The 3 Ingredent Surface Cleaner

If you look around on the internet you will find a TON of recipes for house hold cleaners. Some require hard to find ingredients or supplies you may not want to buy just for cleaners. I don't know about you but I'm not buying a pressure cooker or a second food processor just to make a household cleaner.  I feel that homemade cleaners should be safer, work better, and less costly than buying them.

Today I would like to talk about a SIMPLE easy make your own household cleaner. I use it daily. You'll just need a few ingredients.  If you are just getting into making your own safe cleaners. Let me explain a few things. Vinegar is one of the main ingredients you will need to make your home safer for family and pets. It can be used in a lot of recipes, also if you say vinegar like its spelled, you will have a lot more fun with it. It sounds like a name of a tough and sexy viking from a fun romance novel. Vine-gar! The kitchen warrier! The best friend of a green kitchen. :)

You maybe wondering how our sexy viking friend can help in the kitchen. Well, to be honest, the question really is how can he/it not help, but lets start with another question. What is vinegar?

Vinegar is a liquid consisting mainly of acetic acid (CH₃COOH) and water. The acetic acid is produced by the fermentation of ethanol by acetic acid bacteria.^[1] Vinegar is now mainly used as a cooking ingredient, but historically, as the most easily available mild acid, it had a great variety of industrial, medical, and domestic uses, some of which (such as a general household cleanser) are still promoted today.
Commercial vinegar is produced either by fast or slow fermentation processes. In general, slow methods are used with traditional vinegars, and fermentation proceeds slowly over the course of months or a year. The longer fermentation period allows for the accumulation of a nontoxic slime composed of acetic acid bacteria. Fast methods add mother of vinegar (i.e., bacterial culture) to the source liquid before adding air using a venturi pump system or a turbine to promote oxygenation to obtain the fastest fermentation. In fast production processes, vinegar may be produced in a period ranging from 20 hours to three days.

Well that answered that.Thank you Wikipedia. Vinegar can be used in almost every cleaning product. From cleaning disposals/sinks, shining chrome, deodorizing trashcans and pet areas. The list honestly goes on and on. Today we will start with the basic all in one.

The main thing you want to know is the kinds of vinegar you want to use for cleaning. Lots of types are on the market and some are all wrong for cleaning. Step away from the balsamic! I tend to stick with simple distilled white vinegar for my cleaners and occasionally I also use apple cider vinegar for personal use. Today we will stick with the distilled white.

What you will need.
* An empty (clean) spray bottle. This can be new or used just make sure its been well rinsed.
* A funnel or a lot of towels if you are a klutz like me.
* Marker (very important to label your bottles)
* Water H2O. Distilled, filtered, spring or tap water is fine but if you have heavy water you may want to avoid the tap.
* White Distilled Vine-gar! ...eh hem, sorry. vinegar.
* Optional essential oil. This part is optional but useful. I suggest Lemon because 1) I like the smell 2) lemon is antibiotic, anti fungal, antiviral and antibacterial. You can also use eucalyptus, lavender, tea tree and many others and they work just as well but in my opinion they don't smell half as nice.
;)

Mix
1 part distilled white vinegar
1 part water in a spray bottle
*If using essential oil mix in 5-10 drops in a 16oz spray bottle. I use 5 drops Lemon and 5 drops Lemongrass.
Shake to mix and done. Use immediately or store for later use.

*NOTE
I have used this recipe on all my counter tops and cabinets with fantastic results. I do not have marble surfaces in my home. I have been told that vinegar can stain/etch some marble so be careful.