Best Natural Cleaning Products for Your Entire House

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I just released a post on why I recommended taking a natural approach to cleaning and how to do it. It was pretty comprehensive, though I tried to keep the details simple. Today’s post is a follow up to explain in a little more detail some of the ingredients I use in my cleaning routine as well as some products that I buy to simplify my life and because I simply love them.

If you didn’t read our post on how and why to clean naturally, go check that out first if you have time. If you’re just looking for some product recommendations, jump here.

First I’ll explain some of the basic ingredients I use, then I’ll share my favorite purchased, pre-made products that I’m currently using.

Basic Ingredients

Products I love and purchase

Wrap-up

Basic ingredients

Vinegar

The holy grail. Vinegar. I know, I sound like a hippie. But honestly, if you need one ingredient in your cleaning arsenal, it’s vinegar. As with all things, it seems like there is debate about this ingredient on the internet… Here’s my basic take on it based on research and personal experience:

Vinegar is an effective cleaning agent with antimicrobial properties that can cut grease and grime, but may require a little more elbow grease than some traditional cleaners. Additionally, you do need to use an adequate amount of vinegar in your cleaning solutions to achieve the necessary effects. 

There is a good amount of research I could link but it is kind of a messy picture when looking at individual pieces and is really best considered together. I’ll link a few, but they may not be entirely helpful to you as you need to go a little deeper to get the full picture. As always, what I link here is not the only evidence, there’s a ton more I don’t have the space to add.

Vinegar is effective at killing several different kinds of bacteria, including staph and E. coli, which is great news. This effectiveness has been demonstrated directly with use for cleaning vegetables. It can also help kill viruses such as the flu. Now, vinegar will not kill everything (nothing really will, though things like bleach or other chlorine forms can go a lot further). 

Probably most important to note, you must use an adequate ratio of vinegar to water. It will still clean at lower quantities, but for disinfecting, you need your water to vinegar ratio to be 1:1 and you should freshen it up if you use it very slow.

How I use vinegar: For most of the last several years I have used a vinegar and water combination (sometimes throwing in some lemon or tea tree essential oil) as my all-purpose spray. Again, you have to make sure it’s at least half vinegar, and it doesn’t really matter what kind you us, though I prefer apple cider vinegar. It can make the space smell a little like vinegar, but the smell dissipates and doesn’t really bother me. 

I find this spray works great on almost anything. I use it on the greasy stove top, sinks, toilet seats, table, sometimes as a floor cleaner, and even as my primary vegetable wash. 

Some people say that they find it more difficult to clean some messes with vinegar, but I’ve never found this to be the case, unless it was something I’d need some scouring tools for anyway. I’ve also seen some people say that vinegar doesn’t actually clean dirt it just moves it around. I guess it’s true that nothing in vinegar is going to trap dirt and lift it away, but you lift away the dirt you clean when you wipe it up with a rag… So I don’t entirely understand that. No cleaning method is a perfect system, but I just don’t see this concern. 

What vinegar can’t do is rectify years of cleaning neglect. I mean it can, with A LOT of elbow grease. But there’s a reason deep cleaners tend to use intense chemicals. If you let things go too long, it gets built up to the point where chemicals are very helpful. I’ve said and will say this a million times, but if you just keep up with things regularly, it won’t get out of hand, and cleaners like vinegar will be perfect.

One area I would NOT use vinegar is on certain kinds of natural stone, like limestone and travertine, as it will erode them due to the bicarbonate they contain. 

Some people recommend mixing castile soap with the vinegar but I wouldn’t recommend that for an all purpose spray because they don’t mix well. You are probably best doing one or the other, even switching off if you prefer. However, they work great together as a scouring solution if you want to throw some castile soap on an issue, then some vinegar spray, and get to scrubbing. I just wouldn’t leave it sitting together.

A great benefit of using vinegar to clean is that it’s CHEAP!

Baking soda

I’ve talked about baking soda several times before (like in our post about how to deodorize your home naturally) because it is a great household staple. It’s primarily great for removing odors and scouring. I’ve discussed the odor thing thoroughly before, so you can go check it out, as well as more information on why baking soda works the way it does. Basically it grabs volatile compounds (smells and bad stuff) and hangs on to them, so they’re no longer in the air. 

Because of this you can use baking soda in particularly smelly places like pantries, trashcans, laundry rooms, bathrooms, etc. I use baking soda to clean my mattresses and rugs. 

