Natural Swiffer Floor Cleaner and Wood Floor Cleaner

Wood Floor Cleaner Ingredients

I came home from my daughter's house last Friday with several new tasks for myself.  She was out of Swiffer refillable spray for cleaning her floors.  This presented me with a challenge.  You see I have told my family that as they start running out of cleaning supplies do not replace the cleaning product.  The challenge is to see if I can make it myself, and to make it all natural and safe for the environment.  This is especially important for my daughter, because she has an auto immune disorder which chemicals and certain foods cause flareups.  We normally buy green cleaning products, which are very expensive.  In these difficult financial times, I am trying to make as much as possible to help save money for all of us.  That is why I will try my best to only give recipes for natural beauty products and cleaning supplies on this blog.

Now,  we have all wood floors in our home, and we are only supposed to use vinegar and water on the floors, but that is not as great at cleaning the linoleum at my daughter's.  I also wanted to try to kick up the anti-bacterial and disinfecting qualities, because our family is very big on pets, so I wanted to make sure the the floors were getting as clean as possible.  So, at this point I decided that I was going to use some Dr. Bonner's Baby-Mild Castille Soap, Tea Tree oil, and Lemon Essential oil.   I figured that would be great for her linoleum floors, but I did not want to use the soap for our wood floors.  I decided to make the wood floor cleaner without the Dr. Bonner's, but still wanted to kick up the disinfecting qualities with the tea tree oil and the lemon essential oil.

I mixed up several batches of the wood floor cleaner, and it worked great.  I put it in a small quart  sized bottle with a small mouth, that way I could pour small amounts.  I did not want to soak my wood floors.  This worked great.  Since it is concentrated I could just pour a small amount on the floor, mop, and then go and rinse the mop.  My floors looked beautiful.  I also made a batch for my son, and put it in an old squirt bottle.

For my daughter, I mixed up a batch of this recipe for Homemade Swiffer Cleaner Spray, and I put it in a spray bottle.  That way she could just spray it on her floor, and then use her Swiffer to mop it up.  This apparently worked great on her floor.  So TAH-DAH, here are the two recipes.

Homemade Swiffer Floor Cleaner Spray

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1 cup vinegar

2 oz Dr Bonner’s Baby Mild Castille Soap

3 cups water

10 drops tea tree oil

10 drops lemon essential oil

Mix all ingredients together in a spray bottle and spray on floor and use your mop or swiffer to clean, rinse the mop and move on to the next area.

Homemade Wood Floor Cleaner

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1 cup vinegar

3 cups water

10 drops tea tree oil

10 drops lemon essential oil

Mix all ingredients together in a container and pour on floor and mop as usual.

This was so easy to make and use.  I did not need to use a lot, since it is pretty concentrated.  I maybe used about 1/2 cup on my first floor, and mopped about 900 square feet, so it goes a long way.  It also left a great citrusy ( probably not a word according to my spell checker ) smell, which I like much better then the smell of the plain vinegar and water mixture.

I hope that these DIY solutions work for you.  I would love to hear from you.  I am always open to suggestions or a better idea.  So let me know what you think and how it works for you.

As always, Enjoy.

Debi