How to Make Herb-Infused Scented Vinegar for Cleaning

Make your home sparkle and smell amazing, with this easy guide on how to make herb-infused scented vinegar for cleaning.

White vinegar is a pretty amazing household cleaner. It is incredibly cheap. It cuts through dirt, grease, odours, and soap scum like nothing else. Vinegar can be used in a myriad of different ways – replacing the need for lots of different plastic bottles of cleaning products. And it is kinder to the environment than many cleaning products you can buy. In short, it’s a bit of a miracle cleaning product when you think about it.

Conventional cleaning products have also been found to be as bad for your lungs as smoking 20 cigarettes a day. Swapping to vinegar for cleaning makes good health sense too. 

However, there is one downside to vinegar, and it’s quite a biggie. Vinegar smells of, well, vinegar. Which isn’t entirely ideal sometimes, and isn’t to everyone’s taste. Particularly if you are using it in a small space.

If you want to try using vinegar to clean your home but aren’t so keen on the smell, then making scented vinegar is the way to go. You get all the benefits of using vinegar, but it doesn’t smell like you’ve been eating chips!

How To Make Herb-Infused Vinegar for Cleaning

While you can use essential oils to fragrance vinegar, the super thrifty option is to turn to kitchen scraps and herbs picked straight from your garden to make infused vinegar for cleaning. If you have any pine clippings, then you can even make pine-infused vinegar for cleaning.

You see, infusing the vinegar with citrus peelings and/or botanicals creates a fresh scent, that’s less chip shop-like. Plus it’s light on the pocket.

Consider the recipe as a rough guide. Feel free to play around with it based on what you have growing in your garden or have leftover from cooking. You can use a variety of different herbs, such as mint, lavender, lemon balm, cloves, cinnamon, etc to create some wonderful aromas without spending much money.

You Will Need

• 500 ml white vinegar. Never malt, white wine vinegar, rice vinegar or any other variety: just white! Here’s where I buy my vinegar for cleaning in bulk, cheaply.
• A large glass jar with a lid.
• Orange, lemon, or lime peel (you can freeze fruit peelings as you go, to reduce food waste. When you have enough to make the infused vinegar, there’s no need to defrost the peelings, simply use them from frozen). 
• A handful of your favourite fresh herbs.
• A glass spray bottle.
• A spray nozzle (re-use one from an old cleaning products bottle).

Method

• Pour 500 ml of white vinegar into a clean glass jar.
• Add a good handful of citrus peel to the jar (at least two oranges worth of peel per 500 ml of vinegar) and/or a large handful of fresh herbs, and pop the lid on.
• Leave the jar in a dark spot to infuse for at least 14 days. If you leave it longer the scent will be stronger.
• After 14 days (or longer), sieve the vinegar, and pop the peels/herbs into your compost bin. Decant half of the vinegar back into the jar for use later, and decant the other half of the vinegar into your spray bottle. 
• Top up the vinegar in the bottle with cooled boiled water – so the vinegar and water are in a 50/50 solution – and place the spray nozzle on the bottle. Now you’re good to go.

To Use

Use this spray as you would any other cleaning product. However do not use it on granite, marble, or natural stone, as it will damage these surfaces. Never mix this, or any other cleaning products containing vinegar, with any cleaning products that contain bleach, as this can release gases that can be harmful to your health. Here’s more information on what not to clean with vinegar to help keep you right.

How to Store Your Scented Vinegar

Your diluted cleaner should keep for around 8 weeks. Undiluted it will keep indefinitely.