Back to basics...

I admit, I'm not the world's best housekeeper. I'm probably somewhere between mediocre and adequate. I'm fairly good at keeping up with the essentials like laundry and general decluttering, but I can't remember the last time I scrubbed my bathrooms.

Now, probably a large part of that is inertia. I'd really rather spend what free time I have doing things worthy of such - I doubt I'll be lying on my deathbed wishing I'd spent more time cleaning. But another part is that after a while, the chemical smells get to me. And if they get to *me*, they're worse on my family.

Quite by accident a few weeks ago, I stumbled on a site that had various 'homemade' cleaning solution recipes, using very basic, inexpensive pantry items. Poking further, I found other sites as well, with similar recipes.

It all sounded intriguing. Frugal, non-chemical...could be a good thing. So I've started out trying a few of them.

This is my second week test-driving a laundry solution - I have a bottle of liquid castile soap (short squirt per load) and a dry-powder mix of baking soda, oxi-clean, and borax (1/4 c per load). I'm testing on my whites, since they're often more soiled (kid socks - nuff said) and they'd be more obvious about showing up any issues. So far so good, the whites even seem a little brighter perhaps. And it's certainly gotten blood out of the whites without any real pretreatment. I'm also starting to try the vinegar/water (1:1) solution for basic cleanup.

So we'll see how this little experiment goes. I think I want to try to use up all the remaining commercial products by the end of the calendar year, and try using just homemade solutions for a while after that and see how it goes. Have any of my readers ever tried any of these? What are your thoughts?

Vinegar + baking soda - not just for volcanoes anymore!