This homemade all-purpose cleaner can be made in just a few minutes and contains only 4 ingredients. It’s perfect for cleaning multiple surfaces around your home, including your kitchen, bathroom, glass and mirrors.
Replace the need to buy any toxic household cleaners ever again with this amazing all-purpose surface cleaning spray. It kills germs and will leave your home sparkling clean. Better for you, your home and the planet. What’s not to love!

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Household cleaners that should be avoided
Like many of us, I’ve been duped into buying “eco friendly” brands such as Method in the past. Only to use them and discover that I’ve been greenwashed and that there’s pretty much nothing eco friendly about them at all.
I should have known from the bright BLUE colour of the liquid inside the PLASTIC bottle and it’s overpowering SMELL, that it definitely wasn’t good for me or my home. I would literally start coughing as soon as I sprayed it into the bath, even if I had the window wide open to ventilate the room!
Despite all of these red flags, it wasn’t until I looked it up on the Environmental Working Group (EWG) website that I vowed never to use it again. According to the EWG, the Method mint and eucalyptus bathroom cleaning spray is rated as ‘D – HIGH CONCERN’. This is only one grade away from the worst score a cleaning product could get in terms of toxicity, which is an F. Yikes!

Products are ranked from EWG Verified (the best), then A through to F (the worst). Apparently they miss out E to avoid people thinking it stands for ‘excellent’. You can check out where your household cleaner ranks here at EWG.org
Ingredients that should be avoided in household cleaners
- Any ingredients ending in “-onium chloride”
- Sulfuric acid
- Hydrochloric acid
- Sodium hypochlorite
- Butyl Cellosolve, Ethylene Glycol, 2-BE
- P-phenylenediamine, coal tar solutions, naphtha, estar and benzin B70
- MEA (monoethanolamine), DEA (diethanolamine), TEA(triethanolamine)
- Nonylphenol (NP) and nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs)
- Perfume/Fragrance or parfum, Phthalate, DEP, DEHP, and DBP
- Sodium Tripolyphosphate
- Caustic soda, lye, Sodium hydroxide
- Sodium dichloroisocyanurate dihydrate, sodium chloride
- Sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate, sodium salt, ammonium laureth sulfate, sodium n-dodecyl sulfate, dodecyl sulfate, and sodium dodecyl sulfate
- Caustic soda, lye, Sodium hydroxide
- Sodium dichloroisocyanurate dihydrate, sodium chloride
- Triclosan (TSC) and triclocarban (TCC)
This is not an exhaustive list, but gives you some idea of the ingredients to look out for on product labels. Long term exposure to these ingredients have been proven to be extremely harmful to our health and yet they still continue to be used in common household cleaning products. Once these cleaning products are washed down the plug hole and enter our water ways they are also extremely harmful to aquatic life.
Non-toxic alternatives that you can make at home
So I started to look for a recipe for a natural all-purpose spray and stumbled upon the national treasure that is Nancy Birtwhistle. Not only is she an amazing baker (she won the Great British Bake Off in 2014), but she has a book called Clean & Green that contains 101 natural cleaning tips and ideas. Every homemaker should own a copy of this book in my opinion!

Nancy’s all-purpose cleaner and toilet cleaner recipes are the only two cleaning sprays that I now use in my home on a regular basis. They have replaced all other cleaning products that I used to buy. No more chlorine bleach, no more Mr Sheen and no more Flash bathroom.
I’ll admit I will still use a smudge of Pink Stuff if there’s something really stubborn like pen ink on our white IKEA kallax shelves, but it very rarely comes out from under the kitchen sink these days. Once this is used up I’ll be making my own cream cleaner going forward.
So whilst I cannot take credit for this recipe, full credit goes to Nancy, I have tweaked it slightly by adding Peppermint essential oil to this version. The main reason for this is that Peppermint essential oil is a natural insect repellent.
We have always had an issue with ants coming into our house, despite my best efforts to keep the crumbs off the floor. However, since I started adding Peppermint essential oil to my homemade surface cleaning spray, we’ve hardly had any come into the house at all. Peppermint also smells great and helps to disguise the smell of the vinegar and surgical spirit, so there’s that benefit too.
How to make a homemade all-purpose cleaner
Ingredients:
40ml surgical spirit / rubbing alcohol
20 drops essential oil (I use peppermint)
150ml filtered water
Equipment:
500ml Glass bottle with spray attachment
Funnel
Measuring jug
Method:
Remove the spray attachment from the bottle and place the funnel into the neck of the bottle. Use the measuring jug to measure and then pour each of the liquids one at a time into the glass bottle. Replace the spray top and then give it a gentle shake.

How and where to use your DIY all-purpose cleaner?
Kitchen
I use a few squirts of the all-purpose spray and a damp organic cotton dish cloth to wipe down my kitchen worktops on a daily basis. I also use it on the fridge, as well as the doorhandles and windowsills throughout my home.
Mirrors & Glass
I use a dry glass cleaning cloth with the all-purpose spray to clean my mirrors, windows, glass doors and picture frames.
Bathroom
For the bathroom I do the ‘spray and walk away’ method. So I spray the sink, bath and toilet then leave it to do its work for 20 minutes or so. Then I use a slightly abrasive mitt, which is actually an exfoliating glove that I’ve never brought myself to use on my skin.
I slip the exfoliating mitt over my eco household rubber gloves, wet it slightly with warm water and then give the bath and sink a good scrub. Then I’ll rinse the bath and sink off with warm water and a soft cloth. I buff the taps on the sink and bath just by using a dry towel. Removing the excess water from the taps just helps to shine them up.
I use my DIY Toilet Bowl Cleaner to clean the inside of the toilet.

A quick note about the ingredients
Don’t overpay for white vinegar! Small 568ml bottles can be bought extremely cheaply from the supermarket. If you want to buy a larger bottle, make sure it’s good value for money.
Depending on which brand of surgical spirit you buy, this can smell quite strong. The first bottle I bought was from Boots and I didn’t notice the smell. However, the second bottle that I purchased from Amazon had a really strong smell to it. I remedied this by adding slightly more water and a few extra drops of essential oil to cancel it out.
You can use any essential oil that you like the smell of. Lemon, tea tree, lavender and eucalyptus all work well with this spray. I like to use Neals Yard Remedies or Plant Therapy essential oils, as they’re organic, but any decent brand will do.
You can use just normal tap water, but I prefer to filter my water before using it in food, drinks and cleaning sprays. Our tap water isn’t great where I live, so I want to filter out as many nasties as possible.
Let me know in the comments below how you get on using this all-purpose cleaner! I’d love to know.
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Thank you so much for stopping by!

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