2 Easy Natural Cleaning Recipes to Replace ALL of your Toxic Cleaners

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If you’re into natural living and reducing the toxins in your home, you’ve likely considered making your own cleaning products. I’ve done a longer and very thorough post on how I clean my home completely naturally and with non-toxic cleaners. Sometimes I make my products and sometimes I buy them. I encourage you to go check that post out if you want a bit of a deeper dive. 

However, if you’re just looking for the bread and butter, give me the recipes I need, that’s what this post is for. 

You can replace ALL of your toxic (or maybe just not the best) cleaners with TWO recipes. It’s so simple and easy! This takes very little time, energy, and money. Two recipes and you’re set. 

Now, I’m referring to sprays and everyday cleaners, not things like laundry soap or dish soap. Those are another story. But if you want two easy to make products (honestly you could also just pick one) for all of your surface, appliance, floor (and sometimes kid…) cleaning needs, this is all you need.

There’s two types of cleaners I’m including here. One is an antimicrobial (disinfecting) spray and one is a soap-based spray. They both clean and attack germs, killing/disposing of nearly all of them, but they do it in different ways. Again, go read my more thorough post if you want to know more. But basically, disinfecting kills germs and bacteria, soap captures them and then carries them all away. Both have the same end effect, a clean surface. 

Disinfecting spray - vinegar based

I’m not going to cover why vinegar really, truly does disinfect surfaces because I do that in my larger post. Again, go read that if you have questions or if you’re skeptical. I’ve cited a bit of research there.

Mix 1:1 vinegar and water for a disinfecting spray.

However, the fact of the matter is that vinegar is a great antimicrobial, disinfecting ingredient. The key is the ratio you mix it at. It doesn’t really matter what type of vinegar you use (though they do have different potencies), but it very much matters that vinegar makes up at least 50% of your mixture. It can be more, that won’t harm anything, but it should not be less, or the science can’t guarantee it will do its job. 

Here’s the recipe. So simple. 

You don’t really need to measure, though you can. Just fill a bottle (I prefer these glass bottles) halfway with vinegar (I prefer apple cider vinegar, just a regular version like this, not the drinking kind) and top off with water. 

If you would like, you can add about 5 drops of tea tree or lemon essential oil to this for an extra antimicrobial kick (I like these for their quality, accessibility, and price point). Again, the research for this is in my original cleaning post, but it’s been shown that these oils, especially tea tree, really do attack bacteria and germs.

And that’s it. 2 or 3 ingredients and you’re done. You can use this for everything. At many points in my life I have and it’s the recipe that I always go back to eventually. It just works.

Some people worry that it will make your house smell like vinegar. It may for a few minutes but I don’t find that apple cider vinegar lingers. If you spray way more than you need (ahem, my husband) then it will obviously smell a lot stronger. Just use a reasonable amount and you shouldn’t have that issue. 

The only warning this product needs is that you should not use it on natural stone like travertine or true marble because that will erode it over time. Other than natural stones, you should be able to use this on any surface.

Soap-based spray

For the thousandth time, the research on why soap is an effective cleaner (and the argument could be made really the only one you need; disinfecting isn’t necessary), go check out my big cleaning post. But just know, soap captures germs and bacteria inside its molecules that you then wash down the drain. Boom, clean counter. 

Mix ¼ cup of castile soap with 4 cups of water for a soap-based spray.

For the soap portion of the recipe, I choose to use castile soap. There may be other options out there but castile soap is just a basic lye soap that fits the bill for this product. There are, of course, many purchasing options for castile soap. I typically buy Dr. Bronner’s in store (you can find it at pretty much every grocery store) or online. However, I’ve started just stocking up on a high quality castile soap in bulk from Amazon lately. 

This recipe is slightly more complicated than the vinegar spray, but hardly. Here it is.

For actual measurements, you can base it off of 1/4 c of castile soap for every quart of water. That makes a lot and not all bottles are that big. You can scale this up or down to fit your needs. (e.g., ⅛ cup soap to 1 pint water, ½ cup soap to half gallon water)

The essential oils in this recipe (I like these) work the same way as the vinegar recipe. They are not necessary, the product will work fine without them. However, they can add that antimicrobial boost and I always have them on hand so I like to add them. 

Just FYI, this is the spray I use for my floors when I do it this way. I just spray a section of floor and then mop it. I more often use a mop bucket and mix it that way, but sometimes this is easier in a pinch. It’s especially great when I just need to spot clean area.

And that is it. A couple minutes of time and a dollar or two a bottle and you are set for all your surface cleaning needs. 

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