Fresh and Clean - Citrus Tricks

Hi and Happy New Year! I love a fresh, clean start. This year I'm being totally cliché and spent January 1 cleaning the house and filling my grocery cart with citrus. For some reason I always crave citrus after Christmas. There's just something so clean and healthy feeling about it. 

After all the Christmas goodies and sweets, light and healthy food and drinks are on the menu here for the foreseeable future. I found a recipe for a "detox water" on Pinterest from SkinnyMom.com. I'm not a fan of fad diets or cleanses, but drinking water with fruit in it I can do. I'm still eating all my meals. I don't know if it does anything, but I have been trying to drink more water in general, so I'm throwing this in the it can't hurt column and I bought enough citrus and cucumbers for my husband and I to drink it for three days. Plus since you peel the grapefruit, I used that to make a batch of vinegar cleaner below. Score. So many birds, so few stones. Here's the easy combo for the water:

Detox Water (from SkinnyMom.com)

1 gal water

1 cucumber, sliced

1 grapefruit peeled and sliced

1 lemon, sliced

1 lime sliced

a few mint leaves

Combine and chill in the fridge for an hour or two. Skinny Mom suggests you drink 1/2 gallon of the water per day for 3-5 days. Seems painless and doable. 

I've had a theory for a while now that there are two kinds of people: people who clean their houses and people who pin things about how to clean their houses. Am I right? Anyway, I try not to pin things unless I really intend to use them, so I'm going to try to defy my theory and be both the pinner and the cleaner! Here's what I've been trying from Pinterest.

Homemade Multi-Purpose Cleaner

Fill a jar with fresh lemon, orange or grapefruit peels. Two grapefruit peels will do the trick. Fill with distilled white vinegar, making sure all the peels are submerged. Seal with the lid and let sit for two weeks. Basically the citrus just masks the smell of the vinegar. After two weeks,  remove the peels and pour half the vinegar into a large spray bottle, fill the bottle the rest of the way with water to dilute. Use on counters, floors, microwave, wherever.  

This last one doesn't use lemons, but I also tried this yesterday.

Cleaning the Washing Machine

This is supposed to remove soap build-up, and help it run more efficiently. For a front-loading machine I used 1/4 cup baking soda in the detergent drawer and 1/2 cup vinegar in the drum. Run a short (empty) cycle on hot. 

I hope your year will be one full of joy, giving, gratitude, grace, and love. Happy 2014!

- Haley