The other great purpose for baking soda is for scouring. One of my favorite places to use this is on my oven. You pour a little hot water on the door (fully opened and flat, obviously) then pour some baking soda on it and get to scrubbing with a normal or scouring sponge. Baking soda does a pretty great job at working off the built up gunk. 

Now here’s where the effect is not as great as conventional cleaners. You are going to have to put some significant effort into cleaning your oven or other really nasty messes with baking soda. It’s not Easy-Off, which uses chemicals to melt the layers off (which by the way is not super great for you, hence why I don’t prefer it). However, if you keep up with cleaning the areas that tend to have these problems on a more regular basis, it won’t require nearly as much scrubbing. 

One way people say that vinegar is a scam is mixing it with baking soda. I would actually say that, when used purposefully, this is actually a wonderful use of the ingredients. There’s a reason a lot of us grew up with baking soda and vinegar for the drain instead of Drain-O. 

Yes, when you combine vinegar and baking soda, they become water and salt, so they will not continue to have the antimicrobial or other properties otherwise attributed to them. However, in some cases, that’s not what you’re going for. If you have a particularly cakey mess (say the oven door or the shower drain) you can use the baking soda and vinegar reaction to your advantage, because it does work to break up some of that dirt and grime as it rearranges all its molecules. 

Castile soap

Castile soap is just a very basic soap made from vegetable oils. We discussed what soap is in our previous post on the basic cleaning tool kit, so go check it out if you want to know more.

One thing we noted is that soap is very alkaline and messes with the ph of your skin, as well as drying it out. That’s why, though some people recommend it, I don’t recommend using castile soap for showering. I have used it plenty and there’s nothing wrong with it, my husband uses it every day, but it does disrupt your skin’s ph and there are lots of other natural options out there that won’t cause this. Theoretically, messing with your skin’s ph can cause issues even with your immune system, since the skin is less able to naturally fight of bacterias and such.

I have dry skin so I just don’t prefer it. But on my counters? All about it.

There are a couple other versions of basic soap that are readily available, but I like castile soap, so that’s what I recommend. If you wanted to use this as a cleaning spray, here’s how I mix it:

I tend to buy Dr. Bronner’s castile soap because they sell it at my local grocery store but there are lots of options out there, including this one I like to buy in bulk sometimes.

A surfactant/detergent

There’s a lot of options for a detergent, most cleaning sprays you can buy are made of surfactants. As we discussed in our previous post, detergents are great for places where water stains or soap residue are a bigger problem, like laundry and dishes.

You can’t just buy a single surfactant, so I’ll leave this to the products I like to buy, because that’s just what you have to do if you want to use these. Not everyone needs a surfactant. Some people choose just to use soap and vinegar, and that’s fine. I prefer to use a couple detergents as they’re perfectly safe (usually) and perform very well.

I’ll be covering surfactants more in an upcoming post if you want more information about them, including the infamous sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)!

Lemon

That’s right. A plain old lemon can be a great cleaning tool. I sometimes use a little lemon juice on my counters or in sinks, but more often than not I’m throwing it in the garbage disposal and grinding it up for a good cleanse and deodorizing of that pretty stinky locale.

You could also add lemon essential oil to your all purpose sprays or sprinkle a few drops on a surface when you clean it and achieve the same basic benefit without the possibility of leaving sticky residue from the sugar of lemons.

Tea tree oil

Some people are skeptical of essential oils, calling them placebo or hippie weird stuff. I get that. However, there is some compelling science for their benefits (though not every touted benefit is scientifically backed), especially for a few specific oils. There are also some environmental concerns due to amount of product needed to make these oils. I’m not going to get into all of this today because it could be a whole post, but I will someday. All we will discuss is tea tree oil. 

Tea tree essential oil (I like this one) has shown a lot of promise for use as an antimicrobial agent and potentially even considered for future use as a type of antibiotic. What’s important to know is that tea tree oil is most certainly antimicrobial and an extremely effective antimicrobial agent at that. It’s been shown in many studies to be adequate for use in disinfecting and hand washing. 

Because of this, it can be a great addition to your cleaning routine. I will say that I don’t find it necessary. Soap can trap VOCs, dirt, bacteria, viruses, and so on and wash them down the drain. Vinegar is also antimicrobial, though less effectively. So in general I say that washing with soap is probably sufficient for daily cleaning. However, it doesn’t hurt to add tea tree oil as it is going to take care of bacteria and viruses for the most part. I tend to use this as a less frequent addition for occasional “sanitizing” or if someone in the house is sick.

