Natural Homemaking: Homemade Soft Scrub with Peppermint

This month I am doing a short, weekly series on Natural Homemaking.  You can check out the first post here.

I hope you are enjoying this series as much as I am.  I’ve always wanted to take a more natural approach to my homemaking and these posts are forcing me to learn about and experiment with more natural cleaning methods.  It took me to long to try these recipes and I’m finding that it is SO much easier than I ever could have imagined.

Having a family that loves the outdoors and loves to help me in the garden and with the chickens is a blessing.  I am so thankful that I don’t have to coerce everyone outside after dinner every night.  However, the flip side is that, pretty much daily, everyone needs a long bath every night.  With all the use in the bathtub, the ring around the tub can get pretty heinous.

Before I knew much about the true dangers of chemical cleaners, Comet and other soft scrubs were my best friend.  A little elbow grease and a bunch of Comet would do the trick on any tub ring.  However, I’ve learned to stay away from that stuff now.  Enter my homemade soft scrub with peppermint.  You’re going to kill me when you see how simple this is and want your money back.  (Except I don’t charge you anything…. soo… yeah).  Find the (really simple) recipe below.

Homemade Soft Scrub

Ingredients

3 tbsp baking soda
1 tbsp water
4-5 drops peppermint essential oil

Directions

Mix baking soda and water until you get a thick paste.

Add 4 drops of peppermint essential oil and mix.  Go easy because I used 6 drops the first time I did it and Woah, overpowered.  (There are other essential oils you could add to this mixture that would be good but I chose peppermint for – #1 – Its antiseptic properties.  #2 – Its mood-lifting ability because, duh, if you are scrubbing a tub, or worse a toilet, then you better believe some mood-lifting is in order.)

Scrub away.  You can save it in a small jar or just mix it up fresh each time you go to clean.  It is really that easy.  If you give it a try, let me know.

**Notes**
–  Some recipes out there for a homemade soft scrub call for baking soda and vinegar (instead of water).  Well, if you remember from high school chemistry, baking soda and vinegar neutralize each other, so better to use them separately in cleaning.
–  I’ve seen some recipes that add salt to the mixture.  If you have a particularly grimy surface to clean this might be good addition but I haven’t tried it.
– This is also THE BEST mixture to use to get your glass stove tops clean.  In fact, leave the paste to sit on the spots and then scrub.  Works every time.