By Nikki Bryan

We all know that most of store-bought household laundry and cleaning products can cost a ton and can also contain lots of harsh chemicals, but they don’t have to.

I want to share with you a life hack that can save you hundreds of dollars and avoid your family coming into contact unnecessarily with all those toxic substances they put into products on grocery stores’ shelves. As an Aussie mum of two from Adelaide, I felt anxious of laundry liquids and powders that have fragrance that lingers in the clothes especially with having my 3-year-old daughter, Forest, and another baby on the way being near these household items.

The thought that these products are potentially toxic and have plenty of harsh chemicals hidden under the banner of “fragrance” scares me. All kinds of nasty ingredients could be lurking in your cleaning solutions and you’d never know it! With my growing family, I just was not going to take that risk.

As far as I was concerned, there was no way I was going to let these potentially toxic chemicals get near and even more so touch my family’s skin. Reading the labels of these cleaning products and what they contained, I realised how we needed to make changes, not only for my husband and I, but also for my little ones.

I used to have a shelf overflowing with a heap of different products, many which claimed they were natural, but were still bright green or blue.

Ever since I started living a low-tox life, I’ve always wanted to make my own laundry whitening booster that way I know what’s in them and I did just that. I started researching online recipes that not only would create laundry products that were natural but also just as effective as the store brought brands. After experimenting a little, I created my very own laundering items that add a bit of extra fragrance naturally and also gives a boost to any loads that need more cleaning power.

Now, I never have an issue with my natural DIY products not working. It gives a subtle smell to the clothing and towels and my clothes always come out clean.

Seeing that my laundry products were a success, I started to make more DIY’s such as our own cleaning wipes and baby wipes for our family. And after discovering that my DIY products worked wonders, I decided never to look back proving that natural can clean just as well as the harsh chemical based products.

Since then, I have also saved hundreds of dollars each year by making my own low-tox products and know for a fact that my cleaning budget is so minimal because in the last 5 years since going low-tox, I have rarely needed to restock my items.

This helped us big time especially when the panic buying happened last year. Knowing we were able to rely on this DIY instead of being concerned if the stock was at the shops is huge for us especially during these times.

 How to make low-tox laundry whitening booster

Here are the ingredients for my low-tox laundry whitening booster:

• 1 cup bicarb soda

• 4 cups epsom salts

• 50 drops of essential oil (I used a mix of Young Living’s Lemon essential oil, Purification essential oil, and Thieves essential oil)

Just mix them together and add a scoop per dirty wash. I recommend buying the epsom salts and bicarb soda in bulk to save more.

DIY household cleaner

I also use a Thieves household cleaner mixed in a spray bottle for all household cleaning including the kitchen.

The household cleanser is a mix of:

• 1 cap Young Living’s Thieves Household Cleaner

• 500 ml water

I mostly use the same ingredients on a range of DIY products which allow me to save more for each product.