I’m slowly moving us away from harsh chemical cleaners etc in the home. The more you look at the ingredients in a lot of store bought products the less you want to subject yourself and your children to the toxic mix that most of them have! I’ve been buying more natural ones but realised that it is very easy and much cheaper to make your own. There are recipes all over the net for everything you could possibly want to make

This recipe is soooo easy if you have rosemary growing in your garden like I do.

Ingredients:

10 springs of rosemary

The outside of lemon (I just roughly chop off the skin – some recipes I read say not to leave any of the flesh but I’ve not had an issue)

White vinegar

A big jar

Instructions:

I hope you can cope with this people! Put the rosemary and lemon in the jar and fill about 2/3 with white vinegar and leave to sit for a minimum of 3 days and up to a couple of weeks. That is it pretty much!

This is what it will look like after about 2 weeks:

Drain out the liquid into a bowl – isn’t the colour amazing!? I couldn’t believe how yellow it went the first time I made this – is is from all the natural oils in the lemon I think (although I guess the rosemary probably gives some of the colour too)

I then used a cloth to strain it back into the jar – there were a few little floaties and I was worried they’d clog the spray bottle if I left them in:

I then filled my spray bottle with just over 1/2 of the mixture and topped it up with water – job done – and in good time – my stove was desperate for a spray!

White vinegar is amazing stuff, it is naturally anti bacterial and degreasing. Lemon and rosemary add to the antibacterial properties of this cleaner as well as making it smell yummy. This is totally safe to use in the kitchen on cooking surfaces and if you have a toddler who likes to grab on run off with things (or is that just me!?) you don’t need to worry that he will come to any harm spraying this around!

If you have been thinking about trying some natural cleaners then this is a great place to start – quick, cheap, easy and it works really, really well. Let me know if you try it!