Week 35 of our #healthyhabits2017 was to Make Your Own Cleaning Products.
An average person has about 40 - 60 cleaning products in their home most of them are chemically produced and often have quite obvious warning signs on the back. I thought there simply must be another way.
The transition for me was slow... first I started getting products that are eco friendly etc, but the truth is often I was not really happy with them. So when I stumbled upon a book that tells you, you only really need five ingredients to replace a whole drugstore. I thought - ok let's see if this works : (for all German reader this is the book and it's great) Fünf Hausmittel ersetzen eine Drogerie
The five key ingredients are
Sodium Bicarbonate (powder)
This stuff has endless uses (crazier then coconut oil) it's a natural occurring salt from Africa or North America. But nowadays most of it gets made from common Salt. It's cheap and as said the uses are endless from baking to medical uses, cosmetics, even as a fire extinguisher.
Soda (powder)
also a white powder and not to be confused with Sodium Bicarbonate is the second key ingredient. The high alkalinity of washing soda allows it to act as a solvent in removing a wide range of stains.
Vinegar
Most used one is the apple cider vinegar, because of its acidity and antibacterial effects it can replace a lot of cosmetics and cleaning products.
Citric Acid (white powder)
Industriell produced product often used to de-scale and as a food and cosmetics preservative.
Curd Soap
My favourite, I always have a bar at home and you can used it for numerous things. Shower gel, against nail-bed infections, even to brush your teeth (although I have not tried that yet) also I put it in lots of my cleaning products.
+ essential oils... you can use pretty much anything for the smell but tee tree oil, lavender, lemon, etc have more helpful properties than just a good scent.

50g Sodium Bicarbonate
50g grated Curd Soap (need to be heated up a little in order to dissolve)
10-20 drops of an Essential oil
for white clothing add 100-150g Citric Acid