Natural Wood Cleanser
Spring cleaning, anyone? We just recently ran out of a few store bought cleaning products (finally) and we are exploring making our own eco-friendly alternatives. Today’s experiment was making our own natural wood cleanser.
What’s wrong with store bought cleaners?
Unfortunately many store bought cleaning products are full of chemicals that may be harmful to humans or animals. The range of severity varies from potential allergens to carcinogens. As a consumer it can be quite challenging to understand which products are safe when confronted with a confusing list of chemicals. We sure don’t know how to decode those crazy ingredient lists! Fortunately there are online resources to help us evaluate product safety:
But what about the eco-friendly cleansers at the store?
Yeah, those often aren’t very good either. Our biggest disappointment is with the Method cleaning products. Cute packaging covered with words that make them sound great. Non-toxic! Plant-based! Most of their products, however, get pretty bad ratings by the EWG. The Wood for Good cleanser that we’ve been using for years is rated an F! Based on the ingredients they indicate some concern for a number of human issues (i.e., asthma, skin irritation, reproductive & developmental health, and cancer). They also indicate a moderate concern for the environment, particularly to aquatic life. And let’s be honest, aquatic life already has enough problems without our cleansers poisoning them!
That sucks, I hate being tricked!
We do too. It’s really frustrating – there’s even a name for it! This type of misrepresentation is called Greenwashing. Basically trying to use unregulated words to trick us into thinking we’re choosing a safe and eco-friendly product. The author of I Read Labels for You has an entire blog post about Method cleaning products in particular because they fool so many people, including her in the early day! Method products often have colorant, synthetic fragrance, and some have surfactants that could be problematic. Compared to brands that aren’t even trying to be safe and eco-friendly, their ingredients aren’t the worst out there, but we can do way better!
How can we do better?
We can make our own cleansers. Yep, with some relatively simple ingredients we can clean our homes without compromising our health or our planet’s health. We’ve posted in the past about the miracles of cleaning with plain vinegar, but that didn’t quite seem like the right approach for dusting/polishing wood. After a quick google search I found a DIY recipe that surprisingly does include vinegar! This homemade wood cleanser recipe by Scratch Mommy includes:
- Vinegar (white vinegar for light wood; apple cider vinegar for dark wood)
- Olive oil (or almond oil)
- Lemon juice
- Vegetable glycerin
- Lavender essential oil
You can click here to view her full recipe. We had all of these ingredients already, except for the vegetable glycerin. Having vegetable glycerin on hand is now taking us to the next level of funky! Our local grocery store, Sprouts, carries vegetable glycerin in the vitamin/personal care section, but if you can’t find it in the store, you can order it online as well. Ours does come in a plastic bottle, but it is made from organic and non-GMO soybeans and it will last us for a very long time. Also, try to avoid buying palm-oil based versions of vegetable glycerin – save the orangutans!
So how does it work?
It works really nicely! We aren’t big fans of complicated DIY projects, so we were pleased by the simplicity of this recipe. You just combine everything in a glass spray bottle and shake it! The oils separate from the vinegar quickly, so this natural wood cleanser does need a quick shake before each spray. We tested it out on a chair leg and the wood gleamed instantly! It’s a very oily cleanser and it left all of our wood surfaces looking moisturized and pleasantly shiny. It takes a few minutes for the wood to absorb it a bit and then it feels nice to the touch too. I can tell that we’re nourishing our wood furniture with this cleanser!
We hope that you’ll get a bit crunchy with us – go pick up some vegetable glycerin and give this natural wood cleanser a try! It’s better for you, your family, and aquatic critters all around the world. And of course it will make your wood happy too 🙂
xo, Nicole
