Homesteader Depot

Tag: cleaning

  • Homemade Non-Toxic Daily Shower Spray

    Homemade Non-Toxic Daily Shower Spray

     

    When it comes to the products you clean your shower with, it’s just as important to consider possible environmental toxins. While you might only think of dish soap or laundry detergent as coming into direct contact with your skin, hot showers can expose you to plenty of toxins if you’re cleaning with conventional products.

    Your epidermis, or skin, is the largest organ in your body, and in hot showers, your pores open up. If you’ve been cleaning with harsh toxins, they could be dissipating through the air and being absorbed directly into your skin. And you thought you were getting clean in the shower!

    The downside of not using toxic products is that mold, mildew, and soap scum can build up in your shower or bath fast. Harmful bleach and other chemicals can certainly keep this grime under control, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have the same ease and cleanliness with natural, homemade solutions!

    This incredibly simple and totally non-toxic daily shower spray is ideal for keeping your shower fresh, clean, and totally green.

    Ingredients:

    • 1 cup water
    • 1/2 cup hydrogen peroxide
    • 1/2 cup vinegar
    • 1 teaspoon dish soap
    • 20 drops essential oil of choice (optional)

    Directions: 

    1. Combine the water and dish soap in a large, non-metal bowl, until the soap is completely dissolved.
    2. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until completely blended.
    3. Pour into a clean spray bottle, and keep in your shower.

    To use, simply spray down your shower after each use. Try to coat all the walls and the corners evenly.

    That’s it! This will prevent soap scum build-up, mold, and mildew, and make weekly shower scrubbing a breeze.

    The world is full of harmful, toxic solutions to everyday problems, and it can be so easy to get enticed by products with promises like never having to clean your shower! Fortunately, there’s always a natural solution, and this easy, painless shower spray works just as well as the commercial alternatives. Enjoy!

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  • How to Permanently Get Rid of Ants

    How to Permanently Get Rid of Ants

    Ants are a real drag to have in your home. And if you’re a homesteader, there’s a good chance you’re bringing lots of dirt inside from your garden or pasture, and with that comes ant eggs. Or perhaps you have lots of little nooks and crannies for ants to sneak in.

    Either way, if you’re battling ants constantly, year after year, you’re probably ready to be done with them. Ants are not only a big bother, they can actually pose a serious health risk if not addressed. It’s not common knowledge, but some ant species can actually transfer harmful pathogens into your living space, bringing with them sickness or infection.

    Of course, you could go for the expensive store-bought solutions that promise to banish ants completely. Unfortunately, those are not only highly toxic and dangerous to pets and small children, they also never work to fully rid ants from you home.

    The main ingredient in most commercial ant traps is boric acid, which is mixed with sugary substances to entice the ants. The ants then eat this, and bring it back to the colony, killing the rest of the ants, in theory. However, if you’ve ever tried these, you probably know how ineffective they can be, how quickly they dry out, and how you’re often left with nothing but useless traps and plenty of ants.

    Well, I have found a near-magical solution to banning ants, that has worked for me in several different houses, in several different climates, in fact.

    The secret ingredient is cinnamon essential oil, and the method couldn’t be easier.

    What you need

    • Cinnamon essential oil
    • Spray bottle
    • Tap water
    • Ants you’d like to kill dead

    What  you do

    1. Fill your spray bottle with tap water to the fill line.
    2. Add 5-10 drops of cinnamon essential oil.
    3. Spray.
    4. Banish ants from your home forever.

    Easy right? Very easy to make, and easy to use as well.

    The most crucial factor will be identifying where the ants are entering your home. Spray all around there, liberally, with your newly made ant repellant spray. Then, spray all along the path they normally take.

    If you want proof that this works insanely well, simply spray some in an ant’s path. Heck, you can even sprinkle some cinnamon right in their path to see how it works. They will always avoid it. Not sure why, but ants hate cinnamon.

    Every night as you clean up your kitchen, finish up by spraying the cinnamon oil spray all around. You probably won’t need it for long, but keep it in your kitchen for future use, just in case. You will be amazed at the results, trust me!

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  • 7 Brilliant Uses for Table Salt…Other Than Flavoring Food

    7 Brilliant Uses for Table Salt…Other Than Flavoring Food

    Regular old table salt actually has a whole lot more uses than simply flavoring food. Even if you’ve gotten into healthier salts like Himalayan pink salt, you should still be buying regular table salt for the many household applications it has.

    Salt lasts virtually forever and can be used medicinally, for cleaning, even for the care of animals and in the garden.  It should definitely always be a staple in your home, like baking soda or vinegar.

