Goodbye to Mrs. Meyers

For awhile Costco sold large bottles of Mrs. Meyers all purpose spray cleaner in a three pack. I loved having those on hand in the kitchen for cleaning surfaces and wiping the table and chairs down after meals. They worked well and smelled great. But I haven't been able to get the three pack in months. I guess Costco stopped carrying it, for now.

I checked to see if I could get a similar all-natural spray cleaner at Fred Meyer or Walmart. But a small bottle of Mrs. Meyers cost $7.99 at Fred Meyer. Gulp. That wasn't happening on our budget.

I still wanted something to help me get the sticky, greasy table and chairs sparkling clean again after each meal. As I might have mentioned before, our dining room gets very messy after just one meal.

A little online research uncovered an article on The Spruce about homemade spray cleaners. The author gave instructions on how to make an all purpose spray cleaner with just 2 tablespoons of liquid castile soap and 2 cups of water. I was skeptical, but decided to give it a try.

Christopher got me a 8 ounce bottle of pure castile soap at the local health food store. It cost $10, and if you bring the bottle back to get a refill you get a small discount. I have now made 4 bottles of spray cleaner with it and have used up about a third of the bottle of castile soap. So that's already like $32 worth of Mrs. Meyers cleaner at Fred Meyer prices and if I make 8 more bottles, that would be like buying almost $100 worth of Mrs. Meyers from the store!

I was wondering if the homemade cleaner would clean as well as the Mrs. Meyers cleaners I'd been using for months. Well, honestly, it cleans beautifully. Even better than Mrs. Meyers, in my opinion.

The only other thing I wanted was for the homemade spray cleaner to smell as good as Mrs. Meyers aromatherapy cleaner did. That took a little more playing around. I had two bottles of essential oils, but they seemed to be very weak. Even if I put 20 drops or more in my bottle of cleaner, I could barely smell anything at all. So then I chose a bottle of oils from the soap-making section at Jo Ann Fabrics. That one was strongly scented but it smelled fake and pretty gross to me. Finally, my sister-in-law gave me some nice floral essential oils that she didn't want anymore. Those are perfect. Just 4 or 5 drops is enough to make the spray cleaner smell almost exactly like a Mrs. Meyers cleaner.

So now I am sold on this homemade castile soap spray cleaner and I think I will never need to buy a bottle of Mrs. Meyers again.

I wouldn't use this cleaner somewhere I might need a disinfectant, like for cleaning the bathroom, or to clean up the counter after it had raw meat on it but for everyday sticky spills and crumbs and meal messes, it works great. I use it mostly on our wooden table, vinyl chairs, kitchen appliances, kitchen cabinets, and our rather ugly yellowish-white vinyl kitchen countertops.

The instructions on The Spruce said to use distilled water so your cleaner won't go bad if you take a long time to use it. But since I use it to clean up after meals -- so about 20 times a week -- I go through a bottle each week and I didn't think I had to worry about that. I just use tap water and have had no problems with it getting moldy or anything.

Related, of course, a good kitchen habit is to never use yesterday's washcloth to clean. It might be harboring bacteria after sitting all night. Always get out a fresh one every morning, and if you can't find one I think it's worth spending a little money to get a couple of packs of washcloths so you have plenty and can always get out a clean one each day. Even the most cheap-o packs of dorm washcloths will do the job. They don't have to be Martha Stewart or anything like that. They just need to be clean and plentiful.

homemade cleaner

A useful article.