Too Much time on my hands: Earth Day Thursday - Homemade Vegetable and Fruit Cleaner

So, I have been buying this stuff to clean all my produce.

I buy mostly organic, but I am sure everything gets SUPER nasty inside my germ fest reusable shopping bags, so I am a nut about cleaning everything.

This cleaner smells just like lemon juice. I started thinking, I bet I could make it for WAY cheaper.

I saved my empty bottle and got to my research.

I found many different recipes out there and here are a few

1. Apple cider vinegar diluted with water and let vegetables soak.

2. 4 tablespoons of salt dissolved in a bowl of water add juice of half of a large lemon and soak fruit or veggies for 20 minutes then rinse REALLY well

3. Mix 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar, and 1 cup cold tap water in a spray bottle, shake well, and apply to your produce.

4. Spray- 1 TBSP fresh lemon juice, 1 TBSP baking soda, 1 Cup water

5. For hard skinned vegetables- fill a spray bottle with equal parts white vinegar and water. For soft skinned vegetables soak in this solution for 2 minutes.

They all make sense and sound good to me. For some reason #4 sounded the best, so that's the one I went with. Maybe it's because the store cleaner smells like lemons, I thought mine should too.

I started with warm water, because I thought the baking soda would dissolve easier, but I don't know if it really made a difference.My half of a medium lemon gave me more than 1 TBSP. Then, I decided I should taste it, since it is getting all over my food (see what I do for you people-hee hee) and it tasted bad, no lemony flavor just salty baking soda flavor. But after scrubbing my apples with it, no taste at all left on the fruit.

I bet these would all work just as well. I use vinegar to clean everything, and frankly, I get enough of that smell, so using the lemon juice for produce is a nice change. Really using water, a brush, and good scrub will get most of the ickies off anyway.

Another tip I discovered, and maybe I am the last to find out, but you are not supposed to wash fruit and vegetables until just before serving. Washing can speed up the spoiling process. Well, my little ones reach right into those produce drawers on their own and dig right in. So for me, I need to do them before I put them away.