DIY All Purpose Cleaner

By Make Your Place, modified by Epicurean San Diego

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We've been making our own household cleaners for the last 5 years.  We were inspired on a trip to Santa Cruz where we stumbled upon this awesome book, Make Your Place: Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills by Raleigh Briggs at a local bookstore. We were guilty of having your go-to cleaners in our house... Windex, 409, Comet... it was convenient and fairly cheap. I didn't, at the time, quite care about the affect that these toxic chemicals had on my personal health. We were living in San Francisco and were taking extra care when it came to things like composting, no single-use plastic bags, public transportation etc, so I thought if I care about all these other things enough to make changes, why don't I care about cleaners? So, at that moment, I had had enough. I bought everything I needed to make a few basic cleaners and I figured that was a good start. Little did I know, those few items would turn into a few more and before I knew it I was making cleaners for my family and friends and giving this book to loved ones as gifts. As you can see in the video below, this DIY All Purpose Cleaner takes just a few minutes to make. Its so simple, cheap and you know EXACTLY what is in your household cleaners. I like to make it in larger batches so that I can store it and just keep refilling our spray bottle. We hope you enjoy our video below.

Scroll down for a shopping list and full recipe as well.

Happy cleaning!

Recipe

8 cups hot water

1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

2 tablespoons Borax

2 tablespoons Castile Soap

1 tablespoon tea tree oil

1 tablespoon eucalyptus oil

1 tablespoon lavender oil

Mix all ingredients into large jug. Stir or shake and wah-lah!

This should last you about a month if you use it daily in your kitchen and around the house.