I would love any and all information that anyone has on making homemade household cleaners (dishsoap, kitchen/bath/floor cleaner, disinfectants, etc).

I saw the posts about the homemade laundry soap, and I have a couple of questions about that as well...

1. Can you substitute regular homemade soap for the Fels Naptha?

2. If you put vinegar in your laundry, will your clothes smell vinegary?

3. Can you put fragrant oils in the laundry detergent to make it smell good? (I really like flowery smelling cleaning products)

-- Linda (botkinhomeschool@yahoo.com), June 15, 2000

Answers

Linda, 1. yes, you can use your soap. 2. some, but by the time you bring them in off the line, the smell is gone. 3. maybe. The oil part worries me, use a very little at first to be sure you aren't going to get oily clumps of detergent (which is really soap). It will jack your cost back up.

Baking soda-use in place of things like Comet for many uses. Warm your oven, turn it off, and put a glass pan of ammonia in it over night. Next morning, scrub the oven. Borax, get a box, there are lots if cleaning ideas on the box, same for washing soda. You can also send away for a booklet for even more ideas. You might have to splurge and buy name brand bottles of vinegar and bleach, but worth it at least once for the ideas on their labels.

Search for frugal and cheapskate sites on the internet. They have lots of different ideas for household cleaners. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), June 15, 2000.

If you add fragrant oils to your laundry use "essential oils" and add them BEFORE the clothing into the water. Five or six drops is good, more is just fine. Eucalyptus actually kills the skin mite that lives in bedding, but you need to add quite a bit to do the job. Using essential, and not perfume, oils ensures a high quality, natural additive.

I like patchouli, and using the essential oils allows me to enjoy the scent when they are dry, even after being on the line. I am currently using lemongrass essential oil.

Enjoy your experiments.

-- Anne (Ht@HM.com), June 15, 2000.

Vinegar won't make your clothes smell vinegary.

-- Cindy (atilrthehony_1@yahoo.com), June 16, 2000.

All kind of good info at: www.makestuff.com

-- JerryR(La.) (jwr98@hotmail.com), June 16, 2000.