Author uses kitchen ingredients for spotless home

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Published: November 23, 2006

WINNIPEG – With all her household hints, you’d expect Reena Nerbas to be a grey-haired grandmother.

Instead, the youthful mother of four pre-teen children jumped around during her presentation to the recent Manitoba Farm Women’s Conference, unable to contain her enthusiasm for cleaning solutions.

Nerbas grabbed a box of Borax and extolled its ability to wash walls and whiten laundry.

A jug of vinegar was held aloft and praised for its ability to whiten, deodorize, clean toilets and walls and attract and kill fruit flies.

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Head and Shoulders shampoo lifts out old bloodstains.

Newspaper eats up odours when crumpled into a pair of boots, an old suitcase or in a freezer where meat has rotted inside.

Nerbas collected these and other solutions to cleaning problems around the house and garage and packaged them in a book along with 500 cooking substitutions. The book is now a best- seller.

Nerbas threw away all her commercial cleaners and now uses ingredients commonly found in the kitchen.

Here is her all-purpose cleaning recipe:

2 tbsp. Borax 25 mL

1/2 cup bleach 125 mL

1/4 cup baking soda 60 mL

8 cups water 2 L

About the author

Diane Rogers

Saskatoon newsroom

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