Friday, July 29, 2011

So Fresh and So Clean Part 4!

In my never-ending quest to be cleaner and greener, I've tried a homemade furniture polish. Here's my video:

**Warning: if you get motion sickness, you might want to look away - this is definitely the worst video yet**





Version 1:
1/4 c. lemon juice
1/2 t. olive oil


Version 2:
1/4 c. vinegar
1/2 t. olive oil

So after letting that sit and dry for awhile, we found that  a. our coffee table is clean and fresh, b. our coffee table is shiny and polished, and c. we did without using harsh chemicals. Now here's my brutal honesty: I definitely don't feel comfortable recommending this method for high-end and high-polished woods. Quite frankly, I'm not sure how great the acid from the vinegar/lemon juice is for polishes. But, for low-end quality stuff like what we have - hand-me-downs, thrift-store purchases, side-of-the-road pick-ups for college-aged and young people like us...it's definitely something you may be interested in. But again, I have to be honest - I'm not in love with this polish. After awhile, it's a tad bit sticky (although that may be because I used fresh-squeezed lemon juice instead of the bottled kind - because we never use that and therefore never buy it) and lacks the "super high polish" look we get from the Orange-Glo and Old English polish. It may also be because I had to halve the recipe because I only had 1/8 c. lemon juice...maybe there just wasn't enough olive oil in 1/4 teaspoon.

And there it is, folks.  I just realized that I actually used 1/8 teaspoon of olive oil, and not 1/4 teaspoon when I halved my recipe - mental math fail. So this post may, in fact, be a total bust. I shall try again (with correct amounts of lemon juice and olive oil)...



TAKE TWO:


So after my miscalculation, I went ahead and mixed together a new polish to try out:




This mixture definitely worked better than the first one - I was very pleased with the results. I still stick by my first comment on not recommending it for high-end furnitures with high-gloss finishes...but for your average run of the mill furniture, it works pretty darn well! No discoloration, no weird smells, spots, stains, streaks, or sticky spots.

I'd still rather use lemon juice than vinegar, because I love a clean citrus smell, but that'll have to wait until next time.

Love,
Vanessa


P.S. If you get the urge to try this out, let me know how it works out for you. I'd love any feedback on your organic/home-made cleaning products.

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