I am so excited to share another wonderful natural cleaning post brought to you from Anna Aamone from Best Chelsea W11! Anna is the queen of all natural chemical free cleaning solutions which is evident from the other posts she has written for Painted Teacup including:
The Best Essential Oils for Cleaning Your Home and
How to Naturally Remove Dog Stains and Odours.
Be sure to follow Anna on Google+ for more awesome natural cleaning ideas!
Easy Chemical-free Ways to Disinfect Your Kitchen
This week we are in the kitchen, looking for chemical-free ways to disinfect our countertops, sinks, island and even electrical appliances. Stick around and we will show you how to keep your kitchen in tip-top condition without using any of those chemically-laden store-bought kitchen cleaners that do more harm than good. Let’s get to it.
How to Clean Your Sink
Generously sprinkle baking soda over your kitchen sink and add a little bit of water or lemon juice to make a paste. Leave it for about half an hour. The mixture will do its thing. Then wipe down with a sponge and rinse off with hot water. Dry with paper towel. You’re done.
How to Clean Your Countertops and Kitchen Island
One way to go is to use hydrogen peroxide. Simply spray your countertops with the liquid and wipe down with a cloth. If your kitchen island and countertops are wooden, you can opt for white vinegar. For centuries vinegar has been prominent for its disinfecting properties so why restrict its use to solely spicing up your meals? Combine 50% white distilled vinegar and 50% water and you will get the easiest, cheapest and coolest cleaning solution. Spray liberally on your countertops and wipe down. Voilà!
Now, even though some posts suggest mixing hydrogen peroxide and vinegar for an increased disinfecting power, we recommend you to steer clear of mixing those two liquids, reason being it might get dangerous. Combining vinegar and hydrogen peroxide will form nothing more but a corrosive acid – not the kind of a cleaner you would like to use in your home.
How to Clean Your Fridge
Make sure to remove all of the things from the fridge before you get started. Remove all shelves if applicable. Spray the inside of your fridge with an all-purpose cleaner made with a few drops of tea tree oil, 1 teaspoon of castile soap, 1 tablespoon of baking soda and, of course, water. (Hint: you can use this all-purpose cleaner for the inside of your drawers and cabinets, too.) Make sure to mix all the ingredients in a glass spray bottle. Plastic is fine, too, but if you want to keep the mixture for weeks, you have to use a glass container, or else your essential oil will react with the plastic. Spray the solution liberally. Let the solution sit and move on to cleaning the shelves. Use dishwashing liquid and a sponge. When they are all clean, let them dry. Then go back to your fridge and wipe it down with a cloth, starting from the top and working your way to the bottom. Finally, put all shelves back to where they belong. This method for cleaning is presented by Best Chelsea W11.
How to Clean Your Floors
For wooden floors, mix together 1 tablespoon of castile soap and ¼ cup of vinegar into 1 gallon of water. Let the ingredients combine and soak your mop into the solution. Make sure to squeeze out excessive water. Clean as always.
For all types of floors, combine a few drops of liquid dish soap (Fairy or Dawn), ½ cup of vinegar, 2 cups of water (warm), ¼ cup of rubbing alcohol and a few drops of essential oils. Here are some suggestions for essential oils to use for cleaning. Again, clean your floor as you usually do. Don’t soak the floor and always make sure to dry after cleaning.
Which natural cleaning recipe will you try first?
I love using chemical free products, I need to try and get into using them more though, it’s not good breathing in all those chemicals while cleaning!
The following tips is very useful especially if you have little kids at home. It is really not nice smelling and touching chemical based cleaners and disinfectant.
I’d much rather use chemical free products in my kitchen and everywhere really. I feel like I’m keeping us healthy by not using harmful chemicals for cleaning.
Wow, this is a great way to disinfect your kitchen. Thanks for the tips!
Vinegar is SO great for cleaning! I’m always look for ways to use less chemicals in my home.
Oh Chantel … Love your work! As soon as I read chemical free I knew I would like this post! I had to email subscribe because you speak my language :o) Your post is well written and easy to follow! I’m going to have to use these tips… which is not cool because I totally don’t feel like cleaning my kitchen … but I have to test it out!! Thanks for turning my Friday into a cleaning day…not fun! ;o) xx
I’ve used vinegar to wipe things down when trying to keep ants away, but I never thought to use it regularly. I guess I should add that to my routine.
I keep a big jug of vinegar under the sink for this purpose. I hear lime juice can also be used to disinfect cutting boards.
These are great tips! I usually use chemical to clean our kitchen and I really feel guilty about it. Now that I know what to do, I’ll give your tips a try.
These are really safer ways to keep the kitchen free. It’s great that organic materials are used and it’s easy to find too around the kitchen.
Yay! Just when I needed these tips. I’m going to try out the DIY solution on wooden floors.
I love chemical free cleaning products! I love vinegar and baking soda too.
I love how easy it is to put together these all natural cleaning products with just a few ingredients. Thanks for sharing these helpful tips!
Apparently tomatoes can clean stainless steel sinks too. I don’t know why, or how – but my cousin informed me that is how she cleans hers! Lol.
I swear, baking soda and/or vinegar will clean anything… add a few drops of essential oils and whatever you clean, will smell amazing.
Its always good to find chemical free ways to do everyday tasks. Cleaning is hard enough. Dont need extra. LOL
I will be honest and I have never really thought about using chemical free cleaning products but thank you for this awesome post.
OMG these are so great! You really can use EO’s for anything and everything! I need to try using these for the kitchen, I bet they smell amazing too!!
We use vinegar and essential oils a lot to clean and disinfect. I also really love a few household products that are safer and smell great. We are working to make our own household products.
I love the that they are natural and chemical free! Thats so incredibly important to me!