With a little imagination and a few simple ingredients, you can be on your way to making your own natural laundry soaps and cleaning agents.  With so many dangerous chemicals listed as ingredients in many popular "heavy duty" cleaners that we see so much of these days, you have to be wondering if the use of these products is having a negative effect on your health.  Many of these chemicals have been shown to increase cancer risk and cause a host of other health related problems such as infertility.  So, why are we using them?

For centuries, women were cleaning their homes with a few simple ingredients.  It took a little bit of elbow grease, too.  They didn't have a product that could just be sprayed on and left to "eat away" at the dirt and grease on its own.  But, I can guarantee you that while they may have had to scrub a little harder, the results were just as good and the family was protected from the very harmful chemicals known to exist in our modern cleaners.

When you are using safe cleaning agents, it is much easier to include even the youngest children in household chores.  A two or three year old can easily wash windows with a little spray bottle filled with vinegar and water!  I would never give a young child a bottle of Windex!  After learning more about the dangers of most of the common cleaners, I would hesitate to even allow my older children to handle them!  Thankfully, you can create your own cleaning agents safely, and rather cheaply, in the comfort of your own kitchen!

Let us start with laundry detergent...

You will need a good, strong lye soap base to make a decent laundry detergent.  You will also need borax and washing soda (different from baking soda, but baking soda will do in a pinch).  Mix one part lye soap crumbles to one half part borax and one half part washing soda.  You may also want to add a few drops of tea tree oil or peppermint essential oil for a nice clean scent.  You can put this mixture through the blender to make a fine crumbled powder.  To wash one large load of laundry, you should dissolve half a cup of your mixture into two cups of hot water.  When soap has dissolved, pour into your wash.

For a nice, soft finished washing, add a cup of white vinegar to your rinse cycle.  You should really always add some vinegar to the rinse if your using lye soap, in my opinion.

If you want the whitest whites, always hang them out to dry on the line and let the sunshine do its work!

For windows and glass...

Vinegar is an excellent cleaner and it works great on glass.  Mix 1/3 cup vinegar with 2 pints of rain water.  Pour this into a spray bottle.  The old tip about using crumpled up newspaper to wash your windows really works.  It doesn't leave any streaks!

For tubs and sinks...

To clean tubs and sinks, you will need baking soda, borax and vinegar.  Sprinkle the baking soda and borax into the tub or sink and spray it down good with vinegar (always keep some in a spray bottle for cleaning purposes).  It will fizz up good.  Now scrub with a scouring pad and rinse with hot water.

Floors...

To mop floors, you only really need a bucket or pail of the hottest water with a cup or two of vinegar added.  If the floors are really dirty, add a half cup of borax or a bit of lye soap.

For counter tops and general cleaning...

Always keep a spray bottle filled with white vinegar diluted with rain water and a few drops of either peppermint or lavender essential oil and a few drops of tea tree oil.