DIY Homemade Carpet Cleaner
Toss toxic cleaners and dangerous chemicals! Remove stains with this safe, effective DIY homemade carpet cleaner. Quick + easy to make with pantry staples!
Tomorrow, Matt’s and my house goes on the market. I can’t believe we’re selling our home–it’s where Matt proposed to me. It’s the first house we ever owned. The first renovation projects we took on.
It’s where we lived when we got married, and where we’ve created hundreds of memories. Needless to say, it’s going to be tough to say goodbye.
To get our house ready to list, we had a few punch list items to go through, including steam cleaning our carpets, which (thanks to our adorable kittens and their less-than-adorable hairballs) had quite a few stains on them.
So we went to Lowe’s to rent a professional steam cleaner. But when we got home, we realized we forgot to buy the actual carpet cleaning solution. Doh!
Turns out, after looking up the ingredients, we did ourselves a favor. The store-bought carpet cleaning concentrate was full of dangerous chemicals, like cancer-causing alcohol ethoxylates, endocrine-disrupting and allergy-inducing fragrance and environmentally-unfriendly copolymers and methylisothiazolinone. I dare you just to try and pronounce that last one.
Fortunately, I had all the makings of a super safe carpet cleaner in my pantry and medicine cabinet–all you need is Distilled white vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, castile soap, essential oils (I recommend lemon and sweet orange) and hot water.
I love buying oils at Plant Therapy, whose oils are 100% pure, free from any additives, adulterants, or dilutions. Their facility is USDA Certified Organic, and their prices are also SUPER reasonable! Get 10% off your order of $50 or more sitewide with the coupon code ROOT10!
So I decided to make my own and see what happened. As you can see from the photos above, the results were incredible!!
Not only was this DIY Homemade carpet cleaner just as effective (if not more so) than conventional store-bought cleaners, but it was WAY less expensive, infinitely safer and a breeze to make. Once again, I’ve found DIY recipes to be as easy as pouring liquids into a bowl and stirring.
You can swap out the essential oils you use if you prefer a different scent–something about citrus just smells clean to me, but lavender would be beautiful, too.
And you don’t need a professional steam cleaner for this to work–I’ve tried bottling the solution and just spraying it directly onto a stain, letting it sit and scrubbing with a bristle brush, and it works just as well.
Next time you reach for toxic store-bought carpet cleaner, give this a try instead. And share your results in the comments below. I’d love to hear how it works for you. Happy Cleaning!
- 6 cups hot water (I set my tea kettle to Delicate // 160F)
- 2 tablespoons castile soap
- 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar
- 1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide
- 15-20 drops essential oils (I recommend lemon and sweet orange)
- Combine all ingredients in a large jug or pitcher and stir gently.
- Pour into carpet steam cleaning machine and use according to directions. Or apply directly to carpet stain and scrub with a bristle brush to remove.
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Photo Credit: Heidi Geldhauser
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This is eye opening! I figured most mass-produced cleaning products were harmful so i’m always looking for good alternatives.
These are so helpful! I never realized how dangerous normal products are!
You should NEVER EVER mix vinegar and peroxide!!! The chemical reaction is toxic!
Hi, Nicolle: Hmm, I haven’t heard anything about this in the research I’ve done. What kind of chemical reaction does it create that is toxic? Would love to learn more. Thanks!
It can create parecetic acid which we don’t much about other than it is a known irritant.
Correct. You are supposed to spray one first, let it sit for 5 minutes, wipe it off/down then spray the second one. You are to never mix the two together in the some container. It creates parecetic acid which can cause respiratory issues and irritate the skin.