Karen Logan

If you have ever wondered about the effects of cleaning chemicals in your home and whether they are harmful, I would highly recommend this book. This book is basically a "cookbook" of recipes that feature products that clean your home. All of the recipes are made using non-toxic cleaners such as vinegar, baking soda, vegetable castille soap, distilled water, and essential oils for fragrances. They have homemade recipes for things such as Multi-use cleaner ("409"-style), hardwood floor show more cleaner, "Soft Scrub", toilet cleaner, "Comet", "Endust", "Windex", etc.

I've been making my own cleaners for two years now, and EVERY CLEANER that I have made from recipes in the book worked as well as promised. I wish I would have found this book years ago. I follow the recipes closely, and used Peppermint and Eucalyptus Oil for the scents and it worked well. When I first started making soaps, I could not find a source to buy Dr. Bronner's soaps, so I used Mrs. Meyer's Lemon Verbena All-Purpose Cleaner and that worked well for the liquid soap in the recipes. However, now that I have found a place to buy Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap in bulk (Whole Foods), I use it almost exclusively in the recipes.

I was really amazed that the cleaners worked as well as they did. I use the Vinegar Mop recipe with peppermint oil on EVERYTHING! It cleans so much! And the scent lingers on and on. It is amazing that these recipes worked so well. Their "Soft Scrub" recipe (called "Earth Scrub") in the book even scrubbed rust stains out of my toilet bowl! It worked amazing in the kitchen sink, and made it as shiny as Comet. The Vinegar spray that is used as a mop rinse helped my floors be the cleanest that they have been in years, and it worked wonderfully as a counter cleaner and cabinet door cleaner as well.

In addition to recipes, they also give hints on how to clean house better and more economically, such as cutting up T-Shirts and using them as rags. They really do work!

These recipes are very simple and work very well. I really enjoy the process of making my own cleaners. I was able to find affordable containers for the cleaners at my local Container Store. Although the start-up price was slightly higher than buying commercial products, the refills are dirt cheap because all I have to buy is the baking soda and vinegar, and the Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap in bulk. I'm able to use the oils and containers that I already own, as the oils last for a VERY long time. And the smell is SO much cleaner and longer-lasting than the commercial products. show less

A great resource for nontoxic cleaning. Logan gives a simple recipe for every cleaning use with tips for how to clean. I read the book cover to cover and found her very repetitive as she has to keep saying 'the store brand is toxic.' I'm definitely going to try out the recipes, though, and look forward to cleaning (a true sign of the success of the book).

I really love this book - I don't like to use chemical cleaners, because I have pets and I don't want them to get sick. This book is full of cheap, environmentally-sound solutions.

This book introduced me to the joys of baking soda and vinegar, but there's so much more that I'd like to do with it. Malcolm and I would like to create a Cleaning Basket full of products made from the recipes in this book, all stored in attractive bottles and containers. The idea is to make cleaning fun and healthy, and would love to do that as a project with others.