A simple tutorial with three recipes for making your own Homemade Cleaning Wipes.

This post was sponsored by Viva Towels. All thoughts and opinions are 100% our own.

There is nothing like being trapped in your house with children, pets, and husbands… to get you in the mood for deep cleaning the house. About 3 days into my 5 days of being snowed in the state of the house was starting to drive me crazy. How can 4 people (and two crazy dogs) make such a mess in such a short time?! The one good thing that came out of the mess, and the fact that I was completely out of store bought cleaning wipes, was that I finally got around to trying my hand at making homemade cleaning wipes. It was pretty easy!

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All you need to get started is some quality paper towels, you don’t want them falling apart when they get wet. I use Viva® Towels for everything in my house. They have a soft and smooth texture, like an cloth and they are great for cleaning delicate surfaces like countertops and coffee tables, and even soft enough for little hands and faces. Viva® Towels are also strong and durable like cloth and can withstand multiple rinses, and of course they soak up a lot of liquid, handy when your 3 year old starts fixing her own drinks. Viva® also makes Viva® Vantage® which have a scrubby texture, like a terrycloth. Perfect for scrubbing bathroom counters or tough stains on your stove top. So, you need a roll of quality paper towels, a serrated knife, an airtight container, and the ingredients necessary for your cleaning solution. I’m giving you three recipes here one for general cleaning, one with bleach, and one glass cleaner.

Whichever recipe you choose to make you start by using a serrated knife to cut your paper towel roll in half. It sounds harder than it is. Just start sawing and eventually you will hack through it! Viva® Towels are nice and thick and it still only took me a minute to cut through it.

Next you put half of the paper towel roll in your airtight container. You can use any kind of container but my Viva® Towels fit perfectly in an empty cleaning wipes container (extra large) that I had leftover. I just peeled off the label and shoved my paper towels in. It took some squishing but once I got them in there it was good fit! If you want to use an old store bought cleaning wipe container but your paper towel roll is too big you can peel a few layers of paper towels off, or just wait until your paper towel roll has been partially used then cut it up. If your kids are anything like mine paper towels go quickly!

With your paper towels ready it’s time to mix up your cleaning solution. Each formula has slightly different ingredients but the steps are the same. Pour your ingredients into a bowl, or in my case a measuring cup, give them a little stir and you’re done.

Pour the mixture over your paper towels making sure to move around as you pour so every bit of your paper towels get saturated.

Once you have poured in all your liquid let it sit for a couple of minutes then reach in and pull the cardboard tube out of the center. I’ll admit I didn’t really think this was going to work, it looked way too easy, but it did! That cardboard was soaked and it just pulled right out.

Now you can grab a paper towel from the center and pull up so it feeds from the middle.

If you used an old store bought cleaning wipes container then it is already set up to let you pull one towel at a time. Just feed the paper towel you pulled from the middle of the roll through the hole in the lid. If you used another container just put a hole in the top so you can pull the paper towels through, or, don’t put a hole in the top and just open up your container to get your paper towels. It works either way.

You have two paper towel roll halves so go ahead and mix up another formula or save the other half for when you need to make refills. There is something about making your own cleaner that inspires you to dive right in and start tackling the biggest messes. When my homemade cleaning wipes were ready I tossed the kids outside let the kids head out to play in the snow and I set to work on the kitchen. I used the non-bleach and glass cleaner wipes and they worked great. No more store bought wipes for me!

Here are the formulas I used:

Glass Cleaner

2 cups water

1/2 cup rubbing alcohol

1/2 cup vinegar

Bleach Wipes

2 tablespoons Bleach

2 1/2 cups of water

Cleaning Wipes (non bleach)

1/2 cup vinegar

1 cup water

1 teaspoon liquid dish soap

5-10 drops essential oil (optional)

Directions (same for all formulas): Mix ingredients together and pour over paper towels.

Happy Cleaning!