You could probably buy some polyurethane foam, soak it in polybrominated diphenyl ethers, then thermally degrade it.
Let us know how it works.
But try not to have any more kids afterward. Might mess them up.
I suspect it is a melange of carpet cleaner, cheap cologne and semen.
Another enthusiastic thumbs up for the Mr. Clean Eraser. After dispairing of finding anything that would clean at least 3 different issues in my house, Mr. Clean did the job.
Cascade Platinum for the Dishwasher with a squirt of Jet Dry.
Barkeeper’s Friend for my stainless steel sink.
Swiffer for daily floor upkeep, Pine Sol for full service mopping. Same reason as everyone else. Mom used it.
Clorox for the potty bowl. Windex for the bathroom mirror. Still looking for the holy grail product to clean the fiberglass shower insert. It stains like mad and nothing I’ve tried will unstain it, not even my cleaning ‘boyfriend’ Mr. Clean.
Steam mop for my bathroom stone tile floor.
Bagged vacuums only for my carpets due to pet hair. Pet hair from three dogs and a cat just kills the bagless ones.
Oxy Clean (the laundry stuff) for pet accidents. Works better than the commercial pet stuff.
Woolite Dark for black jeans. Keeps the color bleed to a minimum.
And for that once a year cleaning - either spring or before the holidays - it has to be that old school Lysol in the brown bottle. That, my friends, is the smell of CLEAN.
Things I love
Those blue discs you put in the toilet tank. I get them 2-3 for $1 and each one lasts a week.
Melamine sponges. I don’t buy the mr. clean ones I just go on amazon and buy a pack of 50 for $7 or so. They are great.
Microfiber cloths. Excellent for dusting.
Baby wipes. Excellent for cleaning a toilet or a sink counter. If you get the flushable kinds you can just flush them when you are done.
That is all the advice I have. Other than that I just use whatever I find at the dollar store.
Kitchen:
Kirkland dish soap
One of those tablet dishwasher products
Bon Ami scouring powder
Home Sense for counters and tile floors and stove grease (also for bathroom)
Window cleaner for general stove cleaning
Microfiber cloth for dusting. Also a feather duster.
A wood cleaning and protecting product for the dining table.
Invisible Glass and a microfiber cloth for windows. I really dislike using paper towels and ammonia, particularly on vehicle glass.
Meguiar’s car soap.
Black Magic car wax.
Griot’s Garage Speed Shine for quick car polish.
Griot’s Garage car clay to get the grit out of the car finish prior to waxing.
Bug Off spray to remove insect splats from the vehicles.
Oh, I almost forgot: Vinegar + baking soda = very effective cleaner AND cheap 
Grin! I can do that… What brand of carpet cleaner?
(I still have a case of “Hai Karate” aftershave, and I know how to produce the third ingredient in-house.)
I’m not seeing how some kind of solution of sodium acetate, water and residual vinegar or baking soda is better than either water/baking soda or diluted vinegar on their own. Sodium acetate isn’t known for it’s stellar cleaning abilities.
Maybe it’s a grit+effervescence thing. I’ve not tried it.
All hail the Magic Eraser, I’ve used them for everything from cleaning floors, pots with burnt on sauce, tub, tile, cooking surfaces, walls, ceramics, dishes, bugs on cars, you name it.
Foaming Bubbles–I just spray that on the tub when I get out, wipe it down a few minutes later and I’m done.
That spritz stuff on the walls of the shower. It slows down the growth of mold and so on, so that I only have to wipe the walls down with a Magic Eraser every few days. And the Magic Eraser will clean your tile grout too.
Spritz water/vinegar/soap mixture on some stuff like windows. Spic and Span for mopping.
That’s it.
It may not be the most effective cleaner but it’s cheap and nontoxic. I have friends and an ex-housemate who are hypersensitive to chemical odors (especially bleach). They also swear by hydrogen peroxide in some applications. I’ve never tried it.
