Natural Cleaning & Deodorizing with Orange & Lemon Peels
September 29, 2014 By: Amruta Kshemkalyani

Tribe, as you might know, that I try using natural cleaning products at my home instead of store-bought products. As these artificially manufactured cleaning products contain a lot of harmful chemicals and toxins which are not good for our health.

For example, fragrances commonly contain Phthalates, which are carcinogens. The household cleaning products contain Triclosan that causes hormone interruption and Diethanolamine (DEA) which are foaming agents that are carcinogens.

Therefore, I prefer to use natural cleaning products made at home. For natural cleaning, lemons, limes and citrus peels have great use and they smell amazing without need of any artificial fragrance. Here are some of my favorite DIY recipes for natural cleaning and home fragrance.

Natural potpourri out of orange peels

Whenever we eat oranges or use them for cooking, we are left with orange peels. Since I started this less waste lifestyle I am trying not to reduce my garbage. Today I made the orange sauce and I started thinking what to do with these orange peels? You could imagine how happy I felt when I found out an easy orange potpourri recipe.

Method

Step 1. First, remove the white fibers on the inside of an orange peel

Step 2. Dry orange peels either by keeping it in the sun or just by drying with a kitchen towel.

Step 3. Bake the peels in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Watch in between to avoid burning them.

Step 4. I baked even the leaves with peels.

Step 5. Once they are dry in the oven, store in a bowl or box.

You can even use these baked peels in food. I kept my orange potpourri in a reused glass jar (a Nescafe jar) in our book rack. Now my book rack is smelling amazing with natural potpourri. You can even add cinnamon sticks or other spices.

Using lemon peels as a household cleaner

I found a few old limes and lemons at the bottom of the vegetable storage container in the fridge. I would have thrown those dry limes otherwise but this time I decided to use them. Thanks to the Internet, I found multiple articles about using lemon and lime peels.

Step 1. First I cut all dry limes or collect lemon peels.

Step 2. Few pieces kept in different compartments of the fridge for the deodorization purpose.

Step 3. Some peels I kept in kitchen corners, under the fridge, etc to get rid of a few ants I saw these days.

Step 4. Other few I put in a microwaveable bowl along with some water. Switched on the microwave for few minutes till water started boiling, removed the bowl and wiped off all mess in the microwave. My microwave was never this clean. All the sticky things, dirt, oil, etc came out immediately.

Microwave Cleaning with Lemon peels

Step 5. That hot bowl served as the room freshener as well. I used it to clean stained steel pans.

Step 6. With the same method, I kept a few lemon peels in the oven dipped in water. Switch on the oven till water get enough hot and steam starts forming. Wiped off the oven interior and used hot water and lemon peels to clean over accessories.

Oven cleaning with lemon peels

Step 7. Rest of the cut old lemon pieces I rubbed on clean chopping boards and was surprised to see them even cleaner after wash.

Step 8. Finally, all these used lime peels I threw in garbage bins to deodorize the bins.

You will be delighted to find out how effective are these natural all-purpose household cleaner from citrus peels! This is why no lime/lemon/orange peels go to my compost bin.

If you liked this post, you might want to read my favorite natural beauty recipes, which are also zero waste.

Enjoy living green and take care! Join our tribe here to get such awesome eco-friendly DIYs.