Recipes for home made cleaners

[xcskimom]

Hi - I am interested in seeing some of your recipes for home-made, nontoxic cleaning products. I have been maintaining a chemical-free household for the last 4 years, but for the first 3 I used a lot of purchased cleaners (Like 7th Generation and Ecover) unless I was cleaning something that could just be taken care of with vinegar and baking soda.

Now I'd like to make my own laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent. I also need something to clean my fiberglass tub surrounds - they don't seem to get clean enough with vinegar and baking soda. There's a yucky, kind of grey sticky film that I can not seem to remove. Does anyone have any ideas?

I am also in need of something that will remove a greasy residue from kitchen wood surfaces such as cabinets and counter edges. The previous owners apparently never cleaned anything and all the wood surfaces have a black greasy film that I need to clean off! I really don't want to use a chemical degreaser, but vinegar hasn't even made a dent in it. I may try washing soda since I read that is a degreaser, but is there anything else I could try? I even tried sanding some of the worst of it, but that made a mess of the sandpaper. It's that bad. Yuck.

Thank you in advance!!
-Amanda

[NaturalJo]

The following is a site that contains a few recipes for homemade cleaning products (& soapmaking) ... Happily Homemade http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/soapmaking

[Ceashels]

I wonder if a glycerin based soap or an oil based soap would help take the grease off the wood? The commercial variety would be Murphy's Oil Soap.

Have you tried using shampoo on it? It takes the grease out of our hair so it might help loosen the grease on the wood. If you have already resorted to sand paper, you might want to try shampoo and a gentle bristle brush in an area as a test trial.

[ravenmaniac]

I bought a bottle of Nature's Sunshine from The Herb's Place. It is a mineral based concentrate. At The Herb's Place.com they have many recipes using Nature's Sunshine. They also sell oils like: tea tree, eucalyptus, and lavender, that make your cleaners smell nice and have cleaning properties.

[kaykwilts]

The following is a site that contains a few recipes for homemade cleaning products (& soapmaking) ... Happily Homemade http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/soapmaking

That's an excellent site. I bookmarked it for future reference.

[PrairieRose]

If you'll look at the main page of the forums here you'll find a forum with homemade cleaner recipes.

[xcskimom]

Thanks for the suggestions and the link to the soapmaking page. I did try Murphy's soap on the cabinets with no success. I'm going to try making my own stuff with washing soda, liquid soap and glycerine. We'll see how it goes.