Wednesday, August 4, 2010

A Green Idea (aka I'm a Cheapskate!)

I modified this idea from a friend's blog. I tried it out the past few days and it works really well.

She (and I) love the wipes that you can buy to clean bathrooms and kitchens. But they are expensive and it seems like a waste to use them once and then throw them away. I hate using a washcoth or sponge and a bucket of cleaner. Yuck! All the hair and gunk from the bathroom seems to stick to the washcloth or end up in the bucket. Nasty!

Her idea was to cut up old t-shirts into 6" squares and store them in an old baby wipe container with a spray bottle of homemade cleaner next to it.

Here is the link to her blog post:
J&LSelman

Then she throws the dirty t-shirt wipes in the wash when she washes her whites.

What a great idea!

Except I didn't want a bottle of cleaner sitting there.

So, I cut up the t-shirt, put the squares into the wipes container, and poured enough cleaning solution to get them good and wet, but not dripping.

Wow! It was great having some re-usable handy wipes to clean the bathroom!

The next modification will be to cut the t-shirt into 8" squares instead of 6" squares. I think I would like my homemade handy wipes just a bit bigger.

Here's the recipe for homemade cleaner. It's found lots of places on the internet.

1 gallon water
1/4 cup vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
squirt liquid dish detergent (I like Dawn, you may have to use a bit less if you have soft water).

Here's a great site with lots of home made recipes for cleaning supplies (and other tips):
TipNut

There it is, a green idea for cleaning! But really I like the idea because I'm a cheapskate!

2 comments:

Laurel said...

Tara I actually used to do it like you just described but I found that they went funky smelling before I used them all, that's how the bottle of cleaner evolved. And yes, cheapskate, tightwad whatever you want to call it that is what fits me too!

TJ said...

Hmmmm.... I wonder if a 'shot' of 90% alcohol in the mix will keep it from smelling funky.