DIY: All Purpose Cleaner

White vinegar is a staple in my house. When I get down to below half of a big bottle, I get a little twitchy. We use it for everything - cleaning our laminate floors, pickling pounds and pounds of cucumbers, as an additive to laundry and the dishwasher, creating that streak-free shine on the windows. I love vinegar. It just smells clean to me.

Most of the time, I am content with using a half and half mixture of white vinegar and warm water to clean things around the house, but I wanted to make something with a little more oomph. So, I created what I like to call "Mrs. Woods' Handy Dandy All Purpose Cleaner."

Here's what you need to make your own:

• 1/2 Cup White Vinegar (Cost = $0.08)
• 1 Tbsp. Hydrogen Peroxide (Cost = $0.02)
• 1 Tbsp. Borax (Cost = $0.02)
• 2 Tbsp. Lemon Juice (Cost = $0.99)
• 2 Cups Warm Water (Cost = Free!)

I like to pour everything directly into my spray bottle and then just shake it all together. I also give it a good shake each time I clean with it, since the lemon juice has a tendency to settle at the bottom.

The total cost on this is $1.11 and gives you 24 ounces of cleaner to work with. That calculates out to about $0.05 per ounce. Compare that to the Seventh Generation All Purpose Cleaner (the brand I used before I started making this), which rings in at around $0.12 per ounce. That's better than half-price AND you know what is in the bottle!

DIY: Powdered Dishwasher Soap

Since I already had most of the ingredients on hand from the laundry soap, I decided to see if homemade dishwasher soap would be worth it and if it would clean as well as the liquid kind I usually buy. I found the recipe through Pinterest on this blog.

• 1 Cup (6.2 ounces) of Borax (Cost = $0.25)
• 1 Cup (8.8 ounces) of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (Cost = $0.53)
• 1 Cup (6.2 ounces) of LemiShine (Cost = $1.92)
• 1/2 Cup (3.9 ounces) of Coarse Kosher Salt (Cost = $0.20)

All of the above ingredients are available at Wal-Mart. The LemiShine is with the dishwashing products. 

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Gotta love simple!

The above recipe makes 25.1 ounces of soap. It fits in a quart size canning jar. The total cost for the batch of soap is $2.90. You only need about a 1/2 ounce for one load of dishes, so the cost per load comes out to $0.06. The price for Cascade Powdered Dishwasher Soap at Wal-Mart is $3.97 for a 45 ounce box. For comparison's sake, let's say you use 1/2 an ounce of it to do a load of dishes - this comes out to a cost of around $0.05 per load.

So, will making your dishwasher soap save you any money? It doesn't appear so. What it does do is make you more aware of what is going into your water supply. The less chemicals the better, I say.

It cleans just as well as the commercial soap. I have read suggestions of adding vinegar to the pre-treatment compartment, to help with spots, but we aren't that concerned about our fine china being spotty. :-)

One note about this soap: it does tend to clump. I would recommend putting a Dessicant packet in the jar before you store it. 

DIY: Fabric Softener

You can't have homemade laundry soap without homemade fabric softener, can you? I don't think so.

I found this recipe through Pinterest - thanks to Kat's Custom Kreations for the ratios I used below.

Three ingredients are all you need:

• 8 ounces Hair Conditioner (Cost = $0.40 since I found V05 on super sale at Wal-Mart)
• 12 ounces White Vinegar (Cost = $0.24)
• 24 ounces hot water (No Cost, since we have well water)

In a large mixing bowl, combine the hot water and conditioner. It will be foamy.

Add the vinegar and stir until combined. 

That's it. You end up with 44 ounces of fabric softener.

The total cost is $0.64. Each load of laundry uses 2 ounces of the liquid. This means the total cost per load is around $0.03. !!!

I haven't bought liquid fabric softener in a long time, but the last time I did, I bought Gain. Right now, you can get a 51 ounce bottle of Gain at Wal-Mart for $4.47. The bottle says it has enough for 60 loads. Using that as the calculation, that comes out to $0.08 a load. That is a $0.05 savings per load - might not seem like a lot, but I'll take what I can get.

I put it in a Downy ball, but you can also add it to your fabric softener compartment, if you have one on your washer.

As for the smell, it is lovely while in the bottle, but it does not leave much of a smell on the clothes. It does, however, make clothes incredibly soft, due to the vinegar.

DIY: Laundry Soap

Being unemployed surprisingly has its perks. One of those is having the time to do the things I've always said I wanted to do. An example is making my own household cleaners. I hate using chemicals to clean for a few reasons. I have a very sensitive nose, so even the smallest amount of bleach can send me running for the Kleenex. Also, we live in a cabin in the woods, and we have well water - anything that gets put into our sinks or toilets or bathtubs or washer basically goes right back into our water supply. The more I can do to reduce the amount of chemicals we are exposed to, the better.

The first DIY cleaner I wanted to make was laundry soap. I normally buy the dye-free, scent-free version of whatever brand is on sale, so I wanted to stick pretty close to that. I put an all-call out on Facebook to my other DIY-ing friends, to see if anyone had made laundry soap and what kind of bar soap they had used.

My friend Marissa, domestic goddess and all-around amazing person, gave me her recipe for powdered laundry soap. It even included a cost breakdown, comparing the homemade version to Tide. In her recipe, she uses OxyClean and Purex Crystals. Since I wanted to stay as close to scent free as possible, I left those two ingredients out. Here's what I used to make the powdered goodness:

• 38 ounces of Borax (Cost = $1.52)
• 27.5 ounces of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (Cost = $1.65)
• 32 ounces of Baking Soda (Cost = $1.28)
• 2.75 ounces of Fels-Naptha Laundry Bar, grated ($0.50)

(Note: Since this was my first batch of soap, I didn't want to commit to a full recipe, so I halved Marissa's original ingredients. All measurements above are half of the regular size boxes/bar and all were purchased at Wal-Mart.)

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Store in a lidded container.

The total cost of a half batch is $4.95. Each load of laundry uses 1 ounce (2 Tablespoons) of the powder. This equals a cost of $0.05 per load. According to Marissa's calculations, the average cost of one load of laundry done using Tide is $0.27 per load. Granted, there are only two people in my house, but I do a LOT of laundry. At a $0.22 per load savings, I think I'll continue to make my own soap.

I've already done about 6 loads using this mixture and I like it. A lot. The clothes smell clean and they look clean, too.

One word of warning: if in your brain, Soap Suds = Clean, you need to know that this mixture does not make any suds. Let me assure you, this is OK. Seriously.

ETA: Marissa wanted me to point out that the original recipe for this soap comes from http://www.howdoesshe.com/cheaper-and-better-diy-laundry-detergent/. Give credit where credit is due. :-)