2 Household Degreaser & Cleaner Recipes
Here’s a kickin household degreaser, make sure to wear rubber gloves and not inhale this stuff since the ammonia is pretty strong.
Recipe:
Lemon scented ammonia
Hot water
Dawn dishwashing liquid
- Fill an empty liquid dish detergent bottle half full with the ammonia, then top with hot water. Add a few squirts of dawn. Put cap back on and shake to mix, squirt where needed.
This cleaner works great for cleaning the ornaments and dishes on display in the kitchen (the grease collectors 
).
Kitchen Cabinet Degreaser
Ingredients:
Cleaning Supplies
1 gallon hot water
1 cup household ammonia
1/2 cup vinegar
1/4 cup baking soda
Directions:
- Mix ingredients well in a large bucket, make sure to dissolve the baking soda completely. Soak a sponge in the cleaner and then apply to surface of cabinet. For hard to remove grease spots, hold sponge firmly on spot for several seconds and then try wiping clean.
- Extra tough grease spots: Sprinkle damp sponge lightly with baking soda, gently scrub grease to break it up and then apply degreaser solution.
- Rinse cleaned cabinets well with hot water then dry with a clean towel.
- Can be used on painted cabinets, but test area first to make sure there’s no discoloration or damage.
- Wear rubber gloves and make sure not to mix this with bleach or any soap/detergent containing bleach.
On another blog I found a recipe for bathroom cleaner that cleaned leather shoes and shoe laces like a charm…In a regular spray bottle add 1/2 cups dish detergent and fill the bottle the rest of the way with white vinegar. The laces came out bright white and the leather looked almost new.
Thanks Heather! Do you need to rinse the leather in anyway after you apply this solution? Also, do you think this would work well on leather furniture? My hub, a messy messy man, has turned one arm of our leather love seat into a darker, noticeably flattened armrest from various spills and propping his laptop on it for so long. I’d really love to get it looking like normal again.
Baking soda, Vinegar and ammonia, …an interesting mix. The main ingredient in vinegar that is active in cleaning is acetic acid (CH3COOH), and ammonia dissolved in water is ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH). They will react and produce ammonium acetate (CH3COONH4)(a salt soluble in water). Because vinegar contains maybe 3% of acetic cid, and there is an excess of ammonia, essentially you will kill all of the acetic acid, and you will still have excess of ammonia. So in the end you will have baking soda or sodium hydrogen carbonate (NaHCO3, souluble in water, ammonium acetate, and ammonia.
Before mixing chemical compounds it is good to check if they react together. Bleach is probably the most dangerous, reacts wit so many things and releases chlorine, and chlorine likes to react with our tissues ( I am afraid for my lungs).
Thanks Heather
chemist turned cleaner