Green Cleaners

For years I have thought about the effect that the everyday cleaners we use to say clean the bathrooms or to wash the counters in your kitchen.  Just recently I learned about vinegar being a good healthy green cleaner.  But who like the smell of vinegar?  I for one am not in the category of people who do.  So I was brainstorming and thought about the oils that are in citrus peels and how amazing they smell.

We go through a ton of citrus fruit around here.  I use lemon or lime in my water daily.  My husband loves oranges and grapefruits.  I started saving the peels from all this citrus fruit in a old spaghetti sauce jar.  When the jar was full of assorted peels I poured distilled vinegar over the peels.  Let it set for a few weeks to give the citrus time to break down in the vinegar.  After that I strained the peels and any pulp from the cleaner.  I then poured into a squirt bottle and added some water to the mixture to dilute just a bit more.  I can still smell the vinegar but it is not overwhelming and it has a nice citrus hint to it.  I think the next batch will have some lavender or rosemary.