Adventures In Natural Homemaking: All-Natural Wood Polish

Hello! Perhaps you're like me, getting ready to host a big Thanksgiving dinner in a couple of days. And perhaps you're also like me, being motivated to do a super-good housecleaning because company's coming. 

We own a number of antique wood furniture pieces, so I was busy polishing them to a nice shine yesterday. I suppose there's people who polish their furniture on a regular basis, but I'm not one of them,so I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. 

Nevertheless, even though it's a task I don't do often, I'd rather use something that doesn't list a bunch of chemicals on a bottle. So I decided to try the following "recipe", which I found on the Internet (don't recall the source):

All-Natural Wood Polish

1/4 cup olive oil(see note below)
1/4 cup vinegar(see note below)
10 drops orange essential oil (see note below)

Add all to spray bottle and shake. Spray on cloth and wipe down furniture. 

Notes: no need for the fancier grade (ie extra virgin) of olive oil here; can use the cheaper versions. I assume that the vinegar is meant to be the plain white kind, so that's what I used. 

It seems to me that essential oils are becoming more readily available, perhaps due to an interest in natural cleaning and natural beauty routines. I got my orange essential oil in an online sale (the company has since gone under, I believe), but I've also seen essential oils sold at Meijer (a regional hypermarket chain if you're reading this from outside the Midwest). Health food stores and food coops are other options.

Since I had a lot of furniture to polish, I doubled the "recipe", then began merrily spraying and wiping away. I actually enjoyed watching the woods come back to life, so to speak, and I enjoyed the fact that I didn't need to use a bunch of laboratory-blended "ingredients" to do so. 

Of course, I had to keep shaking the spray bottle to keep the concoction blended, but that was only a minor issue. Other than that, this was a nice wood polish to use. 

Who knows, it might even get me to polish my furniture more often! 

Adventures In Natural Homemaking #4: A DIY Anti-Aging Face Serum

Hello! Awhile back I read a magazine article extolling the virtues of essential oils, with commercial products featuring some of these oils listed. 

One such product uses rose oil and rose hip oil in its formulation. "...a nourishing wrinkle-fighting blend" we are told. The cost: $90 for one ounce.

I wondered if this product was vastly superior to my concoction, which I'd come across here and had been using for a few months already. If you click on the link, you'll see that the "recipe" uses rosewater and rose hip seed oil, but not rose oil. (According to the magazine blurb, rose oil is costly to produce, hence that $90 price tag. That commercial item does also use rose hip seed oil as well.)

Well, I think I can get along okay with my much cheaper version. There's still a bit of an expense involved in buying the rosewater, rose hip seed oil and  base oil (I use almond). But the resulting mixture, which also makes about an ounce per batch, is nowhere 90 dollars! 

I get a 4 oz bottle of almond oil (Nature's Truth brand)on sale for $5.00 at Meijer, a regional hypermarket chain. At a small regional health food store chain, Apple Valley, I just priced the rosewater (Heritage Products brand) at $9.19 for an 8 oz bottle. This store was selling rose hip seed oil (Now brand) at $8.99 for 1 oz. (That may seem high for a small bottle, but with essential oils, a little goes a very long way!)

Now, does this DIY product do its job? It's wintertime, when dry skin is a fact of life. But not this winter. I apply my DIY face serum once or twice a day and it keeps the dryness at bay. 

I have to admit, I don't know if there's really any anti-aging effect with this product. I'm not a good test subject, as I'm consistently told I look younger than my age. I suspect it's mostly a matter of genetics, as the same was true of my dad for most of his adult life.

But on the other hand, I figure it doesn't hurt to boost any younger-looking advantage I may have by continuing to use this homemade serum. And I like knowing that I don't have to pay $90 an ounce to do so!

Note: if you'd like to learn more about the commercial product, read this.

 

Adventures In Natural Homemaking #3: DIY Powdered Dishwasher Detergent

Hello! In my last post I mentioned I would explain the reason for buying citric acid in my next post. 

I wanted it for a DIY powdered dishwasher detergent "recipe". I was set to give the recipe here, but it's from a book that has one of those "don't share my stuff without asking me first" notices in the front.

I looked online and found a similar "recipe", which you can find here. The proportions are a bit different than what the formula I use has (mine calls for more citric acid and salt, for instance), but for all I know, maybe the version in the link is just fine as written. I suppose I could try it and see for myself!

Anyway, I've been using my book's DIY recipe for about six weeks now and have been happy with it thus far. I've tried other DIY dishwasher detergent recipes in the past and it seemed like they didn't have the cleaning power of commercial products. Even if it is better for the environment and cheaper besides, I'm not going to use a DIY detergent that doesn't work well.

