How to Make Natural Soft Scrub Cleaner

Most Americans are watching their wallets these days and are looking for new ways to save money. One great way to save money while helping keep the Earth clean and your home free of toxins is to make your own cleaning products.

One cleaning product that is easy to make at home with ingredients that you probably already have on hand is soft scrub cleanser. This cleanser is great for cleaning bathroom surfaces such as toilets, sinks and bathtubs. It both cleans and rinses as well as the commercial variety. I came up with the recipe below after much trial and error.

3/4 cup of baking soda

Liquid dish soap, enough of it to make a thick liquid that has the consistency of frosting.

After procuring the ingredients mix them together in a small jar and your soft scrub is ready.

This recipe is very versatile; if you have surfaces that have debris that is really stuck on you can add extra baking soda to your mixture. Baking soda is naturally abrasive and adding extra to the mix should help you easily clean surfaces that are particularly dirty.

If you have surfaces that require whitening add a small quantity of bleach, roughly 1/8 of a teaspoon to the mixture depending on your preference. The bleach in the mixture will help you easily clean, whiten and disinfect surfaces making it particularly useful in bathrooms and kitchens.

To use your finished product first wet down the surface that you plan to clean. I use either a sponge or just a washcloth to apply the mixture to the surface in need of cleaning. If the surface is particularly dirty in addition to adding extra baking soda to the mixture, allow the cleanser to set on the surface for 10 to 15 minutes. Add enough water to the mixture on the surface to make a good lather, then scrub the surface as you normally would with a commercial cleanser.

You can make a larger batch of the mixture and store it for up to two weeks by putting it in an airtight jar and storing it in the refrigerator. You can store the mixture for an additional week by adding 1 to 2 teaspoons of glycerin to the mixture before storing it in the refrigerator. If you plan on using bleach in the mixture I recommend that you make the mixture per the standard recipe and only add bleach after you remove the amount you plan to use from the jar. Otherwise the bleach can make your refrigerator smell bad.