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Once upon a time, I made a few huge batches of my regular sea salt bath fizzies and postpartum bath fizzies as gifts for friends who were expecting babies.
I kept a few of the ones that broke when I removed them from the molds and was planning to use them myself. I had them in a bag by my bathtub and my one year old got into them (in true one-year old fashion). She was going through a phase of putting everything in the toilet, and these were no exception.
My first reaction was to stifle my annoyance for yet another thing being thrown in the toilet, and then I was angry that I wouldn’t get to use the bath fizzies myself.
I didn’t want to flush the toilet until they finished fizzing since I wasn’t sure that would be good for the pipes. As I stood there watching them fizz and mourning the loss of my relaxing bath, I noticed that the toilet seemed to be getting cleaner as they fizzed.
I used the toilet brush to make sure they had all dissolved and when I flushed the toilet, I was shocked how clean it was. I realized that the bath fizzies had a lot of ingredients that were naturally detoxing, and that these ingredients also worked great for detoxing and cleaning toilettes.
I played with the recipe to make it a little more potent since it wouldn’t need to be gentle enough for skin. The result was an inexpensive, easy-to-make, highly effective toilet cleaning disk. The best part? The kids love using these because they are fun, so my toilets are getting cleaned three times per week or more.
These freshen the bathroom and leave the toilet sparkling. I store them in an air-tight glass jar in the bathroom and use them as needed. I’ve found that if stored correctly, they keep for months.
Natural Toilet Cleaning
If you are still using the “call the poison center if you eat, drink, inhale or look at this wrong” type cleaners, try these instead. All of the ingredients are food grade and can be used in cooking (though I definitely wouldn’t eat them because of the concentration of baking soda and citric acid).
Note: I haven’t tried flushing the toilet before this has fully dissolved, but I would not suggest trying it (I’m thinking that kind of pressure in pipes isn’t the best idea!)
Natural Toilet Cleaning Fizzies Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups baking soda
- ⅔ cup citric acid
- essential oils (I used 30 drops each of lemon and orange)
Instructions
- In a glass bowl, mix together the baking soda and citric acid in a glass bowl. I suggest wearing a mask and some latex gloves for this to protect your skin and eyes.
- Slowly mist the dry powder with water, mixing as you go. You want to barely wet the powder to get it to stick together in the mold. Literally, 1-2 sprays should be enough. Too much will cause fizzing.
- Add the essential oils and continue mixing.
- Using a ½ or 1 teaspoon measure, scoop out spoonfuls and place them on a piece of parchment paper until dry. You could also use a silicon mold for this step.
- Let the fizzies dry overnight and carefully place in an airtight container to use as needed.
Notes
More natural bath cleaning recipes here.
What do you use to clean your bathroom? Ever came up a recipe randomly like this?
Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), citric acid
NaHCO3, C6H8O7
chemical – noun
noun: chemical; plural noun: chemicals; noun: chem.
1.a compound or substance that has been purified or prepared
So while baking soda and citric acid are certainly less harsh (in multiple ways) than many other cleaning products, they are indeed chemicals.
I appreciate the promotion of less toxic and harsh cleaning products and choose to use them myself. However, to say you are cleaning without chemicals isn’t accurate and may contribute to further misunderstandings about the helpful chemicals that we all use every single day.
Nice! Side note– have you done a sourcing list for the jars you use? I’m trying to do a pantry overhaul and would love airtight jars with hinged tops. Thanks for being so naturally rad! 😉
I got some great hinged jars from the dollar tree – ordered 2 cases online and they delivered to my store.
What a great idea! It seems so simple too. I can’t wait to try it, I love experimenting with new ingredients ..
Amazing ! Was just thinking that I wanted a better way if cleaning loo other than the bicarbonate and vinegar I have been using – great shout 🙂 I need to bulk but citric acid to get started if Xmas bath bomb making!
Thank you for this! I can’t wait to try it! One question – is it really just ½-1 teaspoon? Yours (and the molds) somehow look more like ½-1 tablespoon? Thanks for your help!
You can definitely use more and to be honest, I didn’t measure the molds, but it will work with as little as 1/2 to 1 tsp if you are trying to stretch it 🙂
Love this idea!! Using homemade cleaners, my toilet doesn’t have that “fresh and clean” smell anymore. I saw you mentioned vanilla extract, I have a gallon of homemade, would this just replace the water in the recipe? Sounds like it would smell really yummy!
Thank you for this post.
What is the cost breakdown for this recipe? How many tabs can I make from this recipe, and how much would a tab cost me? Just want to make sure that it will save some money.
Citric acid is at bulk barn super cheap- but you can find it cheaper at freshco in with the bulk spices. 200g for 1.99. baking soda- 1kg cost me ~3$ This is enough to make at least 30 1tsb tabs (using less than 1/4 a thing of baking soda) hope that helps!
Mine are puffing up while drying, are they supposed to do this or did I get too much water in the mix? I guess I’m in the Halloween frame of mind, but this makes me think of cleaning the toilets with Ghost Poop. 🙂 Can’t wait to try them!
Well, this morning, each of my puffy blobs has merged into the next so I now have a big sheet of this stuff! Haha! I thought I mixed it to the consistency of wet sand. Does it need to be on the drier side? I wonder if I can cut them up (mayyyyybe without them crumbling to pieces) and still use them?
I making them right now and have come back to the post to see what I’m doing wrong as well. Mine keep expanding and overflowing the mold. I’m going to wait and see if the mixture will quit expanding so I can get it into the mold.
Mine are puffing as well. :-/ Any ideas??
Theyre too moist. Mine turned out like that the first two times. I dont mist – just add two tablespoons of water (the mix looks deceptively dry) and firmly press into molds. I just made some and they turned out perfect. I like the idea of omitting water and just scooping the powder from a jar. Thank you Wellness Mamma for all your hard work. I am literally (!) in awe and extremely grateful.
Mine are puffing as well. Katie…..are we doing this right? Looks like there’s about 4 of us on here with the same concern.
On another note, I put lemon extract in mine and it smells wonderful!
I just found this recipe and mine did the same thing.. as well when i dropped one in the toilet it didnt fizz up at all.. it just kinda melted 🙁 what went wrong?
Mine didn’t fizz either but only fizzed a tiny bit while making them. I pressed them into an ice cube mold, no expansion and they popped right out the next day. I only had a few tiny bubbles when I put one in the bowl. What did I do wrong?
If they’re swelling up, they’re too wet, and all the fizz will be gone. The mixture will look dry, but you should be able to squeeze a handful and it sticks together. I have rescued a batch before, by immediately sifting in a small amount of baking soda and mix, mix, mix to “dry” out the mix before it uses up all the fizz.
the same happened to me !! could you cut it once they were dry?
This happened to me too!! I remeasured them and they swelled right back up!
I made the postpartum one’s recently for my sister and she loved them. Do you think I could just mix the baking soda, citric acid, and essential oil in a sealed jar and put a scoop in as needed?
You could certainly try it… but the form factor is part of the fun 😉
I tried this, and the whole jar hardened into one clump. That could be because I live in an area of high humidity, though. I found it better to form them into molds. They work so well! I never would have expected to be so thrilled by a sparkling white toilet. It’s the little things, I suppose. 🙂
Thank you for this! I’ve been switching over to homemade cleaners over the last several months. I have been using baking soda to clean the commode, but I think the fizzing action will make it much less work.