5 DIY Powerful Eco-Friendly Home Cleaning Products That Really Work

Eco-friendly living’s become increasingly popular, but that goes far beyond choosing slow fashion and composting at home. How you clean your home makes a significant difference in your environmental footprint.

The products you use contain dangerous chemicals, which is why you’re not supposed to ingest them. What do you think happens once they make their way to the environment and natural habitats? Destruction of habitats and the eradication of wildlife.

With eco-friendly home cleaning products, however, there’s nothing to worry about. While buying these off-the-shelf can be expensive, you can always make them yourself. Five particular DIY cleaning products are more environmentally friendly than you’d think.

It’s worth taking a look at how you can make them, as well as why you should. They’ll be cost-effective to make, and you’re not going to harm the environment. Let’s dive in.

Why Choose Eco-Friendly Home Cleaning Products

Eco-friendly home cleaning products, as the name implies, are cleaning products that don’t harm the environment. They typically use biodegradable ingredients that don’t pose a danger to the environment or aquatic habitats. Many environmentally friendly cleaning brands even go so far as to make sure their packaging is plastic-free.

They offer more than a few benefits, with their minimal – if any – impact on the environment being the most notable of these. They can have more than you might’ve assumed, including:

• Less Harmful – Not only will eco-friendly home cleaning products be safer for the environment, but they’ll be safer for your home. They’ll be much less likely to cause any long-term damage to hard surfaces and other areas. You’ll end up needing to do less home maintenance because of it.
• Less Plastic Waste – As mentioned above, eco-friendly brands go out of their way to reduce or remove the amount of plastic used in their packaging. That leads to much less plastic waste, which builds up more than you’d think with your cleaning products. You’ll have less to throw away, and it’ll benefit the environment more.
• Great Performance – Since harsh chemicals have been in cleaning products for quite some time, you might believe it’s because they’re necessary for the products to work. That isn’t the case. Instead, natural and biodegradable ingredients can be just as effective, if not better, without leading to any environmental damage.
• Ingredient Transparency – Eco-friendly cleaning brands are much more transparent about their ingredients than their counterparts. Standard brands know they use harmful ingredients, and they’ll actively try to hide this as much as possible. You wouldn’t have to worry about this at all, and you’ll know exactly what’s in your cleaning products.

They can often be relatively expensive to buy, especially with how often you’ll need to buy them. Greener living often comes at a price, unfortunately, but switching to ecofriendly cleaning products for your home not only benefits the environment but also ensures a toxin-free space for your loved ones. That doesn’t mean you’re out of options, however. You can make DIY eco-friendly home cleaning products, and these can be much more effective than you could’ve thought.

While you’ll need to put a bit of time and effort into actually making them, they can be more than worth it. You don’t have to worry about harming the environment or spending a lot of money on eco-friendly products every week.

It’s worth looking at what you need to do, and exactly what kind of eco-friendly home cleaning products you can DIY to replace your toxic cleaning items with nontoxic cleaning products.

Basic Ingredients for DIY Cleaning Products

Image Credit: Kerdkanno from Pixabay.

If you’re going to make DIY eco-friendly home cleaning products, you’ll need to know exactly what to put into them. That’s where most of us could struggle. Not only do you have to worry about whether they’re environmentally friendly, but whether they’ll actually help clean your home.

Thankfully, this is far less complicated than you could’ve thought. While the exact ingredients – and their amounts – vary slightly from product to product, some are more common than others. It’s worth looking at each of these, with some of the more notable including:

• Borax
• Baking Soda
• Hydrogen Peroxide
• Vinegar
• Castile Soap
• Essential Oils
• Cornstarch
• Salt
• Lemons and Lemon Juice
• Toothpaste

With that in mind, you should now have everything you need to make DIY eco-friendly home cleaning products. That begs the question, however, as to which products you can actually make yourself. Then there’s the fact you’ll need to have a specific recipe and know which of the above ingredients to use.

How much of each you add to the recipe also matters. Five home cleaning products are much more notable than others. Not only are they relatively easy to make, but using each of them makes sure your entire home is clean.

If you want to clean your home without harming the environment, it’s worth diving into each of them.