    Here are just a few of the many things you can use salt for:

    Soothe bug bites

    You can use salt to reduce itching and irritation from pesky bug bites. Simply moisten a bit of salt with some water, making a paste, and apply to the irritated area.

    Shine copper

    Salt and lemon juice mixed into a paste can work wonders for dirty or oxidized copper cookware. Just use the paste to polish up your copper and it will shine like new.

    Reduce oil splatter 

    Add a dash of salt to oil when frying, and it will absorb any moisture in the oil and prevent splattering.

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    Non-drip candles 

    Soaking candles in a salt solution for a few hours will dramatically reduce any chance of wax dripping. Just make sure to let your candle dry completely before lighting!

    Put out grease fires

    You should know by now that you should not use water to put out a grease fire, but you can use salt. Throw as much salt as you can on the blaze and if you’re able to cover it, it will put the fire out.

    Keep milk fresh

    This is a great one for homesteaders-you can actually prolong the freshness of milk by adding a dash of salt to it. Don’t worry, you won’t taste it!

    Shell nuts easily

    Nuts that are tough to shell can cause much frustration. But if you soak them in a solution of salt water before shelling, it can help ease the process.

    These are just a few of the many ways you can use salt around the house. Do you know of any uses we didn’t cover?

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  • How to Make Infused Vinegar for Cleaning

    How to Make Infused Vinegar for Cleaning

    If you want to clean using natural, green cleaning products, but miss the fragrant smells of conventional, store-bought cleaners, then this is a great idea for you.

    Scent-infused vinegar is a really great, and cheap way, to make your own fragrant cleaners that actually work. We’re definitely fans of essential oils here, but we understand a lot of people aren’t ready to make the dive into buying them, or aren’t sure how to use them properly.

    This recipe is cheap, easy, involves no essential oils, and cleans amazingly well. You even can most likely make your own custom cleaner with a scent that you love using leftover scraps from your kitchen! Let’s begin.

    How to Make Scent-Infused Cleaners

    The basic formula for these cleaners involves soaking your fruit, herbs, or flowers in in vinegar for a few weeks, then using that vinegar as the base for a simple homemade cleaner. Here are some ideas for infusions you can use:

    • pine needles
    • citrus peels
    • fresh lavender sprigs
    • fresh rosemary sprigs
    • cinnamon sticks
    • eucalyptus leaves
    • rose petals
    • gardenia blossoms

    What you need to get started is one of the above, some other fragrant plant of fruit, (or any creative combo you can come up with!), a jar with a lid, and some regular white distilled vinegar. Keep in mind, the vinegar should be able to fill roughly 1/3 of a spray bottle when you’re done, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

    For the following cleaner, you will need that spray bottle, some distilled water, and if you want a little extra cleaning oomph, a dash of dish soap. 

     

    Directions: 

    1. Take the scent of your choice, and, if they’re large like sprigs, roughly chop them. You don’t have to worry too much though, you just need to be able to stuff them in a jar.
    2. Put your herbs, leaves, peels, etc. in the jar, and cover with vinegar.
    3. Put the lid on the jar securely.
    4. Place in a cool, dark place, for 2-3 weeks. You can even do 1 if you’re in a hurry, it will still be lightly infused.
    5. When you’re ready to make your cleaner, strain whatever you have been infusing out of the vinegar, and pour your vinegar into your spray bottle.
    6. Fill the rest of the spray bottle with the distilled water (really, you can use tap, but distilled is just more sanitary) and a dash of dish soap if you like.

    And that’s it! Use this as you would your regular cleaner, and you’ll be amazed at how good it cleans and how delightful it smells.

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  • 30 Items to Purge in the New Year for a Clutter-Free Homestead

    30 Items to Purge in the New Year for a Clutter-Free Homestead

    For homesteaders, there’s a lot of things that are great to hoard and keep a good stock of. However, like any household, there are also often things that pile up and just create clutter and mess. If you’d like to keep a well-ordered homestead with plenty of room for a good stash of supplies, it’s important to purge as well. Also, if you live off-grid or in a semi-wilderness setting, clutter can attract pests and bugs that you might want to deter, so reducing clutter can have a lot of benefits there as well.

    Since it’s a New Year, if you are wanting to clean out your home this year, here are some great items to purge to reduce clutter. Maybe pick one item each week to go through your home and toss out!

