Natural Cleaning Products for Your Home by Sisters Know Best

Are you looking for natural cleaning products for your home?  Are you sick of using bleach and other harsh chemicals that “guarantee” your nest will sparkle?  Bleach.  Eck!  Honestly, no one really thought about the bad side effects from these things! That was just how everyone cleaned.

Now, we understand that these harsh chemicals release toxins in the air and aren’t great to breathe for anyone in the house – human or animal.  So as adults, we like to use natural cleaning products instead. While there are some good ones becoming available commercially, we like to make ours. If you’re interested in doing that, check out these natural cleaning products for your home. For even more ideas, see our other posts on this topic. 

Hydrogen Peroxide as a Natural Cleaning Product 

We’ve always known hydrogen peroxide was great for putting on cuts and scrapes. It cleanses, but it doesn’t burn the way rubbing alcohol does.  We’ve recently discovered that hydrogen peroxide cleans blood stains really well. Just be sure to immediately rinse with cold water or you’ll discolor the surface or fabric you’re cleaning. 

One of our favorite uses for hydrogen peroxide, though, is wiping down bath walls. Soap scum and those little dots of black are no match for hydrogen peroxide. It sterilizes just like bleach, but without the fumes. Excellent! 

Vinegar – Outstanding Natural Cleaning Product 

We keep finding amazing ways to use distilled white vinegar and apple cider vinegar! You know that cleaning boost stuff that goes in the special compartment in the dishwasher? We use vinegar instead and, Man, the dishes have never been so sparkly! 

Another great use for vinegar is cleaning kitchen sinks and sink screens.  First, soak a towel with vinegar and leave it in the sink to remove food buildup and soap scum. While that’s doing its work, toss the sink screens in a bowl filled with vinegar to soak. It doesn’t take long for everything to be clean and shiny. No elbow grease required! 

Because you’re already in the kitchen, run some diluted white vinegar through your coffee maker.  Follow it up with a round of plain water to clean all those little nooks and crannies.  Easy peasy!

Vinegar is also great in the bathroom. We have a fabric shower curtain that needs to be laundered on a regular basis.  Doesn’t everyone?  We’ve discovered that using a 1:1 solution of vinegar and water sprayed on right before it’s tossed in the washing machine makes it come out so much cleaner.   And did you know that you can add a little distilled white vinegar to the rinse cycle in your washing machine to eliminate the need for fabric softener in the dryer?  And, no, your laundry will not smell like vinegar.  Give it a whirl!

Microfiber Towels – Our Go-To Natural Cleaning Product

Oh my gosh! We love microfiber towels! They clean EVERYTHING. And if you haven’t guessed, we also like to find ways to make cleaning easier. Using elbow grease until our arms fall off is not our idea of a good time! And guess what?!  All you need to clean stainless steel appliances is a moistened microfiber towel to wash and a dry one to dry – going in the same direction as the grain of the steel.  If you run into some heavy grime on your stainless steel, use a very small amount of soap on a microfiber towel to remove the messy gunk.  Follow this up with the moistened and then the dry microfiber towels described above.  Your steel appliances will sparkle like new with just a little work!  We love to do this right before we have company over, but it would work well as part of weekly cleaning, too. 

We have written a whole blog post on the e-cloth brand of microfiber towels.  It goes into way more detail than we have here.  Check it out!

Make Your Own Natural Cleaning Product 

Being DIYers, we’ve got to make our own cleaning solution, right? Of course! It’s actually way easier than you might think. Here’s the recipe  for one we use all the time: 

What you’ll need: 

• 1 lemon 
• canning jar 
• vinegar 

Directions: 

• Cut lemon into large chunks and place in canning jar.
• Cover lemon chunks with vinegar and put the lid on the canning jar. 
• Let sit for three weeks.
• Voila!  You can now us this as you go and clean almost anything in the house! 

Shower Grout Natural Cleaning Product

We used this lemon vinegar base in a spray bottle to apply on shower grout and it worked amazingly well.  Allow the lemon vinegar to sit for a couple minutes.  Spray more on the grout.  Now apply a mixture of equal parts salt and baking soda to the grout.  Just like in science class, fizzing will start immediately.  For every fizz we like to think it’s that much less elbow grease needed!  When the fizzing eruption has ended, rinse well with water.  That’s it!

Even if you’ve never used natural cleaning products before, we think you’ll be impressed with the results. Give it a shot the next time you’re cleaning your house and let us know how it goes! And if you have any other awesome natural cleaning solutions for your home, let us know in the comments below.