Homemade Tile Cleaner Recipe

So maybe I'm a little more crunchy than I thought I would be. Before you judge, let me explain how I came upon the path of making my own tile cleaner.

I was about to hop in the shower a few nights ago, when I thought about utilizing the time it takes for the hot water to make it from the other side of the house to my shower for something other than sticking my hand in the water every 10 seconds to see if it's hot. Cleaning the bathroom sounded good - well, as good as cleaning the bathroom ever sounds.

I couldn't leave the room for obvious reasons, so I had a nearly empty bottle of Comet Liquid Bathroom Cleaner and a full bottle of some other stuff that had bleach in it. I used the bleach stuff in, what I thought was, a small quantity, yet sufficient to clean. After my shower, my husband refused to shower until the bleach smell left the room. Not a big fan of bleach smell.

Fast forward a few days. Between being sick for weeks on end and busy in the few moments I felt well, my house has become a wreck. A pretty filthy wreck at that. And our bathroom (not the master bedroom one, but the other) was filthy. The kind of filthy that makes you consider the bushes outside as a good place to go. It needed serious cleaning, scrubbing and sanitizing. I didn't want to use the bleach stuff again, because in the quantity I needed, my nostril hairs would singe.

I didn't have near enough Comet to clean it, but looking at the bottle I noticed the active ingredient was citric acid. "I have citric acid!" I thought. A 1 pound baggie of it was stuck in my freezer looking like something more nefarious, but was actually left from my "Fizzing Bath Bomb" experiment, that obviously didn't go well.  I tried looking up cleaner recipes that had citric acid. I found a couple, but they weren't what I needed, so I improvised.

The result worked better than bleach has in the past, plus no bleach smell. My tiles are cleaner than I thought they would be. So before I totally forget what I threw together, let me share it.

Natural and Effective Tile Cleaner Recipe
1/4 cup Citric Acid Powder
1 cup Hot Water
1 cup Vinegar
1 tsp Tea Tree Essential Oil

Dissolve the Citric Acid in the Hot Water. Pour into a spray bottle. Add the Vinegar and Tea Tree Oil. Shake (after putting the top on the bottle). Squirt on dirty tile, toilet or whatever and let sit a couple of minutes, then scrub and rinse. Repeat squirting, scrubbing and rinsing until clean.

I used Tea Tree Oil because I had an excess of it lying around (don't ask). But many other essential oils would work in it's place. I wanted one that didn't have a strong lingering scent and killed germs. Lavender, eucalyptus, peppermint, or spearmint are a few I can think of off the top of my head.  Whatever your preference is.

Who am I kidding? I am becoming as crunchy as Muslex.