Clean green with DIY household cleaners

National Geographic’s Green Guide has some recipes for DIY Household Cleaners you can make inexpensively at home. These cleaners will be less toxic than most mass-produced ones, which makes them also a good move for your health:

But as you open your windows to let in fresh air, don’t pollute it with lung irritants like ammonia and chlorine bleach or hormone-disrupting phthalates used in fragrances. Instead, make your own cleaners from healthier, least-toxic ingredients.

Circumvent the armada of commercial cleaners by keeping an ample supply of these eight items, which make up the basic ingredients for nearly every do-it-yourself cleaning recipe.

You don’t need to seek out commercial “green” cleaning products. The article lists eight common household items like baking soda, peroxide, and white vinegar that you can use to make cleaning products for every common job in your household. It also has recipes for everything from all-purposes cleaners to laundry detergent. These alternatives to commercial cleaners will save you money and reduce the amount of harsh chemicals your skin and your lungs come into contact with.

We have a lot of recipes using these items around here, too:

23 ways to clean with vinegar – vinegar alone, diluted, can clean a whole lot of your household.
Tang for rust stains – if you ever thought the best thing to do with Tang was flush it down the toilet, you weren’t far off!
Make your own furniture polish with olive oil – and lemon juice.
Cleaning glass with vinegar and water – which is the main ingredient in Windex, anyway, so why pay for it?
Safe and effective mold killer – makes a spray you can safely use on most surfaces.
10 amazing things you can do with baking soda – a link roundup covering lots of uses for baking soda.