You know you're an adult when...

   I am definitely about to blog about cleaning supplies so hold on and get ready for the excitement that is about to come to you. I have been planning on doing this for months, but just now got around to doing it...which is really sad, because it took about 10 minutes to look up the recipes, gather the materials and make them all. I am really super cheap...and realized how much money I was spending on cleaning supplies and knew there had to be a better solution. This also goes with our quest to get as many toxins as possible out of our house. Most of these cleaning supplies were made with things that you can put directly on your skin with no questions asked. There is a bit of bleach and a teenie bit of ammonia in one, so I don't recommend drinking them, although they are all mostly water. There is one other one that I want to make, but will have to wait until I go get more rubbing alcohol and another bottle.

   The first bottle is window cleaner. This stuff will take dog slobber off the outside window and is less streaky then Windex. I come from a long line of people who are entirely to obsessed with streaks and it didn't skip my generation either. This is 6 oz of rubbing alcohol ($2  for a 18 oz bottle, so about 70 cents), 1 1/2 tsp of ammonia (I used some that was lemon scented because the smell of ammonia grosses me out, $2 for 64 oz so less then $.01 for each bottle) and a drop of laundry detergent (I used Free and Clear, I don't even know how to calculate the cost on that one...) and fill the rest up with water.  You use it just like Windex and it's AWESOME. It cost less then $.75 to make and would have cost about $2.50 in the store. Even with buying the bottle this time, it was $1.75...you could wait until you run out to make it and never have to buy a bottle.

   The second bottle is shower cleaner. I don't even know what to compare this to because we have tried just about everything to get the hard water spots off our glass shower and this works amazingly well. It's not completely perfect yet, but I've only used it twice, and it's got 2 1/2 years worth of build up to cut through (so gross, I know). It's got 16 oz of dawn dish detergent and 16 oz of warm vinegar (microwaved for about 2 minutes, makes it mix better) . At Sams, you can get 1 gallon of Dawn for $10 and a gallon of vinegar for $1.75. That makes 8 bottles of shower cleaner so that makes the cost $1.47 per bottle. I think the cost ends up about the same no matter where you get the supplies from compared to the Tilex shower cleaner (which didn't touch the hard water spots) for $4 a bottle for the same size. To use this, I sprayed it on the shower when it was dry and let it sit for about 2 hours (I've heard of people leaving it on overnight, the dawn makes it form a gel that stays on the glass instead of dripping down) then wipe it down and spray it down and prepare to be amazed.

    The third bottle is vinegar cleaner. I use this on everything...literally everything. I've used it on floors, kitchen counters, food, the refrigerator, glass, the stove, anything I have to clean in Jonah's room, my dashboard, any other surface you can think of. It is what I use as my daily cleaner. I do 16 oz vinegar to 16 oz water and call it good. It's $.22 per bottle to make and is so safe to put anywhere near your kids or dogs or food. Jonah likes to help me clean and this is the only thing I let him use. Vinegar is a natural disinfectant so I also spray vegetables and stuff with it. I kind of compare it to Pine-Sol...which is $3 a bottle.

    The last bottle is a bleach cleaner. I don't like all of the toxins it has in it, but I can say everything that is in it so that's a step in the right direction I'm thinking. It's possible that it just makes me feel better and really doesn't mean anything at all. It has 3 oz of bleach ($2 for 3 qts of Clorox which leaves it at $.06 per bottle) and 1 1/2 tsp of laundry detergent ($12 for 150 oz, so that makes it $.02 per bottle) and fill the rest with water. Serious...a $.08 cleaner. The Clorox Cleanup sells for $2.84 at Walmart.

The total cost of the cleaners listed here (store bought) is $12.34. The cost of my cleaners is $2.52. That saves you $10 on those cleaners alone! If it's your first time, and you buy bottles (like I did) add in an extra $4 (the bottles are $.97 at Home Depot) and you still save $6 the first time and then $10 every time after that and I rebuy these supplies at least once a month (I have a whole board on pinterest devoted to cleaning, and I have someone who comes and does deep cleaning once every 2 weeks for me as my gift to myself and my family for working full time, I'm kind of a cleaning supply addict). I have a friend who makes her own dishwashing detergent and her own clorox wipes that I'm very interested in trying (hint hint Jessica ) so hopefully you'll see a blog post about that as well soon. She also makes her own laundry soap, but we have to be so careful about J's skin, that I will probably wait a while on that one.