Home-made Homemaking: reusable dusters and swiffer pads

{making}

For probably about a year now, I've been really into not using chemicals in cleaning (and of course trying not to eat foods that are not entirely actual food), and into as much being homemade as possible.  Of course Pinterest is a great source for all sorts of tips and tutorials for this type of housekeeping.  I've found the benefits to be numerous, typically I've been able to accomplish housework, in a more healthy, typically cheaper, and often more effective manner. {for example, I have completely stopped buying and using chemical cleaning products, all of my cleaning is done using baking soda, vinegar, water, hydrogen peroxide, or some combination of those, or Bon Ami cleaner. You can find this at Walmart for $.88 and it is an all natural cleaning powder and it is amazing)  So I am going to start a new series here on the blog called Home-made Homemaking, to share some of the different things I try, that fit into this kind of back to basics/diy/homemade housekeeping, and what some of my experiences with them are.

I recently decided to try making home made laundry detergent but, I haven't gotten a chance to actually try that out yet (I hate going into our basement to do laundry so I've always made sure I had enough unmentionables, etc. to not have to do laundry very often (and I might have a lot of clothes too) I think my record is being able to go a whole month between laundry days.  My husband however wants laundry done a lot more often then I need to do my own and he just does his those times, so he's used the detergent but I haven't actually used it yet myself, I'm coming up on needing to do some laundry for myself though pretty soon here so I'll review that shortly, but for this first post I'm going to share some reusable dusters and "swiffer" pads I made.  I saw many posts about these on Pinterest and didn't really follow any one tutorial or anything but if you look on Pinterest, like I said, you'll find plenty of results for both of these.

{Reusable Duster Cover}

sorry, I forgot to get a picture before I tried it out..... but you can see how well it picked up the dust....

I love, love, love this! It actually works better than the disposable ones I used to buy I think.  And of course the other benefits - I don't have to keep spending money on something that's only going to get thrown away; I'm not creating as much trash (which believe me in this house, as often as trash day is forgotten until after the trash truck comes through, is a good thing); and I can make them in whatever colors I want, to coordinate all my cleaning supplies (I'm a bit OCD, as well as being very into color and design so this is actually a serious benefit for me).  Rather than buying fleece from the fabric department I just bought a $2.88 fleece throw from Walmart..... now yes I probably could have gotten a smaller amount of fleece from the fabric department and paid less and just only had enough to make one or two, but for the amount of fleece I got and the number of these duster covers I can make from it, it was definitely a great price (especially considering one package of the disposable duster covers are I think at least $3 something.  This duster cover is made from 4 layers of the fleece (but you could probably make it a little thicker and fluffier with a few more layers) I sewed the sleeves for the handle to slip into by sewing the outside and top edges on the top two layers and then sewed the bottom two layers and the top layers as one stack down the middle to divide the sleeves.  It was so quick and easy to make, I didn't even measure anything, just laid the handle on top and marked where seems needed to be, the only thing to do other than sew those few seams was to cut the edges so they would have all the little sections.

{Reusable "Swiffer" pads}

I hadn't gotten Velcro yet when I tried it out and took this picture so if you look closely you can see it's pinned on instead of Velcro-ed

These were a little more complicated to make, but worth the effort.  Most of the ones I saw on Pinterest seemed to be made of terry cloth, so I bought one of the super cheap towels they sell at Walmart to make this from (another $2 and some change).  Again I didn't use a pattern I just drew up a pattern using my Swiffer as reference.  I sewed around the edges leaving a small opening, turned it inside (right side) out and closed the hole and topstitched around the edges.  It was a little difficult in a couple places getting all that terrycloth through the sewing machine, and I think when I make more I might try just using a cotton or something for the side that goes against the swiffer, I was thinking this way they would be reversible, so I could use them for longer before they needed to be washed, but that doesn't really work anyway, unless I were to sew Velcro on both sides.  After I sewed it all up I sewed on Velcro to hold the flaps together over the swiffer. (In the picture if you look closely you will see I just have straight pins holding them together.... I didn't have any Velcro and needed to go get some but I didn't want to wait to try it out).  Now I'm not sure the terry cloth works quite as well as the disposable pads do on picking up dust and such from the floors, and I think I might try making one from the fleece and see how that works, but what the terry cloth is great for is for damp cleaning.  I use a baking soda, vinegar, water, dish soap mix for mopping the kitchen floor, but I had been using Swiffer wet pads for the bathroom floor and occasionally on the wood floors in the rest of the house when they needed more than sweeping, but after making this I mixed up a spray bottle of water and vinegar and misted the floors with that and then went over them with the terrycloth pad and it worked great! If the fleece ends up working better for dry "Swiffering", then I will just make a couple of both and use them for the different purposes.

So these are definitely a win, and relatively quick easy little projects I would definitely suggest making to add to your cleaning tools.