all.  Let me tell you what I use to clean and disinfect with.

For general cleaning, I use plain bar soap, a wash rag and water.  If something needs to be disinfected, just get an opaque spray bottle and fill it with Hydrogen Peroxide which is very inexpensive.

If something is exceedingly greasy, I might add a little ammonia to the washing water and wear vinyl gloves when using that.

To clean windows and mirrors, here is the recipe I use.  If the windows are actually dirty, I first wash them off with the soap and water and wash rag.  Then, I spray on a small amount of this solution and dry it with a sheet of crumbled newspaper:

Window cleaning solution - to fill a 32 ounce bottle -

Mix together 1/4 cup rubbing alcohol, 1/3 cup vinegar, and add enough water to fill the spray bottle.  Shake it up a bit.  If your water is VERY hard, you might want to try distilled water, but I have never found that to be necessary.

To clean the bathtub, I rub a bar of soap onto a wet nylon scrubbing pad like these:

then I just scrub away and rinse!  There is No Need to use chemical things that can poison you and the environment. If you clean often enough, the job is very easy.  I do ours at least once a week.  If you have a larger family (there are only 2 of us) you might need to clean your bathtub a bit more often.

If I need a "scouring" powder, I just use plain baking soda.

So... my cleaning "products" are....water, plain bar soap, baking soda, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, and rubbing alcohol.

If I could only have ONE of these, it would be the soap, water and a wash cloth.  

How did we ever get convinced that we need to buy (and fill our closets with) all that stuff?

Luffa Sponges... something new to me!

Last year (2014) my Garden Fairy and her family were still living with us.

That is her, helping to bring in the harvest.  We are just beginning to come out of winter, here, and this picture makes me smile "ear to ear."  If you look up there, in the upper right hand corner, you can just see part of a tower of Luffa gourds that she grew.  Earlier this winter, she came and took a number of them home, but there were quite a few of them left hanging there.  Here is what Luffa's look like when they are growing.  We were amazed at how prolific they were!  They seemed to threaten to take over the garden!

Yesterday the temperature actually got up to 60 F here and it was a beautiful sunny day, so I spent some time wandering around outside trying to see if I could find some dandelion greens.  Sadly, it seems to be too early for those, however, I did find a few oyster mushrooms!  I sauteed those in a little butter.  Oh, they were good!

I also noticed the poor looking Luffa gourds still hanging around looking forlorn, so I pulled some down and they were very easy to peel!  I then brought them in the house, cut them into lengths and removed the seeds.  After that, I carefully hand washed them in some warm soapy water and let them dry.  Voila!  Luffa Sponges!

You would think that at 66 years old, I would have had experience with them before.  I haven't.  I was aware of them, but had never had one or used one.  They are very nice.  When wet, they become soft, but still abrasive enough that they will make an excellent bath sponge.  

By the way, my Garden Fairy is due to have a baby boy in about 3 weeks.  :)

Spring Cleaning?

I gather from what I have read that the practice of "Spring Cleaning" came about because homes were heated with wood and/or coal and that made the house get quite dirty over the winter. We do heat with wood and things get pretty dusty, but the coal would be worse. We did use coal one winter a long time ago. We had a wood/coal stove in our dining room. It was "family night." I had set the table with white linen and all of our nicest things for a special meal. I was standing there and suddenly the stove said "poof!" and black soot settled all over our nice table. I stood there for a few moments, trying to decide how to react. The children were all looking at me. I said, calmly, "Well, I guess I'll have to start over." And that's what I did! That was the last winter we ever heated with coal, though.

I began Spring Cleaning today. All I got done was the bathroom. I cleaned everything in there. It looks and smells so nice now! I got inspired because I ran across some good homemade cleaner recipes on someone's blog. And of course now I can't remember which one, so forgive me, whoever it is. Please?

Bath Tub Scrub

1 cup Borax
1 cup baking soda

It worked wonderfully well!

Glass Cleaner

Take a spray bottle and fill it up to within about 1 inch of where the skinny part starts, with plain white vinegar. Add about 1 inch of rubbing alcohol. That's it! It is as good as or better than purchased glass cleaner. And the alcohol makes it evaporate nicely and also masks the smell of the vinegar.

All - Purpose Cleaner

To the glass cleaner, add 1 Tablespoon of Borax and shake it up well.

I used this for the walls, counters, floor and everything else.

I used the bath tub scrub in the toilet bowl.

And I used about a million (?) microfiber cloths before it was over.

Whew! I'm worn out. Maybe I should do the next room NEXT spring?? ;)