Environmentally Friendly Wood Polish

You can walk into a room and tell right away when commercially made furniture cleaner and polish has been used. Even if it is lemon scented, it still has that smell of engine oil pervading the room. The furniture may be gleaming but the product used to make it that way could be the cause of that headache and irritability you feel coming on.

You might be using vinegar based homemade cleaners for all your other housecleaning but still use the same furniture polish you have been buying for years. It likely didn’t occur to you to use anything else because you don’t want to damage the finish on your wood furnishings. This is understandable so green cleaning took a back seat when it came to cleaning and polishing you fine wood pieces.

It isn’t necessary for green cleaning not to be considered here, though. It is just a matter of knowing the right combination of ingredients. You might have tried an old recipe for furniture polish at one time but found it left your pieces feeling too oily. It is possible you had the right ingredients, just the wrong ratio.

If you have tried the old quarter cup of olive oil with just a teaspoon or so of vinegar added, it may have made your furniture shiny and clean but left an oily feel behind. Try reversing the amounts of olive oil and vinegar. You may be thinking the vinegar would be too drying but that is what the oil prevents. The vinegar is also not as drying as you might think. It is what does the cleaning and just a little oil is enough to make your wood furniture shine without feeling oily.

If you don’t particularly like the smell of olive oil, there are several options. One of the first options is to add a few drops of lemon oil to get a nice, lemony fragrance. Olive oil isn’t the only option for oil, either. Nut oils such as almond or walnut work quite well as does jojoba, which is a liquid wax.

To make your own green cleaning wood furniture cleaner and polish, you can mix nine or ten drops of lemon oil, a couple of tablespoons of fresh lemon juice or vinegar and three or four drops of oil (olive, jojoba, walnut or almond) together. Now you have a homemade furniture cleaner that gets the job done well and smells fresh and clean.

A soft, lint free cloth should be used so you are not leaving tiny scratches or bits of lint behind should be used regardless of what cleaner you use. The first time you use this homemade mixture, you will find yourself wondering why you waited so long to find a green cleaning option for your wood furniture.