Okay, so I’ve put this off for long enough. I’ve been avoiding this for awhile now because quite frankly, I was afraid to find out. I thought I would not have time nor the knowledge to replace everything I use for cleaning products into homemade, pure, non-toxic products. Here I am, with two kids, was working full-time and now a couple weeks out from having another baby. Do I even possibly have time to renovate my cleaning supplies?! Is it even necessary?!

YES and YES.

First things first, I began to research the ingredients in what I was using every day. Here I am, pregnant, with little ones constantly putting things in their mouths. Is what I’m using really safe? I will say this part (researching) took the longest, but now that it’s done it’s so worth it. I’ve done the grunge work for you : ). I took each cleaning product that I used, one at a time, and looked up each ingredient and the potential harmful or not so harmful effects of them. I wanted my sources to be legit. I was up all night reading peer-reviewed journals and scientific studies from pubmed.gov and other various sites. LONG articles/studies is an understatement. Some were even hard to follow because they weren’t quite in laymen’s terms (bunch of nerds lol).

Anyways, what I found was astounding to say the least. SCARY is more like it.

I started with my first product, my dish soap. Palmolive antibacterial soap. Sounds safe, hmmmmm.

Let’s start with the ingredients shall we???

Ingredients: fragrance, lauryl polyglucose, ethanol LSD alcohol 40, methanol, pentasodium pentetate, D&C orange #4, sodium xylenesufonate, sodium hydroxide, triclosan, quaternium-15, sodium bisulfite, sodium chloride, sulfuric acid, hyrdrogen peroxide, sodium sufate, sodium dodecylbenzenesufonate, ammonium laureth sulfate, lauramidopropylamine oxide

First of all, I’d like to start off by saying that the FDA does not require cleaning supply companies to provide/label the ingredients on the product itself. This angers me. This tells me they could care less about what is harmfully exposed to us because all they want to do is sell a product. They want to make us work in order for us to know what’s in the products we use on a daily basis. Think about it, they would lose TONS of sales if they actually did label their products. It just makes me sick.

Many chemicals used in every day household products have never been formally approved by US regulators because they were developed decades ago before laws required scientific reviews of cleaning ingredients. These companies still continue to use ingredients not approved. You ask, “How can they get away with this?”. Simple, it literally takes years to get ingredients approved by regulation because of the massiveness of volume studies to be performed and the funding it requires to do so.

Sad.

Anyways, back to those infamous ingredients I posted above… I won’t go into every ingredient because that would just take me forever to type out and I think you will get the general idea when I talk about the few that I do go into.

Triclosan. I’m sure many of you have heard of this ingredient. Many countries (of course not yet the US) have banned this completely because of how toxic it is to our bodies. Triclosan has proven to contain known carcinogens, constituents that alter hormone regulation, and properties that assist with antibiotic resistance. NICE…. There was a survey done by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in which they found triclosan was present in the urine of 75% of Americans greater than 5 years old. This just makes my stomach turn.

Triclosan still continues to be in many products today. A lot of products labeled as “antibacterials” tend to have this ingredient in them. Colgate even continues to use this in their toothpaste. YIKES!!!

Please research.

Fragrance. Sounds nice doesn’t it? NOT. Companies think they can just post this harmless sounding word and think that consumers won’t look further into it. Well, the constituents that make up “fragrance” are harmful to say the least. They are known to affect the nervous and respiratory systems, damage DNA (which is how cancer cells develop), and they also create various allergens that are triggered, potentially causing things like asthma to develop.

All of these ingredients have numerous effects that are toxic to our bodies. Another example is ammonium laureth sulfate. This particular ingredient contains 4 known carcinogens: formeldahyde, dioxane, ethylene oxide, and acetalehyde. If we were to just read this ingredient, we probably wouldn’t think much of it because we don’t know what the heck it is, much less pronounce it. It is so crucial that we are aware of the toxic effects these ingredients may pose within our bodies. Most cleaning products have very similar if not the same ingredients in each of them. Even in products labeled and known for it being “safe, “natural”, and “non-toxic” have components in them such as fragrances and other unknown ingredients. You just never know. I just don’t trust anything that I don’t make or witnessed making myself.

There was a study done by the Environmental Protection Agency stating that women had a 54% higher chance of dying of cancer because of exposure to cleaning products. It was also stated that indoor air may be twice as polluted than outdoor air. Another study  done by the Environmental Working Group tested the umbilical chord of ten unborn babies. The study showed that there were 287 toxic chemicals (an average of 200 per fetus) within the chord itself. Among these toxic chemicals were 28 waste products, 47 consumer products, and 212 industrial chemical and pesticides.

