Monday, November 21, 2011

Homemade Miracle Cleaner

I’m not big on cleaning.  Don’t get me wrong, I love having clean things…but I generally get fed up with the amount of time, elbow grease, and/or money for cleaning products required to do the job. However, when I do take the time to clean something, I am overcome with pride and the feeling that I can conquer anything.  But that feeling soon fades when something else becomes soiled and I am faced, yet again, with the grueling task of scrubbing till my knuckles bleed.
I always felt that if I could simply find a cleaning product that was inexpensive, actually worked, and didn’t require much on my part…I might actually clean more often.  Well, on one of my Pinterest searches one day, I found what looked to be a very promising homemade cleaning concoction. 
Maybe you’ve seen it.  The mixture of Dawn dish washing liquid and hydrogen peroxide that claims to be one of the only spot removers you will ever need!  But if you’re like me, repinning the idea was about as far as you got and you have no clue if the stuff actually works or not.  If that is the case – wonder no longer!  I decided to actually try some of the things I had pinned on my boards and this spot remover was one of the first things on my list!
After doing a load of laundry the other day, I noticed that there was a cloth wipe that had some not-so-pretty spots on it. 
I won’t go into detail about what the spots were from…I’ll just tell you that I’m a cloth diapering mama and leave the rest to your imagination…  :)  While I’m sure the wipe was perfectly clean and sanitary, I shudder at the thought of having something that looked so…yucky!  Naturally, I deemed this a perfect time to try out my new recipe. 

1 part Dawn Dishwashing Liquid (the original blue kind)
2 parts Hydrogen Peroxide
Mix together and pour directly on the stain.
The website also says that if it is a big stain, you can always add the mixture to a bucket of hot water and submerse your stained item in it.  I actually chose to mix mine in a spray bottle and just squirt it onto my wipe.  I probably didn’t have to put as much as I did, but I didn’t want to go through the whole process just to find out I needed more…so I opted to douse the thing and let the mixture do its job. 
I’m not going to lie – I am a very impatient person and after about a minute or two of waiting, I decided to give the wipe a little rub to agitate the mixture and then rinse it out.  And since I am a big fan of “before and after” photos…


I was so excited!  Ecstatic!  Over the moon with happiness!  So much so, that I ran to the living room to get my daughter’s Princess chair.  She’s had it for over a year now and you can definitely tell that it is well loved.  From food stains, to milk stains, to “what-in-the-world-could-that-possibly-be?!” stains…this chair has definitely seen better days. 
I doused the entire chair with my miracle cleaner and then let it sit.  Because this seemed like it would be a harder job, I left it alone for a bit longer (albeit, just a little bit longer…).  After waiting for what seemed like an eternity (but was probably less than 10 minutes), I took a rag and started rubbing little circles on the soiled areas.  I have no clue if this is “proper” or not, but when I was finished I didn’t try to rinse it off in any way.  I just wiped off the excess foam from my light scrubbing, then sat back and admired the fruits of my labor.


It’s not 100% perfect, but by golly – it’s pretty close!  I’m thinking that another cleaning or two will have this chair looking like new!  I should probably mention that this is not the first time I have attempted cleaning this chair.  I tried a couple other things that seemed simple enough, but just didn’t deliver.  If anything, they made things worse.  I was planning on trying out a recipe I found that called for whipping Dawn dishwashing liquid in my Kitchenaid mixture until it took on the consistency of whipped cream…but that was just waaaay more work than I really cared to do. 
I can honestly say, however, that this new little combination has me thinking of other things I can use it on.  Those spots of fruit punch that have been on the carpet for the last year and a half…they’re next.  Along with the white shirt that me and my clumsy self splattered buffalo wing sauce all over.  I’m even thinking of attacking the dingy looking grout in our bathroom to see if maybe, just maybe, it will work on that as well.  I hate to say it but…I think I’m starting to like cleaning!!

2 comments:

  1. We loved Fort Rucker! We're at JBLM now, and I'm going to try it out on a white shirt that got the curry sauce from that Thai restaurant right off post in Daleville. Hope it works!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. We loved Fort Rucker! We're at JBLM now, and I'm going to try it out on a white shirt that got the curry sauce from that Thai restaurant right off post in Daleville. Hope it works!!

    ReplyDelete