I have a few things on my mind this Friday. One is homemade cleaning goods. The lovely Kelli from KelliOnegave me a copy of the book, ‘Speed Cleaning’ that she didn’t want anymore, and I found an idea I’ve been keen to try out…

Homemade timber cleaner! I mixed up a paste with some ash from the fireplace, and used it to clean these chairs my father made for me.

I personally would only ever try this on sealed timber, just to make sure it’s ok. Wanna see how it turned out?

And yes, I know the floor below is filthy, I just figured if I’d be cleaning with ash paste, I’d need to clean the floor afterward anyway, so why worry, right?

All in all, I’m happy with the result. I’ve talked before about how I’ve used oils as wood polish, but no matter how much I buff it, my children always slip off their chairs afterward! With this paste, I wipe it on, rinse it off with a wet cloth then buff it dry. I found using less ash to be more effective than ton of the stuff.

I love that this is using a resource that normally has no use. We burn boxes in our house as a cheap way to keep warm in winter, and to reuse our household waste. I’m so happy that this book has given me a free option to clean our wooden furniture.

The other thing on my mind is that today I’m launching my new site within Hear Mum Roar: Winning Mums. I know how much some of you love a giveaway, and I’m the same. So I’ve created a site where bloggers or other companies can submit their giveaways at one, easy to find site for free. The only thing it needs now is the forum installed and some giveaways posted on there. If you are currently running a giveaway, I’d love it if you’d submit one, so I can check it’s all working well.

With the forum side of things, it will start out with one or two categories, and if it takes off well, I’ll add more. If it doesn’t get used, I’ll get rid of it. Time will tell.

I hope you have a lovely Friday and weekend. What are your plans?

Other reading:

Vinegar cleaning

How to clean carpet naturally

Homemade air freshener

I know a lot of people are aware that white vinegar is an awesome way to clean the home. It’s cheap, doesn’t contain nasty chemicals and is much healthier for the family. It’s also far better for the environment than harsh chemical cleaners.

I’ve been using white vinegar for many years now. I started out just using it mixed with essential oils such as lavender, eucalyptus, tea tree and lemon scented tea tree. Of course, there’s many other great oils that can be added, but these were the ones I regularly used.

Now, living out here in the middle of whoop-whoop, it’s a little more of an effort for me to just race to the shops to grab some essential oil. Sometimes I’ve needed to clean the house then and there, without time to replace those empty essential oil bottles. What’s that saying? Necessity being the mother of invention? Anyway. Maybe someone else has already come up with this idea, I don’t know.

I’ve been a little bit mean with some of you on facebook, asking you guys to guess what I’m doing with the bottles in the picture above. These are three white vinegar bottles that were empty to start with. I’ve picked some plants from the garden (from left to right in the photo): wormwood, lavender and mint.

How to make it:

I’ve picked as much of each as I could carry, then chopped it finely. I pushed them into the empty bottles, then topped them up with white vinegar. So basically, they’re pickled herbs, and when they’re ready to be used, need to be strained first. I am saving the wormwood for summer when the flies really get out of hand around here. The lavender just smells pretty and is so soothing. (Don’t use in pregnancy, though). I’ve also heard that floors mopped with mint essential oils mixed with vinegar can deter mice, so I’m curious as to whether or not it’d worked with my pickled mint. I’ll update this blog as I find out.

I’ve found, having made these concoctions a few weeks ago, that the wormwood becomes potent quite fast. The lavender needs a little longer, perhaps a week or two, and the mint needed the longest. In fact, the mint smelt like salad dressing for a long time! It’s only now, a few weeks down the track that it actually smells like mint! I’ve heard that slugs dislike mandarin peel, so in future when I have some fresh peel, I’ll try pickling some to see if it’s useful. Because our home is over one hundred years old, we often get disgusting slugs on our floors!

The ways I’ve used this vinegar so far include:

- Making up spray bottles of one quarter vinegar solution and the rest, water. Makes a fantastic all-purpose spray cleaner.

- Adding a splash of this vinegar solution to the mopping bucket water.

- Mixing the solution with baking soda (also known as bi-carb of soda, they’re both the same thing) to make a paste. This makes a good scrubbing paste for cleaning the bathtub, shower, stovetop, etc. Basically, anything that requires a little extra ‘oomph’. (Edited to add: don’t mix vinegar and baking soda into a paste then store it in a container or bottle. It’ll explode! Just make up enough to use once at a time)

- To unblock the sink with baking soda

- As a final rinse in the washing machine.

…But the job my kids like doing best with pickled vinegar is scrubbing the cereal-encrusted dining table with a cloth nappy splashed with straight solution. How great is it to be able to get kids so involved in nature, and to be able to let them clean up safely without worry about them handling poisons?

As for me, I’ve not bothered buying any essential oil for cleaning for a few weeks, now. Don’t get me wrong, the oils mixed with vinegar are still by far cheaper than buying chemical cleaners. However, I’m so chuffed that I can use something natural, nice-smelling with useful properties (eg pest control), and it works out cheaper still!