Fabuloso, Mr. Clean, Spic N Span - whatever is at the dollar store - I put in a spray bottle, diluted with lots of water, to clean kitchen table, counters, stove, and splotches on the kitchen floor. Paper towels or a dishtowel I am ready to put into the laundry with the others.
The kitchen floor is almost 30 years old and no amount of scrubbing even by hand with a stiff brush is ever going to make it look good. It will be replaced someday.Till then I wipe up spills with the spray cleaner/paper towels and run a cheapie Swiffer type mop with a wet microfiber cloth or disposable sheet over it once a week.
The oven hood and back of the stove get a buildup of thick cooking grease, which then gets dust and pet hair stuck on, yuck! I used to scrape and scrub and now of course, the Magic Eraser works its miracle on that.
Magic Eraser on the bathtub, first spraying with The Works (a strong potion found at the dollar store), works like a charm. Also bathroom sink. I clean the mirror and steel faucets with rubbing alcohol on a washcloth, throw the washcloth in the hamper. I will wash the plastic shower liner in the washing machine with towels, or just buy a new one once in a while. Toilet brush and Comet for toilets, clean the outside with paper towels and spray Lysol.
Laundry detergent, I buy any old thing that’s cheap. The dollar store again has perfectly good stuff, good enough for a sedentary office worker’s worn-once dress shirts and 501’s. I prefer unscented detergent and am reluctant to use fabric softener/dryer sheets unless I really think it’s needed.
I miss the garbage disposal in the kitchen. I have those little screens to drop in the drain hole, have to tap the crap that collects into the trash can. I wash the screens with the dishtowels using hot water, detergent, and bleach.
Laundry Room:
Laundry Detergent - whatever is on sale
Dryer sheets - whatever is on sale
Bleach - whatever is on sale
OxyClean - the real OxyClean. A big box of it because it gets used in the carpet cleaner too.
Kitchen:
Counters/Appliances - Zep Heavy Duty Citrus Degreaser
Palmolive liquid dish soap
Dishwasher soap - whatever is on sale
Glass cleaner - generic blue stuff
Paper towels for cleaning - whatever is on sale
Sponges - they’re blue and have a scrubby part on the back of them. I don’t know the brand.
Bathrooms:
Toilet, sinks, shower, floor - Dow Scrubbing Bubbles - Lemon scented
Toilet bowl - The Works toilet bowl cleaner
Shower curtain - spray bleach diluted with water in a sprayer
Misc:
Carpet cleaner - don’t know - husband does that - don’t know what he puts in the machine besides some of the OxyClean.
Dusting - a torn up towel, mismatched sock or whatever and Pledge lemon scented
Have other misc. stuff around - we have some spot removing stuff for laundry, we have GoJo, we have Goof Off, we have Febreeze - that kind of stuff gets used on an as needed basis.
Floors: I have a Shark Rotator, which can vacuum both the carpets and the tile/wood floors; there’s a switch to turn off the beater bar but still leave the suction running so it works on bare floors like that. We also use a plain ol’ broom, and we mop with a [direct sales brand]* floor mop. My wife got into selling one of those direct sales thingies, and sold enough to pay for the starter kit and some other neat stuff. She doesn’t like the whole direct sales thing, but she liked the products enough to do that.
Kitchen: Dawn and Formula 409. My wife uses some [direct sales brand] cloths to clean, but I feel like you need a spray in there, so I use 409 when I clean it (don’t tell her!). There’s just no damn way that some cloth has some special properties that make it disinfect the counter.
Bathroom: Clorox toilet bowl cleaner and Scrubbin’ Bubbles. Again, my wife uses her weird cloths when she does it, and I use my methods when I do it.
Laundry: We’ve had problems with laundry, as DadWagonBackSeatPassenger #2 has eczema and seems to react poorly to some laundry soaps. My wife got some “all natural” detergent from her kit, and it didn’t give the reaction, but I thought our towels never seemed to smell very clean. I recently switched to Arm & Hammer without any dyes or scents, and it seems to be OK. I use one of those special sport detergents for my running/gym clothes to keep them from smelling awful, and that works much better than any regular detergent ever did.
