You can change someone’s life with this next gift. It is empowering, inspiring, exceedingly useful, and at the moment, rather trendy. Personally, I love gifts that are useful. And I love gifts that don’t clutter.
Starter kit essentials:
- A quart of your favorite Dr. Bronner’s Liquid Castile Soap. If you want to go with my favorite for housecleaning, get the Citrus or the Tea Tree. Or both.
- A quart of Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds Biodegradable Cleaner.
- A bar of your favorite Dr. Bronner’s Castile Bar Soap.
- White vinegar.
- A spray bottle.
- A microfiber cloth.
Optional add-ons:
- Another spray bottle (for a glass cleaner)
- Tea Tree or other favorite essential oil
- More microfiber cloths (Costco sells them in packs)
- A copy of Karen Logan’s book, Clean House, Clean Planet
Print out the Castile Liquid Soap Dilution Cheat Sheet, the Sal Suds Dilution Cheat Sheet, and the Castile Bar Soap Dilution Cheat Sheet on some card stock and laminate them. The lamination keeps them from getting messed up amid the housecleaning.
Use a basket or bag and arrange the microfiber cloths instead of tissue paper. Tie up with twine or raffia if you like and you’re good to go!
It’s Not Easy Being Green!
Further reading
- Green Cleaning Starter Kit
- The Low Cost of Green Cleaning
- GIY All-Purpose Cleaning Spray
- Dilutions Cheat Sheet for Dr. Bronner’s Liquid Castile Soap
Sal Suds cleaner shows >60% biodegradation after 28 days per ISO 14593
I love this gift bucket idea! I clean my parents house with Castile soap when they’re away traveling. When they get home they are elated with the way everything sparkles and shines. They also love how the house smells. I also clean a few things right before they arrive back home so they can enjoy the natural scents. My mom wants me to teach her my cleaning tips and recipes, but she’s of a certain age (in her 70’s) and she won’t remember 70% of what I teach her. This is a perfect solution! I mean PERFECT! Thank you so much for sharing this!
Hi Karen – Great! Hope that makes for a check mark on your holiday shopping list! It sounds like printing off the “cheat sheets” and will be really helpful. You can also write the dilution on the bottle in a permanent marker, so the recipe is right there when it’s time to refill.
[…] further, since I happened to be contemplating some gifts I need to give, this is a perfect way to translate your crunchy self into a gift for someone else. Get this book, package it with a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Castile Soap, a spray […]
I’ve started to make my own liquid cleaner with vinegar and lemon peels. I wanted to give it a boost with adding some Castile soap but wondered what the dilution/mixture should be.
Hi Ruth Anne – The vinegar and lemon peels is a good thing for light cleaning. Adding soap would be a move in the wrong direction. Soap and vinegar react with each other and break down. Read more about that here: https://www.lisabronner.com/a-word-of-caution-about-vinegar-and-castile-soap/. Either use the vinegar, or the soap, but not both together.
Hi! Your blogs are very helpful and have sold me on this product! I am wondering about the spray bottles you use…I know with essential oils you have to use glass or specific types of plastic bottles…is this the same for the soap with essential oils?
Hi Ashlen – Pure essential oils are pretty intense liquids. Some can affect certain plastics, and even eat through our skin if we get them on us undiluted. However, there are two things to consider when choosing spray bottles for your cleaning solutions. One is that the essential oils are tremendously diluted in the spray bottles. If you follow my recommendation of 1/4 c. of soap in roughly 1 quart of water, the 2% concentration of essential oils in the soap is diluted by 16-fold. That means that your spray bottle has around a .1% concentration of essential oils. If you choose to add the optional extra tea tree essential oil, about 1/2 tsp., you’re upping that concentration to around .4% concentration of essential oils. This is still pretty small and will not create possibility of eating through plastic. The second consideration is the type of plastic used to make the spray bottles. Most plastic containers in the US have the little number inside the chasing arrow symbol on the bottom. An explanation of what all those numbers mean and their safety is beyond my ability or space here, but the long and short of it is, Dr. Bronner’s uses PET 1 for its bottles (ours is 100% post-consumer recycled so no new plastic was generated ). This is a BPA-free, non-deteriorating plastic. Look for this same type of plastic when buying spray bottles.
Sal Suds contains SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulphate). I thought this was a no-no in going green. SLS is a skin, eye and respiratory tract irritant that Environment Canada has also categorized as inherently toxic to aquatic organisms.
I have done some research on this previously because like you I heard it was super bad as well. In high enough concentration, foaming agents and emulsifiers (which is their role in cleaning products) will cause living organisms irritation. You can find cleaning products with SLS substitutes but I think the general consensus on price and particularly effectiveness is underwhelming. As you know, however, Sal Suds is not for your person but for hard surface cleaning, and is meant to be diluted. In terms of toxicity to aquatic organisms, these are very sensitive, and you are hard pressed to find any chemical, apart from water, which is not toxic to them at sufficient concentration. If you read the MSDS on Tea Tree Oil you are meant to wear gloves, a lab coat and splash goggles (just to amp up the danger phrases a bit more, it is also a flammable liquid). Vinegar, which is regularly consumed by humans, contains 4-5% acetic/ethanoic acid which is an irritant at concentrations above 10% and corrosive at concentrations above 25%. I hope this is useful information for your cleaning product choices. I recommend bike-riding instead of cleaning.
I just found your website and have been contemplating testing out Dr. Bronner’s products for a while now. Let’s say I’m sold and will be placing an order tonight! I have tested spray bottles using other diy cleaning solutions and haven’t found one I want to use again. What type of spray bottle do you suggest? THanks!
Thanks for the cheat sheets! I’ve been using the tea tree variety for a while now. Its good stuff.
Would you agree to my adding baking soda or Chlorox to clean toilets, stainless steel sinks?
Thank you.
Great Site!
Thank you! Love the cheat sheets. I’m going to lamindate them, punch a hole in the corners to run a cord through them, and hang them in my laundry area. I love your posts which are so helpful, and I love Dr. Bronner’s earth-friendly products! I tell everyone about them.
Great post Lisa, as ever.
By the way, love the new website!
Keep up the good work.
Both links still showing only Castile soap cheat sheet
Thanks for the heads up! The links should work properly now.
What a wonderful house warming gift this would make!! Have a wonderful holiday season, many blessings for the New Year!!
Both links bring up the cheat sheet for the soap right now. I want Sal Suds, too. Love this post!
Both links take you to the cheat sheet for Castile Soap…