A Different Kind of Recipe: Wood Cleaner

Like a lot of people I definitely have the itch to clean and organize my house top to bottom right now. Unfortunately for that urge though, we have a January filled with visitors and a trip to Disneyland this week!  Rough life, I know. Hopefully, come February that urge will still be around and I'll have some time to declutter and reorganize.

In the mean time I wanted to share a recipe for a wood cleaner that I've been using for a couple of months now. Back in November we bought a new kitchen table.  Our old table was round with a glass top and only 4 chairs.  I hated the constant finger prints (on both sides!) on the table and I felt like I was cleaning it constantly.  It was also a little cramped.  Mr. Pears' parents are living with us right now and we wanted to be able to eat dinner comfortably together without resorting to the dining room.  (I only let my twin toddlers in the dining room when I absolutely have to!) And even when the inlaws aren't living here anymore I hope they'll still come over for dinner sometimes.  A wood table with 6 chairs seemed to be the best option for our situation/budget.

But once the table arrived I didn't know what to clean it with!  On our glass table I had been using my glass cleaner/degreaser, which worked great (but unfortunately couldn't keep the kids from constantly touching the table after I cleaned it, ahhhh.)  For the other wood furniture in my house I almost always just use a dry microfiber cloth for dusting.  I used a light spritz of all-purpose cleaner if necessary but usually it wasn't.

Obviously a dry dust cloth was not going to be any kind of match for spilled milk and dried on ketchup so I did a bit of research.  I found out that, yes, vinegar is ok to use on wood furniture (I wasn't sure!).  I also found out that wood furniture should be conditioned (moisturized) as well.  So after looking over some DIY wood cleaning solutions, I decided to just sort of alter my glass cleaner recipe to suit.  What I came up with once a simple one step cleaner that works great to get the food grime off the table and doesn't streak or leave a film.  I love this stuff and I hope you do too!

Wood Cleaner
you'll need a clean 32 oz spray bottle
2 cups distilled white vinegar
2 teaspoons Dawn dish soap (original blue kind)
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 cups +/- filtered water

Pour the first three ingredients into the spray bottle in the order listed.  Top the bottle off with the water.  Shake gently to mix.

That's it!  Since oil and water don't mix you'll need to gently shake the spray bottle before you use it each time. Like I said before, this stuff works great, and it only takes a little so this 32 oz bottle is going to last you a long time.  The olive oil does not leave the table feeling oily at all.  The table just looks nice and soft and shiny. For best results I recommend using a microfiber cloth to wipe the table down with but keep in mind that your cloth needs to be cleaned too!  When your table starts getting streaky you know it is time for the cloth to hit the washing machine.