Rid Your Sink Of Nasty Bacteria The Non Toxic Way
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Anyone out there a germaphobe like me? Well if so, and even if you are not, I am sure that you view your kitchen sink as one of the germiest places in your home. With good reason, many bacteria from dirty dishes and left over scraps of food are lurking in every nook and cranny of your kitchen sink. Lately though, of more concern to me are the toxic ingredients found in most household kitchen cleaners. Even the smell of such cleaners has begun to become an irritant to my nose and lungs. As I have switched over to more natural products around my home a sink cleaner is one of the first things that I made and started to use regularly. It is so easy to make and produces wonderful, effective results. In fact, as I was taking photos for this recipe I decided to do a bacteria test before and after cleaning my sink with this product. Please know, this was not performed in a high tech lab nor did I need to wear any sort of hazmat suit, so take the results with a grain of salt and know this is for visual purposes only. I simply used pre poured agar plates, swabbed the sink with a sterile cotton swab prior to and then after using the sink cleaner and waited three days for the bacteria to culture. You can visually see two things 1) I apparently did not clean every nook and cranny well enough and 2) the sink cleaner is effective at removing bacteria from my kitchen sink. Read below to find out how to make this easy all natural cleaner yourself. Happy Making!
Top: Immediately after pre swabbing, cleaning, and post swabbing the sink. No growth noted on the agar plates
Bottom: 3 days after incubating the agar plates in a warm environment you see majority of the bacterial growth on the pre sink cleaner plate (if you can read backwards haha). Overall the homemade kitchen cleaner appears to be very effective.
Ingredients and Supplies Needed
Baking Soda
Hydrogen Peroxide
Distilled Water
Glass Jar With A Lid Such as a Wide Mouthed Mason Jar
Homemade Kitchen Sink Cleaner Recipe
For my sink cleaning recipe I always make about a week's worth at a time that way I know it is always fresh and ready to use. Because of this I don't use large amount of ingredients at one time. As always, I will add that my method of providing recipes is a little different than most as I estimate ingredients rather than exact measuring and you can read more about that in this post. For this recipe you will need a glass jar to pour your ingredients into and mix with a clean spoon. Be sure that your jar is twice as big as the amount you are wanting to make because the mixture will expand over time due to the presence of the hydrogen peroxide.
First you will pour in your baking soda. I would roughly estimate out about 1/2 a cup for this. Next you will add in your hydrogen peroxide. For this, you will want half as much hydrogen peroxide as baking soda. So if you estimated out approximately 1/2 cup of baking soda you will then want to estimate about 1/4 cup of hydrogen peroxide. Next you will place just a small squeeze or about 1 teaspoon of liquid castile soap. At this point go ahead and mix all the ingredients together. Once they are well mixed, add distilled water a little at a time (you shouldn't need much) until you have slightly thick but liquid consistency, much like a soft scrub cleaner would. If done correctly the mixture should be slow to drop off a spoon, not run quickly off. If it is too runny at this point add more baking soda little by little until you get the right consistency. Now add in 3-5 drops of each of the essential oils listed for both increased cleaning and antibacterial power and for a fresh aroma. When you are ready to clean the sink you will simply spoon the mixture into the sink and scrub it in with a sponge or brush. You should then let it sit for about 10 minutes and then rinse away with warm to hot water. I will usually do this every other night although I would love to try and do it every night! I try to be as honest as possible so I will just go ahead and let you know that some nights the sink remains full of dirty dishes and I simply walk away. Out of sight, out of mind right? And this is why I need a good sink cleaner LOL!
Hope you enjoy this recipe, please comment below if you try it out!
