Homemade Soft Scrub Cleaner

I like homemade cleaners for multiple reasons.

• I do not have to run to the store
• Gentle on hands (especially delicate children who will be doing the scrubbing this time around)
• Control of product
• Less Chemicals
• Less expensive
• Less cleaning product to store under my sink for my little children to get into

 Today I decided the bathrooms had to be scrubbed down better than the usual swish and swipe, so I mixed up a batch of 'soft scrub'.   I filled the bottom of a container with Baking Soda, then using a cleaning toothbrush to stir, proceeded to add dish soap until I had a nice frosting consistency.  To help the kids try to have a good attitude, I also splashed in a few drops of Orange Essential Oil in as well at the end.    A minute later, we have a container of cleaning stuff ready to use! The amount shown above was enough to clean 5 sinks and counters, 1 garden tub, 1 stall shower, and an attempt to clean one normal tub.
  I gave my older children each a rag and some cleaner and set them to work on the bathtubs, showers, and sinks.  I LOVE how this product works on fixtures.  It shines them up beautifully!  It also did a wonderful job on the sinks, tile countertops, and even the shower door that was starting to get the hard water 'fog'.

Isn't this just a beautiful shining sink??? 

   As an added recycled bonus, I have found that you can wash the thicker baby wipes that are often sold in grocery stores with your other towels and rags and they come through the wash just fine and ready to be used as small rags, or to be reused as a baby wipe again.  Its actually scaring me a bit to see how many times these can go through the washing machine and continue to function, so I'm glad we are reusing many of them. 

*If you have not completely neglected your tub for way to long, it also does a great job cleaning that up as well.  If however, you haven't given your tub a good deep scrubbing in a very long time, you are going to need something with more oomph to get off the yucky dirty oily ring around your tub.  (I personally, am not admitting to this......)