That’s all the cleaning ingredients I keep and use. There are some I didn’t include that others would, like Borax. I don’t necessarily have any problems with Borax, I just don’t personally have a need for it at this time. 

Products I purchase

As I’ve kind of hinted at, you don’t need any of these products to adequately clean your house if you know how to use the ingredients I explained above.

However, if you’re the kind of person who just likes to buy your cleaning products outright or for some reason doesn’t trust plain ingredients, here are some recommendations. I always recommend you look at the science first to get comfortable with the way the ingredients work because I promise you, they do, but anyway.

I sometimes use plain ingredients and sometimes use these products, depending on what I’m feeling at the time I need to re-up, honestly.

Branch Basics

I have been loving Branch Basics as my all around cleaner as of late. Again, it doesn’t work any better than my castile soap or vinegar sprays, but I’ve been enjoying it nonetheless. This is not a pure soap, it’d be more like using Sal Suds because it utilizes a surfactant, also coconut (sometimes corn?) based, which are called glucosides. Here’s the ingredient list: purified water, decyl glucoside, chamomile flower extract, coco glucoside, sodium citrate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium phytate. You can view their website for more information about these ingredients, but they’re very clean and effective.

They only sell a handful of products: their concentrate, and some laundry and dishwashing products. I have only used their cleaning concentrate so cannot speak for the others, except for the “oxygen boost,” which is just sodium percarbonate and baking soda. Sodium percarbonate releases hydrogen peroxide when mixed with water, which is why it can help clean tough things (like your oven!) and why it is used in laundry in the place of bleach. Some people call it “green bleach,” but it basically just tackles tough stains and helps break dirt and grime apart.

You can use the cleaner on any surface, and I do. You can buy a kit that comes with bottles with different levels of dilution marked out for you (they recommend a more highly concentrated mix for the bathroom and hand soap) or you can just buy the concentrate and mix in your own containers.

This is a great and simple all around product that can basically cover all your cleaning needs. If you utilize their laundry and dishwashing supplies as well, you could actually cover everything. If I end up trying those products some time I will update this to let you know my thoughts.

Force of Nature

Force of Nature is newer on the market, I believe, and a sort of new concept? Essentially they sell you a kit that has a salt and vinegar mixture that you combine with water in an “electrolyzer” that they provide. This electrolyzer just uses electricity to take the salt, vinegar, and water (which have specific chemical natures) and rearranges all the molecules into new substances: hypochlorous acid and sodium hydroxide.

I don’t really have the energy for a chemistry lesson right now… but very simply, this process works by breaking the bonds that keep the hydrogen and oxygen together that make up water (as well as the molecules that make salt and vinegar) so that all the elemental molecules are floating around on their own. In their attempt to rebalance themselves (most molecules need other molecules to balance their electrons), they grab on to different molecules than they originally had (because there are new, easier/better options). This creates the two new ingredients mentioned above. 

Anyway, hypochlorous acid is a cousin of bleach, just a different combination of molecules with chlorine, that is much gentler and works amazingly as an antimicrobial and is actually a substance naturally produced by our immune systems. Further applications have been made to things like wound care, but there’s some work to be done in that research.

Sodium hydroxide (lye; see our discussion on castile soap) works as a cleaner and degreaser that’s obviously in tons of cleaning products as well as things like toothpaste. It does exist in much lower quantities in this product.

Together these two compounds work to clean (soap) and to disinfect (hypochlorous acid). It’s a great product. Again, not entirely necessary. Soap alone or soap with tea tree oil should be enough to get rid of most of the germs, bacteria, and viruses floating on your surfaces. 

However, if you’re someone who needs or just feels good about a good disinfecting now and then (I happen to be one of these people, for better or worse), this is a great option. I don’t love using bleach in my home. So, where I would whip out bleach before, I use Force of Nature. It’s pretty affordable too, once you’re set up with the “electrolyzer.” Also, because they give you the small portions of vinegar/salt that you mix with water at home, you save on a lot of plastic and shipping waste.

(If you want to try Force of Nature, use code NEWME60 for 60% off the glass bundle or NEWME40 for 40% off any bundle. I try to keep this code updated in this post, but if it isn’t working for you, shoot me an email and I will find the updated deal code for you ASAP.)

