I like to make as many of our cleaners, beauty products and groceries at home as I can. By making them myself, I know what ingredients are used in each item. I started out slowly making our own groceries years ago and slowly expanded to cleaning supplies and beauty type products too.
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I don’t use many cleaners at all anymore. We do use some antibacterial wipes to clean the counters after working with raw meat and once in a while to clean doorknobs in during cold and flu season.
But we mainly use homemade cleaners and e-cloths to do most of our cleaning. We love cleaning with just water and e-cloths. If you want to give e-cloths a try you can purchase them at Amazon. (my affiliate link)
Homemade Broth, Making your own chicken broth is easier than you might think when you use a crockpot to get all that yummy goodness out of the bones.
Egg Noodles, my great grandma’s recipe with only a few ingredients needed to make them. They are so delicious too. My son begs for me to make them all fall and winter long.
Breadcrumbs, skip the cans of breadcrumbs and make your own at home with heels of bread.
Garlic and Herb Seasoning Mix, those little packets of seasoning mixes can be expensive. But you can make your own mixes at home. I’m sharing my own garlic and herb season mix I use all the time plus if you follow the link you can find more recipes to seasoning mixes to try from other bloggers too.
Pizza Dough, this is my favorite pizza crust recipe and one of my most popular posts. I can make 3 pizza in about the time it takes to have pizza delivered to the house. Plus it’s a lot less expensive to make our own.
Homemade Potato Chips, This is a simple recipe for making your own potato chips at home in the microwave. They turn out really nice and crisp and taste so fresh too.
Pancake Syrup, this recipe is an easy one with just four ingredients. I’ve been making it so long that we can’t stand the pancake syrup from the store anymore.
Cream of Soup Mix, this is my dairy free version of cream of soup mix. But if you don’t have to eat dairy free just substitute the dairy free powdered milk with regular powdered milk instead.
Wacky Cake, this recipe is a good one when you don’t have eggs, milk or butter. It’s a great recipe to make when you are short on fresh ingredients and need a dessert.
Oat Groats, this is a great alternative to regular oatmeal. It’s filling, delicious, and inexpensive too.
Baked Fries, my son says he likes this recipe better than the out to eat fries and that’s really saying something.
Frugal Bread Recipe, If you’ve always wanted to make bread but never had the courage, give this recipe a try. At only around $.44 a loaf it inexpensive and if you go to the bottom of the post you can find a link to my step by step video for making the recipe too.
Pita Bread, make your own pita pocket bread with this recipe. It’s not as hard as you might think.
Quick Breadsticks, a biscuit like breadstick that turns out crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. These can be ready in about 30 minutes start to finish.
Apple Cinnamon Bread, a great nut topped quick bread. I make this bread in the fall when the apples are inexpensive.
Banana Bread, this is a great banana bread recipe from my great grandma. It’s great for breakfast or dessert and I have 4 different ways to prepare it for variety from the regular banana bread.
Caramel Sticky Buns, this recipe is biscuits with caramel sauce with nuts too. It’s a super easy recipe that is always a hit when I make it for breakfast.
Cinnamon Scone Twists, these scones are a little different from regular scones. They have a fancy twist with cinnamon and brown sugar hidden inside. Quick to make for a special breakfast treat.
Baked Maple Bars, if you love maple bars you’ve got to try this baked version. These turn our fluffy and delicious like the fried ones but less greasy.
Apple Fritters, these are delicious balls of fried yum. If you’ve never had a homemade fritter they are worth the effort to make at home.
Oatmeal Packets, when you see how easy these are to make you’ll never want to by the store-bought oatmeal packets again.
Refrigerator Dill Pickles, love pickles but don’t want to learn to can. These dill pickles are crisp and delicious and no need to break out the canner to make them.
Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickles, these take a little more effort to make than the dill pickles, but the sweet flavor of them make a great addition to sandwiches or to eat straight out of the jar.
Homemade Chocolate Pudding, this recipe I started making this recipe so we could enjoy dairy-free pudding. If you don’t have to eat dairy free just use regular milk in the recipe. So delicious and a great filling in a graham cracker crust for a chocolate cream pie.
Beverage Recipes
Most of the time when just drink regular old water around here. But sometimes we just want something different. That’s when I use some of these recipes to make us a special treat.
Cocoa Mix, this is a super easy mix recipe that is dairy free so you can easily enjoy a cup of hot cocoa and save money by making it from scratch at home.
Mint Water, this recipe just takes a little mint to make but is so refreshing to drink.
Lemon Mint Water, a little citrus twist to the regular mint water.
Household and Beauty Recipes
Making your own household items like hand soap and cleaners are really quite easy. The ingredients usually cost less so you can save money. I also like to make my own beauty products so I know exactly what’s in them. Here’re a few of my favorite recipes.
Laundry Soap, for under $15 I can make a year’s worth of soap in just a few minutes.
Dishwasher Tablets, I hate to pay so much for dishwasher tablets so I make my own and these really do work quite well for us. Although, we don’t have hard water where we live.
Shower Cleaner, my husband thinks this homemade version is better than the store bought one. I also use it to clean the toilet too.
Liquid Hand Soap, take a bar of soap and make a gallon of liquid hand soap from it. The cost is about $5 per gallon of soap.
Foaming Hand Soap, take cheap shampoo or regular hand soap and stretch to make your own foaming hand soap.
Whipped Body Butter, our whole family uses this body butter to smooth that dry winter skin.
Rose Scented Sugar Scrub, a wonderfully smelling sugar scrub recipe. Makes my skin feel so very soft.
Lotion Bars, I use my cute little star mold to make these quick to make lotion bars. Each little bar is more than one use too. Even my son who hates to use lotion will use these on his dry skin.
Honey Lip Balm, yummy tasting lip balm that can be made quickly and less expensive than the natural lip balms too. These make a great gift. I love to make this balm and store them in cute little tins.
Vanilla Coffee Soap, a delicious smelling soap that starts with melt and pour soap base. Great for those who love coffee.
Peppermint Swirl Soap, a minty easy to make soap that looks pretty too. There is also directions with this recipe to make soap on a rope.
Making your own groceries at home can be easy with tried and true recipes that are easy to make. What groceries or beauty items do you make at home for your family?
See more articles in this series by following the link to the 31 days of Frugal Simple Living.
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