    1. Old wrapping paper
    2. Old phones
    3. Undeveloped film
    4. Broken Christmas lights
    5. Socks with no mate
    6. Broken tools
    7. Rusted tools
    8. Frayed rope
    9. Used weed eater string
    10. Broken buckets
    11. Expired food
    12. Rusted canned food
    13. Expired medicine
    14. Old electronics
    15. Worn out sheets
    16. Worn out towels
    17. Reusable shopping bags
    18. Plastic shopping bags
    19. Old paperwork
    20. Expired animal feed
    21. Broken lamps or light bulbs
    22. Pots and pans that are never used
    23. Broken dishware
    24. Old toys
    25. Toys with missing parts
    26. Clothes that don’t fit
    27. Worn out shoes
    28. Empty containers
    29. Unread books
    30. Dried out pens or markers

    There are some items on this list that you might be able to repurpose for something else, but make sure it’s realistic that you’ll actually take on these projects, and organize these items well so that they’re not just continuing to take up space that you could use for something else. Place them somewhere you will see them and remember to use them, organize them in a way that it is easy to grab what you need (instead of digging around your storage container), and make a list of your repurpose projects to do throughout the year.

    A clean and orderly homestead is so much more functional, so happy purging in the New Year!

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  • 10 Household Uses for Borax

    10 Household Uses for Borax

    Borax, or sodium borate, is a very cool old-school natural cleaning agent that has many uses around the home. It is most commonly used as a laundry booster or as a base for DIY laundry detergent, and it’s great for this. But there are actually many household uses for borax!

    A box of borax is easy to find, typically sold in four-pound boxes at your hardware store or Walmart (in the laundry section) and will last a long time. You can use it for all kinds of DIY cleaning agents, many of which will replace toxic, expensive cleaning products that also probably wouldn’t even be half as effective.

    Here are some creative ways you can use borax around the house!

    1. Laundry booster: just add 1/3 of a cup to every load

    2. Stain remover: make a paste with 2 parts water and 1 part borax (a spoonful will do) and scrub into a stain. Let sit for a few hours, then wash as normal

    3. In homemade deodorizing spray: mix 1/3 cup into a quart spray bottle of water and use as you would Febreze

    4. To deodorize mattresses: mix 1 part borax with 1 part baking soda and sprinkle into your fabric, wait a few hours, and vacuum up

    5. Cleaning grout and tile: make a paste with water and apply liberally, let sit, then scrub away and rinse off

    6. To clean floors: add 1-3 tablespoons to your mop water for extra clean floors

    7. To sanitize brushes and combs: soak in warm water with a handful of borax added, then rinse thoroughly

    8. To unclog toilets and drains: unclog the toilet or drain as much as you can, then dump borax into the clogged area. Let sit for 20 minutes, then pour drown with boiling water

    9. To sanitize sinks and counters: add a tablespoon to a spray bottle with water and vinegar and use as an all-purpose cleaner

    10. To kill cockroaches: nothing kills cockroaches like borax! Mix borax with sugar and sprinkle in the path of cockroaches. Clean up and refresh regularly and **make sure to keep out of reach of small children and pets. **

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  • Vinegar Does it All

    Vinegar Does it All

    When most people think of vinegar they probably think of salad dressings, or pickling, or the quintessential baking soda and vinegar volcano for kids.  But most people would still underestimate vinegar, and in doing so they could waste money and expose them and their families to needless amounts of toxins.  Here are a few ways you can use vinegar in your home to save money on commercial products and reduce the amount of toxins in your home.

     

    Toilet Cleaner

    Pouring vinegar in the toilet bowl and letting sit overnight will stop water lines from forming and help disinfect your toilet.  Common products sold for toilet bowl cleaning cost much more than vinegar and come with warning labels about not inhaling vapors from the product or getting it on your skin, let alone ingesting it.

    Shower Head Cleaner

    If your shower head is covered in white film and spraying in every direction except onto you, this could be due to calcium build up.  You can soak the shower head in vinegar to dissolve the calcium and get your shower head looking and working like new.

    Better Coffee

    Coffee makers, like shower heads can become clogged with calcium.  They can also have coffee build up and even mold in them.  To clean out your coffee maker, fill it with equal parts vinegar and water and turn it on to brew as normal.

    Cleaning Cutting Boards

    Wooden cutting boards can be homes for potentially harmful bacteria.  To clean them without soap that can be absorbed and affect food’s taste use vinegar.  Simply wipe the cutting board down with a generous amount of vinegar and allow it to soak in and dry.

     

    Vinegar is amazing, and this list is by no means a comprehensive example off all of vinegar’s household uses.  Given its affordable price and the fact that it is food grade, you will hard pressed to find a better all-around cleaner for your home.

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