Laundry detergent, fabric softener, and dryer sheets. Solutions for windows, hardwood, and kitchen surfaces. Bathroom cleaners, dish soap, and air freshener. The list goes on and on, and the dollars add up and up. Dedicate a little time to making common household cleaning products yourself, and your savings account and the environment will thank you.

Here are a few ideas to get you started. Makes loads' worth using 1 Tbsp. per load. To save costs on dryer sheets, try using a kitchen staple. Tightly roll up a few balls of aluminum foil so they fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. Use of these per load in the dryer and they act as static-reducers!

Tennis balls are also an option, and a few people combine this method with the foil balls for materials that really hang onto static. Something else to keep in mind is that you only need half of a dryer sheet per load to get the job done.

And sheets can be re-used. Extend the life of your box of dryer sheets by putting these tips into practice!

There are plenty of ways to save on cleaning products by making them yourself. The main benefit of this, of course, is the money you'll save. To tackle all those tough stains and grime, try using L. I use it to remove gunk and soap buildup on the sink and shower walls, and it degreases like a charm!

Another product that stands out is the Toilet Bowl Cleaner Tablet, which keeps your toilet clean without any scrubbing. The Foaming Bathroom Cleaner is a great product for giving your bathroom an all-around clean. It can clean your bathtub, shower, toilet, and sink.

Bleach is an excellent choice for disinfecting surfaces, while baking soda is a versatile cleaning product that removes odors and unclogging drains.

I use them wet or dry to clean our windows, mirrors, floors, and walls, plus I can dust our TV screen, tables, and lights. In addition to their extensive range of cleaning supplies, your local dollar store also has items to keep your home organized.

Caddies, a basket with handles, and storage bins are all available to keep your cleaning products organized and easily accessible. Caddy Solutions at Dollar Tree can help you easily organize and transport your cleaning supplies. A cleaning caddy has helped me keep my cleaning supplies organized and tidy, and I can take the whole lot with me all over the house.

It saves me a lot of back and forth, and it fits neatly in my closet for storage while keeping everything where I want it. An organized cleaning supply makes your life easier while saving you time and effort to better tackle your cleaning tasks. Baskets and storage bins available at Dollar Tree provide additional storage options for your cleaning supplies.

However, they have their own version of the Pink Stuff, simply called a multi-purpose cleaning paste. Yes, Dollar Tree carries a mix of name-brand and generic cleaning supplies, offering great value for budget-conscious shoppers.

This tip comes from the amazing cleaning company, Go Clean Co. Follow them on Instagram for more cleaning tips. They recommend mixing a few teaspoons of powdered Tide detergent with about a third of a cup of bleach with a gallon of hot water.

This mixture is pure magic! I was a little skeptical about using laundry detergent to clean more than my clothes, but once I tried it, I never went back to any other cleaner!

This is how it works: the Tide lifts stains and dirt while the bleach disinfects. I use this budget cleaning mixture almost everywhere in my home, but here are three specific examples.

The bathroom is an area that needs daily disinfecting, and this mixture works wonders. I use it on my bath tub, my toilet, my tile floor and walls, my sink, and even inside my little bathroom waste basket. I use this mixture on any hard surface floors except hardwood.

This budget cleaner gets them shiny again, not to mention germ free. Those fingerprints, food smudges, and dust will wipe off your kitchen cabinets so easily with Tide and bleach. Now that your cabinet doors are sparkling clean, read this tips for getting the inside of your kitchen cabinets organized.

Baking soda is a budget cleaning super star. Here are two ways I use baking soda around my home. Soap and water can clean almost anything, but sometimes you need a product with a little more grittiness to give you a bit more scrubbing action.

Mixing baking soda into a paste with a few drops of water works great for scrubbing the grime out of the kitchen sink, scrubbing buildup on your bathroom tile, or scrubbing the ring around the inside of the bathtub.

Living in our houses brings along some unpleasant odors, especially if you have pets. I love my basset hound, but sometimes he stinks! I like to sprinkle baking soda on any soft surface that needs a little refresh — my couch, area rugs, or the bed mattress.

Let it sit and do its job for a few minutes, and then vacuum the baking soda up. Last but not least in our budget cleaning kit is hand sanitizer. These days, we all have plenty of hand sanitizer in our homes. Why not get double duty from it? I use it in my home for one thing- removing stubborn stains from hard surfaces.

One box of Magic Erase stain scrubbers costs more than ten dollars, but a bottle of hand sanitizer costs just a few dollars. Put a little hand sanitizer on a kitchen rag, and the ink wipes right off the wall.

Dish Soap Peroxide Toothbrush

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Budget-friendly cleaning supplies - Baking Soda Dish Soap Peroxide Toothbrush

I get out my cleaning bucket, mix a few teaspoons of Dawn with hot water, and use this mixture to clean my kitchen counters. This works especially well if you have stone kitchen counters because you need to use a gentle cleaner to protect the finish of your stone surface.