I remember when I first began cleaning with vinegar all those years ago. I remember being gobsmacked at having less headaches in general, and not coughing and sneezing when I cleaned anymore. And it works just as well, if not better. Vinegar works as a disinfectant and an odour neutraliser. Of course, it does smell strongly for a few minutes, but once the smell fades, it takes those stinky house odours away with it.

I can’t wait to try some other plants/scents in this way. What do you think would be good ones to try?

Other reading:

How to clean carpet naturally

Homemade air freshener

Of course, this means that we are all blotchy with big, red welts all over our bodies. The initial itch and sting is enough for us to want to tear our skin off.

The good news is, when I was making homemade fly repellant, I was actually on the phone to my good friend Myrtle from Mimsical Soaps, and she gave me some great tips. At the time, she let me know that wormwood, or  artemisia absinthium (yes, you read that correctly, this is the stuff that makes absinthe) can be used to make an effective treatment for mozzie bites.

She gave me directions, and about a week ago, I tried it for the first time out of sheer desperation and itchiness.

I picked a basket full of wormwood (I recently learned it’s also called Mugwort. Who knew?), placed it into my slow cooker and drizzled a bottle of oil over the top. I added some lavender as well, because I love its soothing, antiseptic properties. I also have a bloody lot of it, so why not? I hope Myrtle is ok with that idea. Hi, if you’re reading:)

Then, I put the slow cooker on the lowest setting, and let it cook for about 6-8 hours, stirring regularly. I like cooking with wormwood in the kitchen, because it has the side bonus of driving every fly out of the house at the same time.

I let it cool, then strained it into a freshly washed, recycled pasta sauce jar. Because last time I made something with wormwood it went mouldy, I have been keeping this in the fridge. It’s been keeping well so far. The best news is that we can dab some of this onto our mozzie bites with a tissue, and it’s probably the most soothing thing I’ve tried yet. I also have a patch of eczema on my ankle, and it’s been making that a lot more bearable too. Keeping it in the fridge just makes it more refreshing on irritated skin.

Now, there is a better way to make this treatment, but according to Myrtle, it takes much longer. Say, a year. So I’ll make some soon, but we’ll have to wait to see how that turns out.

Do you have any wormwood growing around your home? What works best for your mozzie bites?

Other reading:

How to get rid of flies

How to clean carpet naturally

Lavender

Picking our mushrooms

Our fruit garden is planted

Drying mandarin peel

Homemade air freshener

Fresh, homemade cat food

Homemade flax seed hair gel

Beneficial plants and insects – companion planting

To cut a long story short, I picked it, boiled it, then strained it.

This made rather a lot. Once it was cooled, I poured it into a spray bottle and squirted it around the house. It seems to be working so far! I dropped all the cooked, strained leaves around the backdoor also, in the hope it would deter flies and mosquitos as well.

I was talking to my good friend  Myrtle from Mimsical Soaps who knows a lot about this sort of thing. She told me that if you boil the wormwood with some chilli, it makes an excellent spray to prevent fruit flies. So I must start growing some and I’ll try that too.

Edited to add: this mixture went mouldy very quickly, so next time I would probably add some vinegar or vodka to the water to help preserve the spray and let it last longer.

The other thing I was busy with today, was picking loads of flowers from the front garden. I stripped the bushes bare of daisies, lavender, roses and geraniums. I was worried how I was going to dry so many flowers, and didn’t want to fiddle around tying them all into bunches and find places to hang them. So, I took an ugly lace curtain that came with this house when we bought it…

..and made a hammock of sorts for my flower haul to dry out on.

Other reading:

Wormwood for mosquito bites

How to clean carpet naturally

Drying mandarin peel

Kids growing mushrooms

Home made air freshener

When we vacuum every couple of days, sometimes we want to just do something to ensure it also smells nice. We don’t like the talcum-based carpet powders or foams in the supermarkets, and my fiance and I are allergic to them for different reasons anyway. We loathe the idea of talcum around our children, as well.

Luckily, I’ve got something much healthier, cheaper and nicer right here at home. Home-made carpet powder. I remember Marita was recently asking me what I was planning to use my dried lavender for. Well, this is one thing! Stay tuned, because I will be using it for other things as well…

All that’s in this little container here is dried lavender heads and baking powder (or bicarbonate of soda, if you prefer, they’re the same thing) shaken together. The longer you store this mixture, the more the baking soda will be scented by the lavender.

You could use any sweet-smelling dried petals for this powder, just use what’s available. We have a rose bush out the front which I’m dying to use for this, but I have to wait until it flowers. Baking soda is fantastic for absorbing and neutralising odours, and obviously, the lavender smells pretty. I also like the calming effect it has on everybody.

You can use it in the same way as the store-bought powder; just shake it directly onto the carpet, then vacuum it off again.

The kids loved running through this with their bare feet, they pretended it was snowing! I love that it’s harmless and chemical free so  they can do this with no worries.

…and here we are: clean as a whistle! It’s so nice to be able to have pretty smelling carpets without giving ourselves a headache, hayfever or an asthma attack.

Do you have anything in your garden you could use as a carpet freshener?