Cleaning supplies are so expensive and full of chemicals. It’s amazing how much money you have to spend to have a clean house while keeping it green. To save money, I started looking into alternative, DIY green cleaners. This is how I discovered the magical cleaning powers of vinegar! Vinegar has amazing properties to clean your house without all the chemicals. Plus it is a whole lot cheaper than store-bought cleaners.

Califf Creations was supplied with a free copy of the book Green Homekeeping. This by no means influenced the review.

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WHY VINEGAR WORKS

It’s the acidic properties of vinegar that makes it an effective cleaner. The acidity cuts through buildups, leaving a clean surface. The same properties make it great at removing microbial contamination, making it a natural disinfectant. For any surfaces that are more delicate, it’s important to dilute the vinegar with warm water.

Using a basic substance, like baking soda, in combination will create a reaction that cuts through grease. That increases the cleaning power of vinegar. Plus, baking soda is a mild abrasive, which assists in cleaning as well.

Admittedly, vinegar doesn’t smell very good. Although it works really well to clean, you might not like the residual smell of vinegar that is left in your house. To counteract this smell, add some essential oils! Lemon is a great oil to add to get that nice citrus smell. Lavender is another one that I really like.

CLEANING THE KITCHEN

Reducing the number of chemicals used in cleaning your kitchen is really important for your family’s health. Using a natural cleaner, like vinegar, reduces the chemicals left behind when you clean. This keeps your food cleaner since it doesn’t come into contact with all those chemicals.

The Oven

The oven gets so much gunk built up during cooking and can get really disgusting. This buildup can also become hazardous if left alone as it could catch fire while cooking. It takes a lot of effort to clean an oven and it is a job I hate to do. Using chemicals to cut through all that gunk never seemed like a good idea to me. Those chemicals are left on your oven and can evaporate as you cook, possibly contaminating your food.

With a simple mixture of baking soda and vinegar, you can naturally cut through that junk and then easily wipe it up. Simply spread baking sodas all over the oven and then spray it with vinegar from a spray bottle. The reaction that occurs will create a bubbling action that will break up all that gunk. No more elbow grease to wipe up that mess!

Stainless Steel

I have a lot of stainless steel in my kitchen. My appliances are all stainless steel, and so is my sink. Every cleaner I have tried leaves streaks and residue behind. Everything may be sanitized, but it still looks really dirty. Enter the magical cleaner vinegar! I tried using vinegar and there were no streaks and no residue left behind. It was amazing! Cleaning stainless steel with vinegar gets it both clean and looking great.

CLEANING FLOORS

1 Tablespoon White Vinegar
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
5 Drops Lemon Essential Oil
1 Quart Warm Water

This DIY floor cleaner does a great job cleaning floors. You simply have to mix all the ingredients together into a spray bottle and spray the floors. Then use a good clean mop. Finally, mop again with plain warm water (which is something you should do with any floor cleaner). It cleans floors really well, doesn’t leave any chemicals, and the lemon makes it smell really good!

OUTDOORS

Vinegar can also be used outside in the yard as a natural alternative. The simple mixture of vinegar and lemon juice makes a great weed killer. For extra strength, you can also add some salt and/or dish soap.

What do these ingredients do? The acidity of vinegar and lemon juice dries out and kills the weeds. You have to use a targeted spray as it will kill any other plants it comes into contact with. The salt dries the plant out even more. If you use salt, make sure that you are spraying an area that you don’t want anything to grow. Getting salt into the soil can make it difficult for anything to grow there. Adding dish soap helps the solution stick to the leaves instead of running right off, increasing the efficiency of the solution.

I tried this solution all over my yard and found that it can be really effective at controlling weeds naturally. It was important to me to accomplish this naturally as I have young kids and a dog that I wanted to protect from chemicals. Vinegar won’t harm them at all if they decided to eat a plant that I had sprayed!

Note: This treatment works a lot better on weeds that are in the sun. Heat helps a lot as well. I saw the best results when I sprayed weeds in the morning on a hot summer day and let it bake in the sun.

For more on gardening see my post on Building Your Dream Garden

CONCLUSION

For more ideas on natural cleaners and how to go green in your household, I highly recommend the book Green Homekeeping by Alice Alvrez. There are a lot of great ideas on how to save money by going green and making your own cleaners. This book gives suggestions for every aspect of the home to save money and the planet by going green.

How important is green cleaning to you? I hope I’ve made it easier to afford cleaning your house without the use of chemicals!