I take one kitchen rag and scrub the counters with soapy water, and then I take another rag and buff it dry. Dawn is really good at cutting grease and lifting up the mess that covers my kitchen counters daily from the smear of peanut butter my toddler left when he ate his lunch to cooking grease that splattered from the pan on the stove.

Here are more ways to control dust in our homes. If you walk down the cleaning aisle at any grocery store, you might get the impression that the bathroom needs all kinds of expensive cleaning products. Remember, soap is soap. I like to squirt a little blue Dawn dish soap in my toilet bowl and then scrub with a toilet brush.

It gets the job done for cheap, and the money I saved gets to stay in my wallet. Here are more helpful tips for getting your toilet fresh and clean. This might go without saying, but a sink full of hot water and a few drops of Dawn works better than anything to get my dishes clean.

I have a dishwasher in my home, so I like to pre-soak any dishes with stuck-on food in a sink full of hot soapy Dawn water before I rinse them off and place them in the dishwasher. Next up in our budget household cleaning products, we have good old vinegar.

Vinegar has strong cleaning power, a cheap price tag, and is all natural. Here are three areas of my home I clean using vinegar. A mixture of one part vinegar to three parts water is great for cleaning anything shiny — windows, mirrors, shiny metal fixtures like sink faucets, glass coffee tables, glass cabinet doors.

Just wipe or spray on the vinegar mixture, and then use a paper towel to dry. I use paper towels instead of my kitchen rags because I find that the kitchen rag leaves lint behind.

A squeegee would be a good environmentally friendly alternative. Pour a cup of vinegar into a microwave safe bowl, and place it in your microwave.

Turn your microwave on and let it heat up the vinegar for about ten minutes. Let the vinegar cool down for a minute or two before removing it very carefully from your microwave.

Now take a kitchen rag and wipe down the inside of your microwave. The hot vinegar has steam cleaned the inside surfaces and that stuck on food is easily wiped off.

You steam cleaned your microwave, and now you have a bowl of hot vinegar sitting on your kitchen counter. What should you do with it? You could pour it down the drain, but wait! Squirt a teaspoon of blue Dawn dish soap into the bowl and mix.

Now you have a great budget stain remover that you can use to spot clean the stains on your couch, the rug in your living room, or even the cloth seats of your car. This tip comes from the amazing cleaning company, Go Clean Co. Follow them on Instagram for more cleaning tips.

They recommend mixing a few teaspoons of powdered Tide detergent with about a third of a cup of bleach with a gallon of hot water. This mixture is pure magic! I was a little skeptical about using laundry detergent to clean more than my clothes, but once I tried it, I never went back to any other cleaner!

This is how it works: the Tide lifts stains and dirt while the bleach disinfects. I use this budget cleaning mixture almost everywhere in my home, but here are three specific examples. The bathroom is an area that needs daily disinfecting, and this mixture works wonders.

I use it on my bath tub, my toilet, my tile floor and walls, my sink, and even inside my little bathroom waste basket. I use this mixture on any hard surface floors except hardwood.

This budget cleaner gets them shiny again, not to mention germ free. Extend the life of your box of dryer sheets by putting these tips into practice! There are plenty of ways to save on cleaning products by making them yourself.

The main benefit of this, of course, is the money you'll save. In addition, though, DIY cleaners are usually more environmentally friendly and non-toxic as well. Skip to Main Content. Go back to Education Center.

Thrifty Thursday: 5 Budget-Friendly DIY Household Cleaning Products. Aly Hess. budget-friendly DIY Thrifty Thursday. What if we told you that it's possible to cut that number down by half - or significantly more?

Laundry Detergent Ingredients: 1 Box of Super Washing Soda 3 lb. size 1 Box of Pure Baking Soda 4 lb. or Ivory soap 1 container of Oxy-Clean 1. or Downy Unstoppables, for scent Instructions: Grate your Fels-Naptha Bar by hand or toss it in the food processor.

You want it to be grated as finely as possible. For Ivory soap, microwave it until foamy, then crush into a fine grade. In a large bowl or bucket, mix together the grated soap and all other ingredients.

Pour into your container of choice. Take note that this recipe makes 18 pounds worth of detergent, so you'll need to have a rather large container. To use, scoop Tablespoons of detergent into the wash load. This can be used in high efficiency washers.

Fabric Softener Ingredients: 2 cups hair conditioner Suave is a popular, inexpensive choice 3 cups white vinegar 6 cups hot water A container to mix it in a pitcher is ideal, as it's easy to pour the mixture later Optional: Essential oil, for scent Instructions: Mix the water, vinegar, and conditioner together.

Stir for several minutes, until clumps disappear and mixture is smooth. Pour into a final storage container an old fabric softener jug or milk jug are perfect.

Safe for high energy washers.