How to: Make your own cleaning supplies!

Today I am going to show you a couple of recipes I use to make my own cleaning supplies. Dishwasher soap, Baby wipes and Liquid Laundry Soap. So let's get started, I love making my own supplies, I love knowing what is going into them and most of all I love the money I save by making my own! We all want more money so we can buy pretty shiny things!! :) Let's start with the dishwasher soap, this soap saved my dishwashers life, Hubby and I had given up, our dishes came out disgusting! Like this;

this photo belongs to empoweringmommy.com

 any this is how gross my dishes were and i was online searching for other uses for my dishwasher when i came upon this recipe, it changed everything, this picture is actually a before and after picture, what a difference hey! This recipe is best for hard water, and in these parts, we got us some HARD water LOL! So here is the super simple recipe,

1 cup Borax
1 cup Lemishine
1 cup baking soda

Mix it all together in a container, and use 3 tbsp per load, if you have never seen Lemishine this is it, you can buy it at your local Canadian Tire, or if you are American, they sell it at Wal-Mart.

Next, Baby wipes, Baby wipes are expensive and full of all kinds of nasty stuff, so I thought I would try and make my own, they turned out great, just like they should, so here are the steps;

Get yourself some good quality paper towels, the cheap stuff will not work. so don't even try it, then you need some baby shampoo and some baby oil, I didn't have baby oil, but I did have some baby massage oil, so I used that, but next time i will try baby oil, cause the massage oil kind of stayed together and never really dissolved like baby oil would have. This shampoo and massage oil is from Body Shop and I picked up the towels at Wal-Mart.

Next you have to cut your roll in half, an electric knife works great for this, if you don't have one a good serrated bread knife will do great as well.

 Now you have to separate rolls, so you can either make 2 batches or you can save the second roll for later.

In this case I am making both rolls up and giving one roll to my sister, here is the mixture, 2 tbsp baby shampoo and 2 tbsp baby oil and add in three cups hot water.

 Find containers for your rolls and then once you have mixed the mixture pour it unto your rolls, let them soak for 10 minutes and then flip the container and let it soak another 10 minutes.

Once you have done this it is time to remove the roll, it comes out nice and easy,

 Dig your finger nail around the inside of the hole and you will see the where the paper towel starts and voila, your own baby wipes!

Last but certainly not least is my very own liquid laundry soap. Oh it makes me so happy LOL! I am a dork I know, but it saves me tons of money and it is so easy!
The recipe is very simple

3 Tablespoons Borax
3 Tablespoons Washing Soda
2 Tablespoons Dish Soap

The only problem with this recipe is that here in Canada it is almost impossible to find washing soda, unless you buy it online, but I found out how to make my own all you have to do, it bake, baking soda!! How awesome is that! So in order to make this recipe all you have to do is bake baking soda, and here is how; 

Homemade Washing Soda

Ingredients
Baking Soda

Instructions
1.place baking soda on a cookie sheet
2. Heat in the oven at 350 degrees until all the baking soda becomes washing soda. Mix every 20 minutes, bake for 60 minutes.
3. Use as needed!

But if you don't believe me that you'll know immediately, the differences between the two are this:
Washing soda is grainy, baking soda is powdery.
Washing soda is dull and opaque, baking soda is crystallized like salt and reflects light, i.e. it is semi shiny.

Washing soda is separate grains, baking soda clumps together.

 Here is the baking soda all ready to go in the oven!

 Our three simple ingredients!

 Get yourself some containers! I make 4 batches at a time and it lasts about 6 months :)

I like to line up my jugs and then add the ingredients assembly line style. I use a small plastic funnel for this and it helps to make it all go much faster and with much fewer spills.

Once all the jugs have the 3 ingredients inside, I pour 4 cups of VERY HOT water into each one. I just use water from the kitchen faucet, it doesn’t need to be boiling. Swirl each bottle until all the ingredients are dissolved in the liquid. Then fill almost to the top with cold water. (Bubbles will overflow out of the bottle a little.)

I use ¼ or 1/3 cup of soap per load

Adding the Borax and Washing Soda

Adding Norwex dish washing liquid, I Love Norwex!

Half way through my project the milk jug i was using sprung a leak, so I ran to my recycling box and found these old juice containers and they worked great! Now I have enough to last me around 6 months and it only costs about 1$ per batch! 1$ for 6 months worth of soap YAY! It has never clumped or not worked properly ever! It is awesome, we prefer scent free but you could ass some essential oils for a nice scent. Plus we hate fighting stains and with this laundry soap we have rarely had to. Love it, love it, love it!

Hope you enjoyed my blog all about homemade cleaning supplies, hopefully you will try them out and save yourself some cash, so you can go out and buy yourself a lot of pretty shiny things!