I don't know why this version works better than the ones I'd tried before - not sure if the previous attempts included salt and baking soda. But I'm sure glad I found something that works well, is cheaper and is less toxic.

Oh, and the book I referred to: Essential Oils For A Clean And Healthy Home, Kasey Schwartz, author. I bought it discounted at Sam's Club. I've tried quite a few "recipes" from the book already and by and large they've been solid performers. But if you don't want to get this book, or others of this nature, similar content can be found online. It's just nice to have this sort of book on hand if you're getting into natural cleaning solutions and the like; it does save time on doing Internet searches. 

And you know, they say time is money, so I figured buying Scwartz's book would save me a lot of dough in the long run. I think it's probably close to paying for itself already!

Adventures In Natural Homemaking #2: DIY Citrus Soft Scrub

Hello! I knew I had to clean our front porch very well before I gave it a new coat of paint, but wasn't sure what cleaning product to use. So I asked a guy at the local hardware store, and he said he used Soft Scrub for that task at his house. 

Sounded like a good idea, but I wasn't sure if I wanted that cleaner around my nearby perennials, so decided to search the Internet for a DIY version. 

And thanks to Pinterest, here's what I found and used:

Citrus Soft Scrub (don't recall the source)

1 cup baking soda
1/4 cup liquid castile soap (Dr. Bronner is a well-known brand)
15 drops orange essential oil (see notes below)
15 drops lemon essential oil (see notes below)

Mix all ingredients to form a paste, adding more castile soap if needed to obtain desired consistency. 

Notes: the "recipe" called for 10 drops each orange, lemon and lime essential oils.  I had just the first two on hand, so increased their amounts as indicated. If you have just one of those three essential oils on hand, then use 30 drops of that.

Store in a container with tightly-closed lid. This mixture will dry out otherwise. (you can still use it if that happens; just add water or liquid castile soap to the mixture and stir to get a wetter consistency, or use extra water on your sponge or cleaning rag.)

I didn't bother to take a picture of the finished product, since basically it looks like a white paste. Not too thrilling. 

I don't typically use Soft Scrub, so I can't say if this DIY version is its equivalent, but it worked well enough that the paint went on smoothly and looked clean. 

Since then, I've used Citrus Soft Scrub to clean other surfaces around the house, like bathroom and kitchen sinks and our vintage cast iron claw foot tub. This soft scrub smells nice, is pleasant to use and is easy to rinse clean. And once you've purchased the ingredients, it's relatively inexpensive to make per batch too. 

And what more could you ask from a soft scrub-type cleaning product?

Adventures In Natural Homemaking #1: DIY Hardwood Floor Restorer

Hello! Thanks to some soap making projects over the Christmas holidays, I had a nice amount of essential oils left over (I'd purchased these oils on sale from Soap Making Resource, whose website can be found here.) 

There's only so much soap one can use and give away at a time, though, so I decided to look for alternate uses for my oils. I quickly learned that there's a seemingly endless of "recipes" that use essential oils, along with various other "ingredients", to create less toxic cleaning, health, and beauty supplies. (search "essential oil recipes" on Pinterest and you'll see what I mean).

So, here's the launch of a new blog subject, Adventures In Natural Homemaking. I have no background in chemistry, nor have I studied essential oils in depth. Thus, I don't know how effective  the concoctions I've come across on the Internet are. But I do know it's nice to use products that are better for the environment and for the health of my family. And I figure there's little to lose in trying out some of these "recipes" for myself to see how well they work.

This brings me to the hardwood floor in our dining room. It had taken a huge hit when a burst pipe on the 2nd floor unloaded gallons of water onto it a couple of years ago.  It took several days and some heavy-duty drying equipment from the restoration company to remove that water. 

Once dried, the floor never really looked quite the same again, but then again, it never looked all that great to begin with. It's not the original floor (have no idea why it had been replaced), but still deserved to look better.

I supposed sanding and refinishing would help, but I decided to try a DIY hardwood floor restorer I'd learned about here.  It looked pretty easy and I had the supplies on hand: olive oil, vinegar and essential oils (and that last ingredient is optional).

And it was easy: a light cleaning first, then the application of the homemade floor restorer solution. It was actually kind of fun to see my floor come back to life a bit:

See that nice shine? I took a "before" photo, but it didn't come out well because it was cloudy outside at the time. True, the sun was shining when I took the above "after" shot, but trust me, that's not the main reason why the floor is gleaming. This mixture did the trick! 

Since essential oil is optional is this "recipe", I figured it didn't matter which one I added. I picked patchouli due to its woodsy scent. 

I'm happy with the results of this hardwood floor restorer, and would use it again as needed!