Absolutely astounding.

Once I continued to dig deeper into what was in what I was using to clean my COUNTER TOPS, DISHES, FURNITURE, CLOTHES, KIDS TOYS, ETC….(everything my kids, husband, and I–pregnant, were exposed to and ATE off of)….I knew I had to do something about it. My family’s health was much more important to me than the “inconvenience” of making the products myself. To be honest,

IT WASN’T THAT TIME CONSUMING!

I made SIX cleaning products and from start to finish (with interruptions like putting my little one down for a nap), it took me about 2 1/2 hours to complete. I really don’t consider this to be too bad. It is SO WORTH IT when you are all done. Not to mention the products I made were literally the best products I have ever used. They WORKED!!!! Yes, before this post I tried each and every one of them!

Let’s take a gander at what I’ve created for a fraction of the cost and made with all natural, non-toxic ingredients!

My shopping list was simple: 1 box of Borax, 2 glass bottles of apple cider vinegar, 1 (2 lb) box of  baking soda, Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Bar Soap, Dr. Bronner’s Pure Organic Liquid Castille Soap (32 oz), and containers from the DOLLAR TREE! (I already had olive oil)…..All these ingredients I found at Target. I spent about $30 at Target and about $7 at the Dollar Tree. Not to mention, I have TONS of ingredients left to make more when I run out.

MY CLEANING SUPPLY RENOVATION!!

DISH SOAP…

Ingredients: 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar, 2 drops of Young Living Lemon essential oil, 5 drops of Young Living Thieves essential oil, 2 cups liquid castille soap, and 1/2 cup of water (mix them all together and viola!)

FURNITURE POLISH…

Ingredients: 1/4 cup of olive oil, 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, and 8 drops of Young Living lemon essential oil (mix all together….I used an empty vinegar jar and a spray bottle top from a spray bottle I bought at Dollar Tree : ) )

IT WORKS!!!

Before…                                                                                                  After…

  

GLASS CLEANER…

Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups of apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup of water, 8 drops of Young Living Orange essential oil, and 3 drops of Young Living Lemon essential oil (mix all together and place ingredients in 2nd empty vinegar jar and use another spray bottle top from Dollar Tree)

Stove top before…                                                              Stove top after…

 

Stove front before…                                                        Stove front after…

 

DISHWASHER SOAP

Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups of Borax, 1/2 cup of washing soda (I didn’t have so I baked baking soda in oven at 400 degrees for 30 min—-same thing), 1/2 cup of baking soda, 10 drops of Young Living lemon essential oil, 10 drops of Young Living orange essential oil, 1/4 cup of water mixed with 3 drops of Young Living Thieves essential oil (mix together in a bowl until big clumps are out. I washed out Cascade container and used this as my new container for my non-toxic formula!)

LAUNDRY DETERGENT

Ingredients: 2 gallons and 1 quart of boiling water, 1 bar of grated castille soap (I used the lavender one), 2 cups of Borax, 2 cups of washing soda, and 15 drops of Young Living lavender essential oil

INSTRUCTIONS:

melt grated castille soap with some water at medium heat

add to big pot of boiling water along with other ingredients (except for lavender essential oil) and mix well

once I mixed everything well, I poured everything into a easily pourable bucket. I let the mixture cool before I added the lavender oil.  I then poured it into 3, 3 quart containers I bought at Dollar Tree…

 

STAINLESS STEEL SCRUB

Ingredients: your own portions of 1/2 baking soda and 1/2 salt

Sink before…                                                                                              Sink after…

 

These products were not only cost effective and easy to make, they actually work! The pictures shown do not do it justice I promise. These are some of the best products I’ve ever cleaned with! Homemade and non-toxic!! Whoop Whoop!!!

This is just a start of me transforming my home into a non-toxic environment. It makes me genuinely proud to know that I know for sure what’s in my cleaning products. Not to mention, that the products with the Young Living essential oils in them are not only non-toxic, but anti-septic and antibacterial!!! So AMAZING!!!! I hope you are somewhat inspired by my cleaning product renovation. It gives me peace of mind to know that my family and I are safe with what I am using (I don’t have to even worry about wearing gloves!). 

I’m telling you, you’ve got this. Just get up and DO IT.

If you want to know more about Young Living Essential oils, feel free to comment below!