Natural Homemade Toilet Bowl Cleaner

Yesterday I made up a batch of homemade toilet bowl cleaner. It worked like a champ! Here is the recipe for those of you interested in a cheaper alternative the harsh chemical cleaners.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup Baking Soda
1/4 cup Liquid Castile Soap
1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide
1 cup hot water
1/4 cup vinegar

This recipe foams up a lot when you make it, so be sure and use a bigger bowl than you would think you need.

Step 1:

Using a whisk, gently stir the 1/2 cup baking soda and 1/4 cup liquid castile soap together.

*note* I used peppermint castile soap and it gave the cleaner a nice minty scent 

Step 2:

Stir in the 1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide and the 1 cup of warm water

Step 3:

Gently pour in the 1/4 cup vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar) and whisk gently until it stops foaming.

You can see how it decreased in size once the foaming action from the baking soda and vinegar stopped.

Step 4:

Use a funnel to pour into a squirtable bottle.

My hubby found this one at Walmart for $1 near the condiments.

Also, you can see that the mixture separates as it sits. Be sure to give it a gently shake to mix it up before you use it.

My recipe made a little more than the bottle held so I poured the extra into a glass jar for storage. 

Okay, now it was time to try it. I purposely let my toilet get gross before I used it, I wanted to make sure that it actually worked. I normally DO NOT let my toilet get like this before I clean it!

Okay, so here is the gross toilet. That is mildew/gross stuff that grew on the bowl.

I squirted just a little bit of the mixture up around the edge of the bowl underneath the rim (just like you would with any other toilet bowl cleaner). I let it sit for just a minute and then scrubbed it with my toilet scrubbing brush.

It worked like a champ!! The bowl was totally clean and no hard scrubbing was needed!

*Note: I do not know how well this will work on toilets that are already rusty or stained. The minerals in water vary so much by region. If you try this, please let me know how it works on yours.

Let's break down the cost:

1/2 cup of baking soda is $0.15

1/4 cup castile soap is $0.68 

1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide $0.03

1 cup of water is free (from your tap)

1/4 cup vinegar $0.05

      For a grand total of  $0.91! That is cheaper than buying the cheapest kind possible (at the Dollar Tree) which lets face it, doesn't really work that well anyways.

For those of you wondering where I get the liquid castile soap, I get it from vitacost online. Here is a link to get $10 off your first $30 purchase!

Homemade All Natural Liquid Hand Soap

I decided to try my hand at making homemade liquid hand soap. It was fun and super easy!

Ingredients you will need:

10 cups of distilled (or well) water

5 oz bar of castile soap (I used Dr. Bronner's Peppermint )

1 1/4 Tablespoons Vegetable Glycerine 

 15 drops Essential Oil (optional), I used Eucalyptus  

Step 1:

Grate the bar of soap

Step 2:

Pour distilled water into a large pot. Gently add grated soap, glycerin and essential oil (if using). 

Step 3:

Stir gently over medium heat until all of the soap has melted. 

Step 4:

Pour carefully into a large glass bowl and let sit for 12 hours (I did mine overnight)

How it looked when I left it to go to bed.

12 hours later! It is soap! Mine was solidish and smelled wonderful!

Step 5:

Blend gently with a hand mixer til smooth. At this point you can add a little bit more water to it til it is the texture/consistency that you prefer. 

Mine was perfect!

Step 6:

Pour carefully into containers for storage. I prefer to use glass for storage so that there is no chance of chemicals leaching out through plastic. If you aren't worried about that, then using the jug of water you got the distilled water from would work perfectly too. 

My batch yielded just a smidge under 3 quarts. 

Now, lets see how this compares to store bought hand soap...

 Walmart sells a 5.5 ounce pumper of hand soap for 98 cents. That makes it 18 cents per ounce. 

My cost:

$4.09 for the bar of soap

$.75 for the distilled water

$.53 for the glycerin

and the essential oil I already had so it was free 

(If you buy the essential oil then it would be around $5 for the bottle and then you used probably $.10 worth of oil in the batch of soap)

$5.37 total for 89 ounces of soap (two quarts = 64 ounces and then 25 ounces for the last quart jar which isn't completely filled)

Which ends up being..... drum roll please......

$0.06 per ounce! 

Six cents per ounce for all natural, safe liquid hand soap! 

*Note: I found the vegetable glycerin and the castile soap online at vitacost. I also found very affordable essential oils on their site. If you are wanting to start making your own cleaning and household supplies I would highly recommend purchasing from their site. Here is my referral link which will get you $10 off your first $30 purchase!

https://www.vitacostrewards.com/JTFPQEc