Using Lemons for Cleaning
Lemon juice is a natural substance that can be used to clean your home.
It’s Inexpensive: you can use up that half a lemon left over from a recipe rather than leave it languishing in the fridge or just use lemon rinds after you’ve extracted the juice.
It’s environmentally-friendly as you can mix in your own bowls and bottles and there are no nasty chemicals.
Lemon cleaning applications include:
Lemon and vinegar kitchen spray: Put lemon rinds in a large glass container leaving plenty of room for the vinegar. You can collect them in the fridge over the course of 5 to 7 days or for longer store them in the freezer until you've collected the desired amount.
Once collected, pour plain white vinegar into the container and fill it all the way up, or at least until the peels are all submerged. Feel free to add a handful of fresh herbs for increased scent and disinfecting power.
Soak the citrus in vinegar for at least one week, and up to three weeks. Give the container a shake every few days to mix things up.
After it has finished soaking strain the lemon rinds from the vinegar using a very fine mesh strainer or a cheese cloth. You want to remove as many chunks and particles as possible, to avoid clogging the spray bottle!
Finally, pour the strained solution into a spray bottle.
It will clean laminate kitchen counters, sinks, shower, toilets, baths, tiles, stainless steel appliances, inside the fridge, and other durable, sealed surfaces.
It’s great for deodorising cutting boards, washing machines and inside the dishwasher
DO NOT USE vinegar on: granite, marble, or other sensitive stone surfaces. We use it on our laminate “wood” floors and wood cutting boards, but would avoid using vinegar on natural hardwood floors or wood furniture.
Cleaning paste: Mix lemon juice with baking soda.
Dishes, surfaces, stains: Cut a lemon in half and sprinkle baking soda on the cut section of the lemon. Use it like you would a sponge.
Furniture polish: Mix olive oil with lemon juice for a natural furniture polish for hardwood furniture. For this, though, combine two parts olive oil and one part lemon juice in a bowl or spray bottle. Rub a small amount into your furniture with a clean cloth, then wipe dry with another cloth. It's best to make this fresh for each use as it doesn’t keep very well.