My Favourite Vanilla Cleaning Spray: Perfume for your kitchen!

This is my favourite ever cleaning product. It's basically just alcohol and vanilla in a bottle. It's totally safe, and smells amazing! I love it for wiping down my benches or cleaning the fridge, and though it's designed for the kitchen I sometimes use it in the bathrooms too, just because of the scent.

You can't always find it in every supermarket, and if they have it, it always seems to be on the very bottom shelf. My mum used to use this when I was a kid, back when it was called Vanilla Fridge Wipe. I was unnaturally happy when I found it again as an adult :)

It's made in Australia and as far as I know, only sold here, so I don't know if you can get an equivalent product elsewhere.

Nobody is paying me to say this, I just love this product! (Though I wouldn't object to a lifetime supply of the stuff.... :)

How to clean a greasy oven door

I should feel embarrassed about how yucky my oven door was, but I think because I was sick as a dog with morning sickness for so long and my husband was working like a dog to support both of us (or all soon to be three of us) that things like oven doors can slide.

But I opened it today to put the grill tray back in and suddenly noticed that soon you wouldn't even be able to see through the glass window on the oven.

I've been experimenting with both Bi Carb (bicarbonate of soda, baking soda etc) and Vinegar as natural and cheap cleaning products, so I just had a feeling this was a job for Bi carb today.

So here's what I discovered to really work well:

- Open your oven door as flat as it will go.
- Lay down an old towel on the floor under the door to catch any dirty drips that happen while you're cleaning it. (I only thought of this after I saw the dirty water dripping on the floor.)
- Sprinkle bi carb over the glass
- Squeeze lemon juice over the bi carb. It will fizz up a bit. Love that :)
- Then use a bit of elbow grease. You still need to scrub a little, but it comes of pretty easily. And it smells good too, because of the lemon.

I sat a bowl of hot water next to me to rinse out the sponge periodically.


Now I'm probably slow on the uptake, and I'm sure this is nothing new, but I love discovering ways to do things and have them actually work!

Lemon and Sugar face scrub

Simple, simple idea with only 2 ingredients. Just a warning - don't get any of it in your eyes. A mite painful. Not that I did anything that silly...

Lemon is good for lightening and evening skin tone (e.g freckles, spots, fake tan mistakes) and this cleanses and exfoliates your face.

You'll need:
- a cotton ball or pad
- lemon juice
- sugar

Wet your face with warm water.

Squeeze the juice onto the pad and sprinkle on a pinch of sugar. Rub it over your face, avoiding the eye area. Don't scrub too hard either. The sugar is quite abrasive and lemon is a natural exfoliant itself. You only need to do it for about 30 seconds but you can stop scrubbing and leave the juice on for longer if you want. Don't leave undiluted lemon juice on too long, though.

Rinse off with warm water. Feel the smoothness :)


Wash it off right away if it is irritating to your skin. Another option if you find your skin too sensitive is to dilute the lemon juice with water for a milder scrub.

Fresh squeezed lemon juice is best, since it contains none of the 'extras' like preservatives etc of your standard bottle from the supermarket, but bottled will do if you have no fresh lemons.

I used plain old white sugar, but you can use any type - raw sugar for a grainer scrub, or caster or brown sugar for a finer one.