However, the direct sales brand has one great product for laundry: really good dryer balls. I switched to those from dryer sheets, and it’s both cheaper (in the long run) and seems to make the eczema flare ups for the little one not as harsh as when we were using dryer sheets AND regular detergent.
Other: Paper towels - I like the Sam’s Club brand. Their TP is pretty good, too.
*I took out the brand name of the direct sales brand before posting this; I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to advertise! I’d like to eventually start a thread about the brand, because it sets off so many red flags in my head when I read their marketing materials, and I’m curious about some of their claims. FTR, it’s not Amway.
You can get the Generic Mr. Clean sponges at the dollar store. They are the bomb!
When Celtling was a baby she had a lot of skin sensitivity. I also keep aquariums, so airborne surfactants are a Very Bad Thing. I can’t spray just anything around my space. As such, I had to learn about the basic ingredients of cleaning, and it is vanishingly simple and cheap if you spend a couple of hours reading.
I am notoriously cheap when it comes to cleaning products. About once every two years I go down to the hardware store and get a gallon of Janitorial strength ammonia. I also have a few heavy-duty refillable spray bottles. ¼ bottle ammonia to ¾ water works great for most jobs.
For bathrooms, in my area you need chlorine. Sodium Hypochlorite powder is much safer than liquid bleach for storing, and vanishingly cheap. No more hauling gallon bottles from the grocery store for me!
Sodium Percarbonate (The stuff in oxyclean) is a bit more expensive, but nothing compared to retail pricing. Add a tblsp or so to a quart of water and you get hydrogen peroxide + sodium carbonate. Fantastic for cleaning and excellent in laundry. In large concentrated doses it will bleach some fabrics. Adding just a bit to a laundry load of water won’t do that. But don’t just sprinkle it on the fabric while the machine fills. Both of these require gloves and a dust mask while you add them to the diluting bottles. After that they are safe to use as usual.
I started making laundry soap because of Celtling’s allergies (back when the unscented laundry detergent cost more) but I kept it up because I like the scent and it works great for seriously low cost. Recipe here.
For the dishwasher I use Cascade Complete. It’s worth the extra money.
I will also splurge on Windex, I just like the scent. I’ll add an ounce or so to each bottle of ammonia spray to make the jobs more pleasant.
For floors I have a steamer. I recommend the kind with washable scrubbing covers. (aka “Pocket mop”). Buy extra covers while you can, because they disappear when they update the designs.
409 for most cleaning
Mister Clean to mop floors.
Dawn to hand wash dishes. Cascade packs in the dishwasher.
I use ammonia and bleach. I mix them into separate dilutions for household cleaning.
The only real product I use that I don’t ‘make’ myself is a degreaser call ‘Motorsports Degreaser’. It’s got some enzymes or something that eat grease. Stuff is invaluable for real grease stains. I’m a car guy… so it happens.
Windex, Tilex… etc: They ain’t nothin’ but ammonia or bleach. 10 bucks and I have a year’s worth of kitchen and bath cleaners.
.
I mix 'em together for those times when I want everything clean, including all human life.
Windex at least comes with ammonia and ammonia-free versions.
I’m what you might call “Hippie-lite”. I only use four things to clean my house–soap/water, vinegar/water, Mr. Clean (for my floors) and bleach (in the bathroom). Other than that…I don’t feel I need anything else to clean my house.
[steps onto soap box]
I think that we, as Americans, are total germophobes and we are bombarded constantly by messages that we MUST sanitize all the things all the time or we’re not doing it right. That our kids will fall over and diiiiiie if we don’t coat them in antibacterial gel. It is my opinion that this constant push to sanitize everything has compromised our immune systems and we are actually sicker more often because of it. There is, IMO, such a thing as being TOO clean.
[/soapbox]
My girlfriend introduced me to the idea of using newspaper to wipe streaks off of mirrors and glass. She has little wads of newspaper in a basket under the sink and uses one then throws it away.
Not sure what exactly makes it work so well, but it really does.