Clean and fresh.

I love the house to smell nice. In general I think a clean house is the most important thing, bins emptied everyday and the house full of the aromas of lovely cooking and plenty of fresh air. Linen that smells of sunshine and towels that smell fresh. These are the basics of your house smelling good.

Over the years I have tried all kinds of scented candles and room fresheners, diffusers and so on. Many smell just dreadful like cheap motels trying to mask something nasty! Many are really just chemicals that I am doubtful we should be inhaling in the first place. 

I have found a few candles/diffusers that smell just divine. And they are very expensive. You do get a couple of weeks of bliss from them but after a couple of months they have lost the best bit and become blahhh! 

My favourite scents are vanilla and caramel fragrances. Love them. But beautiful scents from baking are hard to beat and have a good effect on everyone. Who doesn't love to walk into their home to the smell of a beautiful dinner cooking! 

In a quest to save money, reduce chemicals and have everything clean and smelling good I have used a cleaner recipe I originally got from Simple Savings called Miracle Cleaner. The smell is very fresh as it uses Eucalyptus Oil. This is a good oil as it is a natural germ killer, dust mite killer and smells good. People comment how good your house smells. It is one of those smells that smells clean. You just assume everything is clean and hygienic when you smell this. My daughters husband loves this scent. She adds it to her washing as well.

Now this recipe I have made using different oils. I think the oil should not be just a good smelling oil but a germ killing one. I have used lavender oil and orange oil in place of eucalyptus with really good results. So think of what scent you would like to use as it will fill your home and it will last really well. It is absolutely wonderful and once you have the ingredients you are set for a really long time as this goes a long way. It takes a minute or two to make and each batch lasts just ages.

I pour one lot into bottles. This goes into buckets of water for floor washing. The rest I put into spray bottles. You can recycle a spray bottle or buy one for a couple of dollars. The spray I use in the bathroom, on counter tops etc. It really cuts through grease and stubborn stuff. And when you have cleaned the house smells really wonderful.

This is my current batch made with lavender. Normally I use a lavender dish washing liquid as my detergent component so that it looks lavender in colour.

In a large jug mix 2 dessertspoons of washing soda. (this is in the cleaning isle it is also called lectric soda)
1 litre of water,
40 ml detergent (I use a good dish washing detergent)
200ml of white vinegar
and 40ml of eucalyptus oil or lavender oil or orange/lemon or whatever...

Mix together and pour into your bottles and spray bottles.
For the floors pour a couple of spoonfuls into a bucket of hot water.

If your hands end up in this it feels really soft and lovely. I have found bought cleaning products often take my breathe away. I cough splutter and know I probably shouldn't be breathing this stuff!

Now you can also make your own wipes with this. I pack a big jar with soft cloths. You can get really inexpensive mircofibre cloths and re use them again and again. Then I pour in some miracle cleaner diluted down. If I am filling a big jar I would use two desert spoons miracle cleaner and the rest water. I make it so that I fill the jar with cloths and  about one third fill the jar with water then shake. This way the cloths are all damp. Then you just pull a cloth out to use as an instant wipe. They are really handy. In the kitchen they really cut through sticky stuff and they shine your sink like you wouldn't believe! 

If I see flannelet sheets in the op shop I grab them! (well if they are a dollar or two) I launder them and tear them into sections about the size of a large mans hankie. Some I save for super soft hankies if someone is really ill. They can then be thrown away. They are so soft that they are a saviour. Because it is the softest fabric and has been worn out and washed 100 times it is just soooo soft. I swear by these. The others become soft cleaning rags and for jars of wipes. Really they are so good and between the softness of them and the scent and effectiveness of the cleaner these have me cleaning and dusting away very happily. At the end I love how the place smells!

This is very old fashioned, money saving, healthy and good. We can spend a fortune in the cleaning isle in search of some miracle. Save that money. I hope because of this you will be a few hundred dollars better off every year!

A really good website for make your own cleaning products is One Good Thing By Jillee. She is great and there is something for every need there. I use a lot of her ideas. 

How often do we buy a cleaner hoping it will do something impressive but in the end it just sits in the cupboard!? I find with this recipe it smells so good that I really enjoy using it and so much more cleaning actually happens. Mixing up a new batch is wonderful too and instantly fills the house with a clean fragrance.

I hope you are having a great weekend and keeping warm! xxx