This fun little nuggets of citrussy-scented cleaning power are like bath bombs for your toilet, except instead of softening your skin, they fizzle away at your dirty toilet bowl. As far as toilet cleaning goes, these are actually pretty fun. That’s not much, but it’s something.
Frankly, I’m a bit surprised I don’t already have a recipe for, err, “Bandits” oil up here (apparently the more common name is trademarked and the owners aren’t shy about threatening bloggers with legal action, which is just charming… hence the different name), and I have Michelle to thank for kicking my butt into gear on this one (thanks!). The legend around Bandits oil says it was used by a group of thieves to safely rob victims of the Black Plague. It’s not exactly a cheery story, but it certainly serves to imply that this oil is a powerful antibacterial/antiviral blend. Now, there’s no shortage of recipes for Bandits oil online, so I thought I’d try my best to provide a good overview of the options so you can create your own blend around a basic recipe.
Your basic Bandits oil recipe generally contains essential oils of clove bud, cinnamon bark, rosemary, lemon, and eucalyptus. The proportions are hardly set, but clove oil usually dominates the blend, and rosemary is usually towards the end. The other three seem to shuffle about depending on whose formula you’re looking at.
This lemony scented cream cleaner comes together in a flash, and is fantastic for cleaning sinks and bathtubs, but it’s also done great things to grime on my stove top. It’s basically a lotion, but instead of a carrier oil, I’ve used d-limonene (aka citrus terpenes) for the oil part. D-limonene is a biodegradeable solvent and disinfectant, and since it’s derived from lemons, the citrus scent is built in.
One of my most popular entries is a short and sweet one on getting sticky labels off jars using one secret ingredient (it’s cooking oil). Consider this the 2.0 of that entry.
This started out as laundry powder, but then I started using it for other things, and it still hasn’t made it’s way into the washing machine. It’s too busy in the kitchen, melting away tea stains and blasting greasy pans from DIY projects clean. I always keep a bag or jar of it under the sink to add to especially dirty messes (it’s particularly awesome for getting beeswax (USA / Canada)-y grease off things when combined with boiling water).
This recipe may not be all that romantic, but I can promise it’s wonderfully practical. It yields hard white bars that are inexpensive to make and nicely bubbly. The bars shred down beautifully into soapy flakes and bits that make great laundry powder and cleaning concoctions. I like to ensure I always have a few bar aging in my basement. It’s not sexy, but it’s practical.
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