As you know, we do live a fairly strict additive-free lifestyle, at least compared to most of the population. This has led to a lot of DIY moments around the house to help save money, make great thoughtful gifts, protect the environment and keep in line with our additive-free values. From the early days of focusing on additive-free, due to Jo’s daughter’s serious behavioural issues, right to Tracey’s love of natural body care, DIY just seemed to fit hand-in-hand with our healthy lifestyle changes. So whether you’re wanting to look into DIY body-care products, or DIY cleaning products (or both), our focus in this podcast is to compare costs of DIY vs purchased products to inspire you to go the extra mile!

Carpet Deodoriser

Tracey thinks back to the times when she’s had really big pet dogs, and just how much of an odour they ended up creating inside the house, or for the times when the kids have vomited in the car, she always reached straight for the carpet deodoriser.

She simply didn’t think twice about what ingredients were contained in these handy spray cans until of course, she started living additive-free. In fact, we still don’t know what’s in those cans, as there aren’t actually any ingredients listed on the back-urgh slightly scary? Fragrance and perfumes are certainly some ingredients that are highly likely to be contained within that carpet deodoriser, and should be avoided at all costs.

It’s so incredibly easy and cheap to make your own. The average cost of carpet deodoriser across the major supermarkets is $3.25. You can purchase a 500g bag of bi-carb soda for $1.50 and add in any essential oil of your choice. You literally just have to mix the bi-carb and essential oil in a container, sprinkle over your carpet, wait a few minutes or even leave for the day, then vacuum it all up. If you have a high quality or darker carpet it pays to do a quick patch-test first!

Lemon and wild orange are incredibly cheap, and we worked out that it would cost only $2.30 to make our own DIY carpet deodoriser of the same size as a supermarket-purchased one. While it may not sound like a huge saving, you’re using something 100% natural, you’re saving the environment and won’t have adverse effects on pets or family members.

If you have any wet messes such as vomit, sprinkle the DIY deodoriser on and wait for the bi-carb to absorb the moisture, allow to dry completely before vacuuming up. Any stinky cupboard, fridge or freezer can also be taken care of by leaving the deodoriser in a jar with muslin or a chux cloth over top.

Hand Sanitiser

This is a product that’s gained a lot of popularity over the past few years, especially the convenient handbag size bottles. A 200ml bottle of hand sanitiser is around $7.50 which is not only expensive but has been featured all over the news lately, for the toxic side-effects. In our opinion, sanitisers should stay strictly within hospital environments or other medical environments that enforce their use! The vast majority of sanitisers use alcohol as a base, which strips moisture from your skin.

You can quite easily create your own non-toxic sanitiser, containing nourishing witch hazel or on-guard, and a fragrant blend of essential oils that contain anti-bacterial properties for around half the price. Tracey carries around on-guard or peppermint beadlets, and simply rubs them on her hands after being in a public toilet without soap. You can blend 100ml of witch hazel to about 20 drops of on-guard, or peppermint oil and add into a spritzer bottle.

Soft Scrub Cleanser  

This is a DIY product comparable to Jiff or other similar commercial products which average around $3.75 per bottle. We use an amazing recipe from the doTERRA website where we only spend around $2.80 (see resources for recipe link). Again the savings aren’t huge, but it goes back to the health benefits, environmental benefits and avoiding common skin conditions that usually arise from harsh commercial ingredients. Plus, you can get your kids to help out with the cleaning, knowing they’re not being exposed to nasty chemicals!

Disinfectant Spray

You can get away with making a DIY version of Glen 20 or a similar product. We’re not going to lie, these products certainly do work -but at what cost? We’re looking at all the side-effects, the synthetic ingredients, and the chemicals that usually end up being sprayed on your baby ’s or kid’s toys, which they then put inside their mouth!

Instead, take a few minutes to mix up some ordinary white vinegar, or distilled water ($1 per litre) and simply add 10-20 drops of tea tree, eucalyptus, on-guard, lemon, pine or other citrus oils. You’ll save around $2 per bottle by making your own, and you probably go through an all-purpose spray bottle every few months, so you will see a fair amount of savings here.

If you do have younger children, make sure the essential oil you’re using is also safe for consumption, so for all those moments when they put toys in their mouths, they won’t end up causing them harm.

If you do have a contagious gastro bug or other virus going around the house, the disinfectant spray is great for cleaning all the things you generally forget about like the keyboard, fridge doors, door handles and car keys. It always cracks us up to walk down the supermarket aisle and see a cleaning spray for your bathroom, your sink, your toilet, your benchtops, and floors. It’s really unnecessary to have a bottle for every object in your house when you can have one multi-purpose spray that’s incredibly effective and safe to use!

Toilet Pods

For around $2 per pod you can stick on the side of your toilet bowl, a convenient plastic pod of lovely fragrance like ocean breeze, which will be released with each and every flush. In our minds, nobody needs their toilet water to be blue, and it’s simply a marketing trick to make you feel like you need these pods to be hygienic.

Again, you can use bi-carb soda, citric acid (buy in bulk otherwise small packets in the supermarket are expensive), some castile soap and around 15 drops and purify like tea-tree or citrus.  To make around 15 pods will cost you $4.25 (28c per pod) or buy two commercial pods from the shop for $4. It also takes around three minutes to make the recipe!

If you don’t want to DIY

If you simply prefer to purchase natural products instead of making your own there are a heap of options:

  • doTERRA cleaning concentrate $18 for 1 bottle (makes 18L of solution)- great for cleaning toilets, mopping floors and cleaning your shower.
  • Resparkle is an amazing all-natural cleaner, choose from laundry cleaner, all-purpose, window cleaner, dishwashing liquid, laundry powder, dishwasher powder and even body wash. Find their products here. All the spray bottles are re-usable and are really high quality. On that note Target now sell glass spray bottles for $3!

We will send a word of warning on the amazing DIY cleaning products mentioned above, you might find that you actually start to enjoy cleaning (in a strange way). That’s because the oils are uplifting and don’t come with the headaches, or other side-effects of chemical cleaning products. If you’re of the belief that you don’t have time to DIY, trust us, all of the products above take a few minutes to make! With your interest in safe and natural cleaning or bathroom products, together we’re all helping to turn around the cleaning industry, by their avoidance of using harmful chemicals. We’re starting to see the shift already and are super excited!  

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