1. DIY All-Purpose Cleaner

Sometimes, you mightn’t want to go through the effort of making a few eco-friendly home cleaning products, as that could take a lot of time and effort to make. And that’s without mentioning all the ingredients you’ll have to pick up.

While an all-purpose cleaner mightn’t be as effective as ones made for specific purposes, it could still be enough to clean most of your home. To make an eco-friendly all-purpose cleaner, all you’ll need are:

• 1 teaspoon of Castile soap
• ¼ of a cup of vinegar
• 2 cups of distilled or boiled water
• 12 to 20 drops of essential oils, depending on how scented you want it

Once these have been mixed together, put them in a spray bottle and give them a shake right before using it. After spraying on a surface, use a microfiber cloth to wipe away, and you’ll end up making everything cleaner than you would’ve thought.

2. DIY Glass Cleaner

Glass and mirrors can be some of the more complicated areas to clean when you’re making your own eco-friendly home cleaning products. Thankfully, there are ways to make it easier, and you’ll simply need the right recipe. All you’ll need at hand are:

• 125 ml of warm water
• Hydrogen peroxide
• 125 ml of white vinegar

Mix these together and then add to a spray bottle. Give this another shake and then spray on your glass or mirrors. Don’t leave it on for too long, however, as it could end up leaving marks. Wiping away as quickly as possible makes sure everything’s as clean as possible in seconds.

3. DIY Bathroom Cleaner

Your bathroom needs a good clean much more than most other rooms, so it’s worth focusing on how you can make an eco-friendly bathroom cleaner. As you might suspect, this can be relatively easy to do. You’ll need a few specific ingredients:

• Distilled white vinegar
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Citric acid
• Warm or hot water (not boiling)
• Borax
• Castile soap
• Baking soda
• Rubbing alcohol
• Lemon juice

Once these have been properly mixed, they should form a fluid that you can fit in a spray. You can then use this almost anywhere in your bathroom to clean it quickly. Make sure to wipe the solution off a few seconds after you’ve sprayed it, and you’ll see instant results.

4. DIY Kitchen Cleaner

You’ll have quite a few surfaces to clean in your kitchen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make eco-friendly home cleaning products that do it all. You won’t even need many ingredients to make this, and you’ll have everything clean before you know it.

All you’ll need are:

• A handful of dried lavender flowers
• 200 grams of baking soda
• Organic liquid Castile soap
• 6 to 10 drops of essential oil, depending on whether you want it scented

Once you’ve all of these properly mixed together, you’ll get a creamy solution you can use to clean your kitchen. You mightn’t have to use much of this, depending on the size of your kitchen, so it’s vital you store it properly after using it. A glass storage jar could be more than enough for this.

5. DIY Floor Cleaner

There are quite a few DIY floor cleaners you can make, depending on the type of flooring you have. If you’re like most people, however, you’ll have various flooring types around the house, so it’s worth going with an all-purpose eco-friendly floor cleaner.

Thankfully, this is much easier to make than you’d think. All you’ll need for this are:

• 2 cups of warm water (not boiling)
• 3 drops of biodegradable or Castile soap
• ½ a cup of vinegar
• 5 to 10 drops of essential oils, depending on the smell you want
• ¼ of a cup of rubbing alcohol

Mix all of these up in a ceramic or glass bowl before putting them into a spray bottle. Use this to spray the mixture on your floors after giving everything a shake. You should wipe the mixture off straight away to clean it properly.

Conclusion

Eco-friendly home cleaning products offer quite a few benefits compared to their more traditional alternatives. Not only will they offer you as great of cleaning performance – if not better – but they completely avoid any harmful implications on the environment. Add in the transparency with ingredients, and there’s nothing not to like.

You don’t even need to go to the store to take advantage of this. You can DIY plenty of your home cleaning products while making sure they’re eco-friendly. It gives you much more control over what’s in your cleaning products, letting you make sure they’re actually environmentally friendly.

All you’ll need are the right ingredients, and you’re off to the races. What’s stopping you from cleaning your home without destroying the environment?

Resources:

• https://www.epa.gov/greenerproducts/identifying-greener-cleaning-products

• https://www.epa.gov/saferchoice