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Jun 10, 2010

Cheaper Cleaning Products: Part 4 (Merrick)

I recently found a recipe for homemade furniture polish. I have a wood cleaner that I frequently use, but it leaves little spots on my front table, which looks terrible. So when I found this alternative that was cheap, healthy, and got good reviews, I decided to give it a try it out and give a review of my own.

Here's the recipe:

Needed
Cooking oil (no need to waste the good stuff on this, cheap unhealthy stuff will do fine)
Lemon juice
2 rags
1 container to hold the mixture (cup, basin, or bottle)

Instructions
1 In your container, mix a few tablespoons of oil with a dash of lemon juice. Stir or shake well.
2 Dip your rag into a tiny bit of the oil-lemon mixture.
3 Rub thoroughly over the wooden surface, adding more liquid as needed.
4 When completed, the wood should be dirt free and glistening.
5 Use the second cloth to rub down the furniture so no oil remains on top, so the furniture is not slippery or prone to giving oil stains.

Note: This works on faux wood as well as real wood.
{source: penniless parenting}

My review:
I tried this mixture on three surfaces: my real wood front room table, my wood kitchen table that has a seal over the wood, and my son's non-real-wood IKEA dresser.

Every. Last. One. Of Them. Is. GLEAMING!

The front room table has zero spots, and is shining like it's never shined before.

We have been struggling to find something to clean our kitchen table that doesn't leave streaks and won't hurt the sealed surface. This left NO streaks, and the table looks brand new again. And because it's not full of chemicals, it's safe for the surface.

The IKEA dresser looks beautiful too, and after cleaning it there was some dirt left behind on the rag, so I know it was really cleaning it.

For all three of these surfaces, I used probably 1/2 teaspoon of the mixture, so the several tablespoons that I made will last a long time. And because it was only oil and lemon juice, the several tablespoons cost almost nothing. Probably only a few pennies.

Bottom line, I'm sold. I'm using this furniture polish from now on. Go right now and make yourself a mixture and clean every wood/faux wood surface in your house!

1 comment:

Packrat said...

Thanks for the recipe! Our furniture is so dirty, so this will be great. I'll use mineral oil instead of salad oil, though. This might be a little more expensive, but it there is any oil left behind it won't ever get rancid.