Blue Land

This is another brand I’ve been getting into lately. I’m not partial to it as there are several great options for what they provide, but I do like their laundry soap and dishwasher soap formulations as well as their toilet bowl cleaner. I will say I don’t love all of their products. Some of their products use fragrance and the glass cleaner has added color. I think both of these are unnecessary and, while unlikely to kill you, potentially harmful. There are plenty of other companies that make these products you might as well avoid those ingredients.

In fragrance, there’s is stated to avoid use of known harmful chemicals, such as phthalates, so it may be even more fine than normal, but they are still synthetic and it’s just something I choose to avoid. Even for fragranced options, there are other brands using better options. 

As we discussed with Sal Suds, some people may be concerned about SLS in some Blue Land products, but I have no problems with SLS in cleaning products. 

I especially like Blue Land’s packaging. They send you tins with the products the first time you order, that contain the unwrapped tablets. After that, they send you refill tablets in paper packaging. There is zero plastic in Blue Land packaging, which is just a fantastic and eco-friendly model. It’s probably half the reason I like the brand, if I’m being honest.

I don’t use the spray cleaners so I can’t confirm this, but I have heard that they are plastic, though supposed to be extremely hard and durable plastic that can last forever.” If I ever get more information about this, I’ll let you know but I’m not planning on switching to their spray cleaners at the moment.

I’ve heard some complaints that Blue Land seems a little expensive, but when I look at price per load comparisons, they don’t seem to be more expensive. Maybe they’re more expensive than grocery store options? I’m not sure and I don’t have the energy to do a whole price comparison at the moment.

Molly Suds

I don’t love all of Molly Suds' formulations, but I love their powder laundry detergent, their oxygen whitener, and their enzyme stain spray. They have clean ingredients and they work amazingly. I’ve been using their laundry products since I had my first son and they’ve been perfect for my family. 

My son stains everything, obviously, and I cloth diaper. I have not put a lot of effort into trying to whiten the diapers since my son started eating solid foods (if you know, you know, if you don’t, find someone else to explain it to you, lol…) but the stain treating products work amazingly for the orange and red and purple stains he seems to amass every time I turn around. 

They have unscented and scented options, but the scented options are natural and not problematic. They’re also not very strong, I don’t notice much of a smell from the scented one I have, but that doesn’t bother me. My clothes, though not having a “scent,” never smell. Diapers, sweaty workout clothes, my husband’s stinky work clothes–everything comes out fresh. I’m a big fan.

Truly Free

I’m including Truly Free even though I haven’t personally used it because I think it is a great brand and those I know that use it, love it. They have a lot of products, which is somewhat overwhelming… But they all have decent ingredients. There are some ingredients on there that some people may disagree with, but for the most part it seems pretty non-controversial. 

From what I’ve explored, their laundry soap, oxygen boost, stain stick, and dishwashing products all seem to have great ingredients and people say they work very well.

This is also a brand I’ve heard people love for the laundry scent. They say it smells great and replaced their old favorite laundry smells better than unscented options, which made them miss good smelling laundry. The scent is natural, coming from oils, but supposedly is more potent and lasts better. They also have a “dryer angel,” which is basically a carrier for oils. You could do this with dryer balls and essential oils, but I do think it’s a nice, no-hassle way to do the same job. 

I’m personally looking at switching to their washing machine cleaner from my current Tide washing machine cleaner. I tend to neglect wood polishing, but my husband is really into the Orange-Glo, so Truly Free’s wood polish, which looks to have great ingredients, might be another we have to try soon.

Wrap-up

That’s it. That’s all I use to clean my house. Honestly, it’s more than I usually use to clean my house, but it’s all of the things I ever use to clean my house. As you can see, it’s not too crazy and there are great options out there for people who want to make their own stuff, just use simple ingredients, or just buy ready-to-go products. 

Things I look for specifically in my cleaning products: no fragrance, no crazy preservatives, no harsh chemicals, and no plastics (such as plastic coating like for some dishwasher pods). I keep it pretty simple and that keeps it pretty stress free. Luckily, there are so many options available to use today, it’s easy to find something better for you and the planet that you’re also going to like.

I hope you found this helpful and were able to find some ingredients and products that may work well for you as you embrace a natural cleaning journey. If you did and you want to see more content like this, please subscribe to our newsletter to stay in the loop and browse our other blog posts. As always, feel free to send me an email with any questions you may have or any other topics you would like me to explore.