Finding the right wood cleaners for your wooden furniture, floor, or other home decorations may be difficult. Materials made of wood generally are more prone to damage and blemishes such as stains, dirt, grease, and grime.
One such solution is to make your own wood cleaner! Using everyday household products, your very own wood cleaner can be formulated to help clean and renew wooden materials in your home. There are both eco-friendly and safe alternatives to the traditional cleaners you can buy at the local home improvement store. To clean up larger debris before the final touch, you can always do it with one of the robot vacuums for hardwood floors, or, if you just need robot vacuums for pet hair, take a look at Roomba 675 and Roomba 805.
What can you use to clean wood?
There are many ingredients and naturally occurring products that you can use to clean wood. Be sure to start with a dusting spray to first clean off any dust and debris on wooden furniture, wooden floors, or other wooden surfaces.
Dusting before cleaning is a good idea to help produce the best floor cleaning results. You can add some water to a soft cloth to wipe down any of dust or debris before applying the homemade wood cleaner.
A natural and effective DIY wood cleaner needs to have the right natural ingredients that can both clean and protect the wood surfaces. A good DIY cleaner not only cleans up the mess but also adds a nice smell and polish to the finished result. That’s why having an extra empty spray bottle would be useful when formulating the right ingredients to the homemade wood cleaner.
How do you clean and polish wood furniture naturally?
One homemade DIY recipe for a wood cleaner that helps clean and polish wood naturally contains just only a few natural ingredients:
1 tablespoon of castile soap
2-3 teaspoons of olive oil
20-25 drops of essential oil (lemon or citrus)
1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
Simply mix together these three ingredients that can be easily found at your local supermarket or at home in your pantry.
You can choose to mix all the ingredients in a glass spray bottle and shake well before use.
You can either spray some of the DIY wood polish on the wood surface and then wipe with a soft cloth or microfiber cloth. Alternatively, you can pour some of the mixture onto a cloth to slightly moisten the cloth fabric and then use the cloth to wipe down the wooden surfaces.
How do you make homemade furniture cleaner?
This following recipe serves not only as a wood cleaner but also as wood polish to both clean, finish, and polish wooden surfaces.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup of white vinegar or apple cider vinegar (ACV)
1/4 cup of olive oil
1-2 tbsp of lemon juice
20-25 drops of essentials oils (lemon or citrus)
The ingredients in this homemade cleaner recipe is both naturally safe and effective. Simply put the ingredients in a glass spray bottle and shake well before use. Otherwise, you can also choose to pour some of the cleaner onto a soft cloth and wipe down surfaces directly.
How do these natural ingredients work?
Olive Oil
Olive oil is not only a great way to give some flavor to your salads, it is also great for helping to bring shine, moisture, and protection to wood. Whereas mineral oil is a product made of petroleum, olive oil is made of natural and sustainable ingredients, usually from freshly picked and pressed olives. Olives also give a natural fragrance and smell that brings a scent freshness to the wooden surface.
White Vinegar
Kinds of vinegar like white vinegar provide an acidic solution that helps cut through hard-to-clean messiness like grease, grime, and other yucky disasters. In addition, vinegars also are mildly disinfecting to help both protect wood and safely sanitize them too.
Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV)
Apple cider vinegar, or ACV, for short, is another alternative to the regular white vinegar. It helps with cleaning up grease and grime like other kinds of vinegar, but also gives a natural fruity scent of apples. ACV is also great for darker woods as the colors and smells seem to match well with a wood cleaner.
Lemon Juice
Lemon juice is a great citric and acidic natural ingredient for your DIY wooden cleaner. It is also a mild disinfectant that both adds a nice fresh scent to any wood cleaner recipe.
Essential Oils
Some flavors of essential oils include lemongrass, lavender, and lemon. All of these essential oils give a nice relaxing and pleasant clean scent when added to the wood cleaner mixture.
Castile Soap
Castile soap is a safe and natural green cleaner that is olive oil. based. It is great on stubborn stains that are hard to wipe off. Castile soap can be extremely effective when used on hardwood floors and tile floors.
Conclusion
Cleaning is a part of life at home. There are many homemade wood cleaner recipes you can choose from, but generally, the natural ingredients mentioned above are great to start off with.
You can slowly choose to add or mix and match ingredients one at a time. Different recipes call for maybe one more tablespoon, teaspoon, or cup of a particular ingredient depending on the batch size.
Remember that cleaning does not have to be a chore! It can be fun as you learn to love and appreciate your home more. You can learn to share your new clean, beautiful, spotless home with impeccable wood floors and furniture with the ones you love. Mom would be proud!
