Saturday, March 12, 2011

Amazing Orange

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article about surprising things you can use around the house, one of which was orange peels.  I learned that the peels contain oil which can be turned into a natural cleaning product. After finishing the article,  I decided to try making my own cleanser with orange peels and vinegar.

We eat a lot of oranges at this time of year, so coming up with the peels was easy.  I crammed as many as I could into an empty peanut butter jar, added vinegar, and let it sit on the counter for a couple of weeks, shaking it a couple of times every day. The jar looked quite colorful setting next to the sink.

This morning I decided to test out my orange oil cleaner on the vinyl kitchen floor. I usually sponge mop it with vinegar and water, but today I grabbed the orange oil-laced brew. After I removed the peels, I was left with half a jar of beautiful orange-colored liquid with a faint citrus smell.  I have a big kitchen floor, though, and there wasn't enough to do the job, so I added plain vinegar from the jug in the pantry to fill the jar, then poured it into the bucket of water and got to work.

The floor was quite dirty, and when I was in the middle of the job I wasn't sure that the orange oil was doing anything, but when the floor dried it was clean and had a nice shine.  It also passed the "walk barefoot across the room" cleanliness test, so I'd say my experiment was a success.

7 comments:

  1. wow, really? That's a neat tip. Very environmentally friendly.

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  2. Thanks for the tip, it's amazing what works without adding all those chemicals. What type of flooring do you have in your kitchen? I'm wondering if it will work on this cheap laminate which was installed when we bought this house...laminate which will be changed once I'm out working. That's going to be one of my first major indoor changes and I can't wait, well it's a toss up between the flooring and the cupboards! lol

    Did you also know that if you pour about a half cup of baking soda down your kitchen sink about once a week, then pour about a cup of vinegar and let it do it's thing for about half an hour, rinse with hot water and you'll have germ free drains? I just started doing that after I read it somewhere online.

    Enjoy your Sunday!

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  3. Nice! I love the smell of running the peels down the garbage disposal.

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  4. I use orange oil on my wooden furniture and also my wood front door. Does a nice job.

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  5. That sounds pretty easy. Thanks.
    I just rediscovered Borax as a household cleaner. It's nice to know we're getting back to simple.
    Hope you had a sunny Sunday!

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  6. What a cool idea! I love it!

    We have a wonderfully productive lemon tree. I'm going to try this with lemon peels. I use water and vinegar on our pine floors anyway. I love the idea of adding citrus. Thanks for sharing!

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  7. Oh my... What a great idea to make use of those orange peels. We are seeing more oranges at the market these days.

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