Mess On, Wipe Off

This DIY moment brought to you courtesy of an early morning mess and my caffeine deprived brain. I've learned the hard way time and again, with two kids in the house, you do NOT sit down at any flat surface and place your hands or arms upon it before checking it first. Well, at 6:00 a.m I'm not awake much less coherent enough to check before I prop. I sat down at the table this morning and crossed my arms on top of it. BIG MISTAKE. I ended up stuck to the table due to last night's dinner that Mini Me "forgot" to wipe up. So, still being groggy and fuzzy and all to irritated I went to the sink and grabbed the Lysol wipes. Half way back to the table, it dawned on my "still in bed" brain that, "Hey, I can MAKE these." So, there I stood, in the middle of the room staring at the container and composing this blog post, all before my first cup of coffee.

I use those Lysol/Clorox wipes for everything and I spend a small fortune on them in the long run. They are just so much simpler to grab than trying to find the spray bottle full of cleaner and a rag or paper towel. (Paper towels in my house are like a rare animal that you only see if you are lucky. I'm pretty sure they should belong on the endangered species list.) On that note, making your own cleaning wipes is extremely simple. I posted a recipe back in July for a homemade cleaner. You can find it here.

What You'll Need:

Old T-shirts (Old thin baby blankets would work well for this too.)

A container (A baby wipe container would do well, as would a wet wipe container or even a largish bottle)

The ingredients from the homemade cleaner recipe already posted.

Cut your cloth (whatever you choose to use would be fine I imagine.) into squares. The size of said squares is completely up to you but I would go with the normal wipe size. Grab your container. I'm going to use an old Lysol wipes container. Make up your homemade cleaner. For a wet wipes container or bottle, you will want to roll your fabric squares. Lay one overlapping another until you have them all lined up. Remember if you are rolling your squares each will need to overlap the other or it won't come out of the container right and you'll end up frustrated. For a baby wipe container, all you'll have to do is stack your fabric squares in the container. Once you have your squares rolled or stacked, pour the cleaner you made up over them. I would try to cover them for the time being. Let them sit overnight. The next day open the container back up and pour the cleaner into a spray bottle or whatever you choose to use to keep your cleaner in. Don't squeeze out the squares though. Leave those alone. And there you go, homemade cleaning, disinfecting wipes. They may be a bit "wetter" than the normal wipes but when you get one out you can always squeeze it over the container to get any excess cleaner out.

Another great thing about these homemade wipes is, they can be washed instead of thrown away, so in the long run you are saving money by not having to buy more and you are also contributing less to landfills. That's always a plus.

Happy DIYing Everyone!!!