Saturday 20 April 2013

Sunshine in a bottle

I am a confirmed crunchy granola eco warrior. I don’t go in for all that chemical stuff. It’s bad for you and bad for the environment. Plus it stinks. Have you smelled bleach lately? Blech.

 
The problem is that eco cleaning may be good for you and good for the environment but it can also be on the whiffy side. Anyone who has ever smelled vinegar knows what I mean. When I clean with bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and vinegar I get excellent results, but the flat really pongs. Spiderman always gets that look on his face that says, “I can smell you’ve been cleaning again.”

 
But wrinkle your nose no longer, oh best beloved. I saw this idea all over the internet and just *had* to try it. Orange vinegar. You know the power of orange oil for cleaning? How about that mixed with the cleaning power of  vinegar? What if you could harness the two together? To paraphrase that old Reeces Peanut Butter Cup advert from olden days:

Person 1: Hey! You got your orange in my vinegar!

 
Person 2: Hey! You got your vinegar in my orange!

 
Together: It smells great!

 
All you have to do is add 2-3 orange peels to some white vinegar, put it in a wide mouth container and let it sit for 2 weeks then strain out the orange and use the vinegar for cleaning. Seriously, that’s it. Look at this--this had only been brewing for 3 days when I took this photo. Look at the colour of that white vinegar!


 

I’ve got 1 week to go before it’s ready and it already smells great. I just give the glass bottle a bit of shake every couple of days and open it and check the scent because I‘m nosy. We put the orange peels in over the course of 3 days as we ate oranges. It’s that easy.

 
When it’s ready to use I’m going to make some fabric softener using it. Watch the blog for the upcoming post with the recipe!

 
Now go and make your own.

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