Below is the full list of supplies and ingredients from the ebook itself, with an expanded list of my own tips on purchasing what you need, where I shop myself, and where you can get items in bulk. I hope you find it helpful!
The 7 ingredients:
- baking soda
- Castile soap (liquid as well as bar)
- lemon essential oil
- vinegar
- washing soda*
- Borax
*Note: You can make your own washing soda out of baking soda with this tutorial – http://www.pennilessparenting.com/2011/01/homemade-washing-soda.html
Optional Ingredients
- grapefruit seed extract (GSE)
- miscellaneous essential oils (lavender, tea tree)
- citric acid
Buying my ingredients
Any of these 7 basic ingredients should be simple to find in your local grocery or drug store’s cleaning section (and just grab vinegar and baking soda from the food aisles).
You may have to try a couple stores to find washing soda, but it’s usually quite readily available in the laundry aisle, near the Borax.
Lemon and orange are popular, common and inexpensive essential oils and should be available anywhere they’re sold. Most health food stores or vitamin/supplement stores sell at least a small selection of oils.
You’re also most likely to find castile soap at these health or vitamin shops, though more and more regular grocery and drug stores are beginning to carry it as well. Look for it in the personal care soap section, as it’s usually not stocked in the cleaning supplies aisle.
I’m definitely a fan of buying in bulk, whenever possible. I purchase huge jugs of white vinegar and very large bags or boxes of baking soda from Costco (try Sam’s club if you don’t Costco, or Walmart is another possibility).
Amazon is another great choice for bulk—I found bulk baking soda, vinegar, Borax, and washing soda, all for good prices!
There are also a number of options for castile soap – here are three different brands of the liquid variety (Dr. Bronners, Desert Essence and Dr. Woods, and two of the bars (Kirk’s and Dr. Bronners), as well as a link for Fels Naptha, which can be used in the laundry powder recipe instead of a castile bar.
If you’re looking for essential oils, I found both lemon and orange at Amazon as well:
Orange – Aura Cacia, doTERRA, Plant Therapy
Lemon- Aura Cacia, doTERRA, Edens Garden
Another great place to purchase castile soap (both liquid and bar) as well as essential oils, especially if those are products you can’t find in your local stores, is Vitacost.com. They’re one of my favorite places to shop for vitamins and health products of all kinds, including grocery pantry items. I also sometimes buy dish soap, dishwasher detergent and laundry soap there. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Their prices are good and so are their shipping costs and we’ve never had customer service issues.
Lastly, I also buy vitamins, natural beauty supplies and cleaning products from iHerb. They’re particularly awesome if you don’t live in the USA as they have excellent international shipping and reasonable rates. You can use my referral code “CEC426” to take $10 off your first order at iHerb.
Equipment and Supplies
I like to re-use as many containers as I can for my cleaning supplies. Glass jars or washed out plastic containers with lids (like yogurt) work perfectly.
You can wash out old spray bottles and remove the labels to add your own. You can also pick up all sorts of sizes of spray bottles inexpensively at places like dollar stores.
My best method for finding foaming soap pumps has been to buy a foaming brand of hand soap from the store, and when it’s gone, use the bottle and pump to keep refilling it myself. That said, you could also just buy a foaming soap dispenser reading for filling, buy the foaming pump to add to a mason jar, or make one yourself!
- foaming soap pump
- foaming soap bottle
- empty spice container
- empty spray bottle
- mason jars
- empty food tubs (eg. old sour cream or yogurt containers)
Just so you know, I do earn a small referral credit through some of my links above, but these are all places our family genuinely shops from on a regular basis, and products that we actually have and use in our home. I wouldn’t recommend them if they weren’t, and your purchases support this site and products like our free cleaning ebook. 🙂