How to make your own cleaning products

With a handful of common ingredients, Christchurch-based Sonja Barrish makes cleaning products for the house and laundry washing powder.

In this episode of RNZ podcast Thrift learns how to make a simple spray cleaner and a washing powder.

The base ingredients include a handful of carbonates, which in various combinations, can pretty much clean your whole house, says Barrish.

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First up is baking soda, AKA bicarbonate of soda, or sodium bicarbonate.

“It's really fantastic at cutting through grease, also removing smells,” says Barrish.

Barrish buys hers in bulk in North Christchurch, but she says you can find reasonably priced sellers on Trade Me.

Buying in bulk will save you a bit of money, but if you don't want the upfront cost, or you don't have space to store a large bag, you can probably get by on what you've got at home, she says.

Washing soda, aka sodium carbonate is next. It's like baking soda, but less abrasive and it gets soapier.

“Washing soda is great, it cuts through grease, it removes odours and it kills mould and mildew,” says Barrish.

The final carbonate is sodium percarbonate. Barrish uses it for everything – even sterilising her homebrew kit.

“Basically, anything that needs to be sterilised. It's really fantastic, I used it on our nappies, anything that's got colour to it, this won't damage the colour.”

Washing soda is sold under a few different names, and that can change the cost.

“You can buy it as No Rinse Home Brew Steriliser. It's about $5 for a little tablet container. I don't imagine that it'll have more than 100 grams in.

You can also buy it as oxygen bleach for about 10 to $14 a kilo and as sodium percarbonate, she says.

“And that costs you about $6 a kilo. So just knowing the name, as well as a huge money saver, which is I find so crazy.”

Next up is borax - the last of the white powders.

“Borax is great because it disinfects, keeps ingredients dispersed and it maintains a good pH for cleaning.”

Although this is not to be confused with boric acid, which is used in swimming pool cleaners, she says.

A couple of soaps come next, Castile soaps, originally made in the Castile region of Spain.

These are simple soaps, she says, normally made just with olive oil mixed with lye.

Barrish makes her own Castile soap.

“Once you know what you're doing, you can make six kilos of soap in like an hour or two.”

Or you can buy Castile soap from a soap maker or find it easily online. Castile soap also comes in liquid form, which makes it handy for putting in a spray cleaner recipe, she says.

Here's Barrish’s recipe for a super simple spray cleaner.

Supermarkets sell 500 ml bottles of cleaners from around the $4 mark to just over $6 and just like a homemade cleaner, Barrish reckons those supermarket bottles are mostly water.

“You are paying for the packaging of the water, the spray bottle, and all the transportation costs with 95 percent water, which is quite crazy.”

Best results are had when adding white vinegar into the fabric softener compartment also, she says.

Her trick for making this easily is:

Fill glass jar up 1/3 with grated coconut cleaning soap, 1/3 up with washing soda, and 1/3 up with borax. Add essential oils, and mix well. Then, add sodium percarbonate, if using.

Now top up with baking soda, mix well, and keep topping up with baking soda, till full. Use up to 40 drops essential oil per half kilo of washing powder.

Thrift searched several different supermarkets and a kilo of washing powder ranged from $3.79 up to $11.50.

But what about the cost of her time and labour?

“I find this an interesting one, because when you cook dinner, do you take into account the time that it took you, versus just going out and buying takeaways. People don't seem to take labour into account in some areas, yet they do in others,” Barrish says.

Get yourself some simple ingredients. Bulk buy if you can afford the cost up front. Otherwise, start small. You can do a lot with just baking soda on its own, vinegar on its own, or mix baking soda and liquid Castile soap together for a really simple spray cleaner.

Once you've got your head around that, give the washing powder a go. Play around with the proportions, work out the recipes that get the dirty jobs done.

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