Homemade cleaning products

After reading Foster Mummy's and The Troll family's advice on home laundry soap making and as I had run out of ecover I decided to use some of my homemade soap to make laundry soap. I started off by just grating the soap and tried it in warmish water, which is all I wash my clothes in. It didn't dissolve quickly enough so I blitzed it through the food processor with the washing soda (85p from Morrisons) I used an equal weight of washing soda with soap.
The result was a really fine soap powder, which is not dissimilar to Ecover's own soap powder. I try to use natural products as I don't want my home full of chemicals (it's just a personal choice) but eco-products are expensive and you sometimes need to soak stains out in salt water as they don't contain digestive enzymes. Nonetheless, the washing soda element of my homemade soap powder will certainly get rid of most of the dirt in our clothes.
I had also run out of furniture polish. I don't use it very often as a damp cloth is all that is needed to get rid of the dust. However, I do like my retro 60's dining suite (£80 bought from the Cornish Guardian's classified and came home in the back of the car with the seats folded down) to have a sheen when I clean it. I mixed equal amounts of olive oil with lemon juice, then a liberal sprinkling of lemon essential oil. I only made a bit as the natural oils tend to lose their aroma and I will just mix a bit more when I need it. (BTW - 1 litre of olive oil is £3 in Asda - you could always use 99p sunflower oil but the thick olive oil seems best for getting a shine and no my dining room does not smell of salad dressing, but of the lemon oil.)

Following Foster Mummy's advice (here is the link to her blog) I used my soap mixture to clean the floor. I just boiled the kettle, poured that into a bucket with a spoonful of the soap mixture and now my floors are wonderfully clean.

I'm pleased to report that the clothes were washed OK, the floors and wooden furniture are gleaming and hooray, it was a really sunny washday and all the bedding made it onto the line and onto the bed in one day.