The Nitty-Gritty of Scrubbing Cleaners

Last post, I shared my current favorite spray cleaner: a Super Simple Citrus Cleaner that’s good for wood floors, cabinets, furniture, and any surface that may benefit from a little lemon oil. (Don’t forget the bonus lemonade!)

This time, I’m going to share with you a couple of my favorite scrubbing cleaner formulas – good for polishing your kitchen sink, getting burned-on food off pans, and scrubbing away general grubbiness.

“The Salts” – baking soda, kosher salt, and Borax* – are great for taking grime off and great multi-taskers. Just with table salt alone, there are tons of uses beyond seasoning food. There are also lots of ways to use baking soda other than getting rid of odors in your fridge. And Borax is good for the laundry and, yes, scrubbing.

So without further ado, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of scrubs. I’ll give you a few locations to start with your scrubbing adventures.

Basic Sink Scrub

This is probably the easiest scrub you can use to polish your sink. What you’ll need:

Kosher salt, Borax, or baking soda – whatever you have on hand
Method® dish soap or Dr. Bronner’s liquid castille soap
Sponge or abrasive pad

Shake about ¼ cup of your preferred salt in the sink, squirt some dish soap on it, make a paste and work it around the sink with your sponge or abrasive pad (you still have to scrub a bit). Let the paste stay on for a while for extra-nasty stains or dried-on stuff. Rinse.

Now, about all those dishes…

Dirty Pan Scrub

You’ve scrambled some eggs and the egg remnants won’t come off the pan? I swear they will with this. What you’ll need:

Basic Scrub above, add a little Borax

This time, let the paste stay on the pan for 30 minutes or so. You might have to still scrub a little with your abrasive pad, but it’s nothing like what you’d be doing without the Borax paste!

Gentle Scrub

Baking soda is the least abrasive of the three salts mentioned above. You can use the Basic Scrub formula with baking soda to clean tubs and sinks, counter tops, stove tops, etc. Pretty much anywhere you need a softer scrub.

That’s it! Some basic formulas for scrubbing away grime with just a few non-toxic (and less toxic) ingredients. Let us know how you like them! And if you have some tips you’d like to share, please leave them in the comments below.

*Borax is the stuff that’s in non-toxic (well, for humans and animals anyway) ant killer. Got some sugar ants taking over your house? Sprinkle a little borax on their trail and they’ll soon disappear.

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Karen Gann

Karen Gann had a marketing communications career in high tech before taking a sharp turn into stay-at-home-momdom and homeschooling. She grew up in the Tennesse Valley, lives in Huntsville, and is wife to the wittiest man alive, mother to two head-strong and independent girls (they're adorable, really), and human caregiver to the cats. Addictions include Facebook, Pinterest, NYC's Radio Lab, coffee, food, and politics (not necessarily in that order but sometimes all at the same time). She's also the marketing director for Pandia Press in her spare time.