Household – Vibrant Life

Non-toxic Products—Worth the Scrub?

With spring around the corner, I find myself stuck aboard the cleaning wagon. When I first started making homemade cleaning products, I’d occasionally find it challenging to get an area completely spotless. It can be frustrating to scrub twice as hard, when a chemical-laden spray used to eat through the grime in seconds. Using all the tips I’d learned, I was always able to get it clean, but not without some effort.

The good news is that there’s an easy way to spare myself the intense, muscled scrubbing: the monthly onceover. When I stay on top of things, revisiting each room weekly, the cleaning isn’t more than a basic wipe. Such a relief.
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Vanilla-Scented Linens

Everything you’ll need to keep linens fresh and bug-free.

We have a wooden dresser that I use to store guest linens. Despite fresh laundering, things consistently smell of wood on the way out. Not a soft pine scent either, more of a musty pile of sticks smell. These simple bundles now impart a light, sweet odor to our guest towels.

What you’ll need to make four
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon water
4 cotton balls
1 plastic sandwich bag, cut into four pieces
4 twist ties
1 toothpick

What to do
Mix the vanilla and water in a small bowl. Flatten or open your plastic bag pieces on a countertop. Dip the cotton balls into the vanilla mix and place each in the center of a piece of plastic. Gather the plastic edges, keeping the cotton ball in the center, and use a twist tie to bind. When all four bags are sealed, poke three or four times with the toothpick to let the scent out slowly.
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