Alvin Corn

Who is Alvin Corn you may be wondering? Well it is a pretty good homemade glass cleaner and at the moment my all around cleaner until i get the other items needed to make all purpose cleaner. Is it just like Windex? No. Does it clean and shine mirrors and glass surfaces? Yep! Sure does! She tested many recipes and this is what she came up with and loved and so do I! Recipe from the Crunchy Betty blog is as follows:

1/4 cup rubbing alcohol
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 TBS cornstarch
2 cups warm water
lemon, lemon grass or ornange essetial oils optional if you don't care for the smell of vinegar.
Squirt Bottle

next time i make it i may up the vinegar and alcohol to 1/2 cup each. That's the great thing about making your stuff, you can adjust it!

I mixed the alcohol, vinegar, and cornstartch in my 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup to easily pour into my squirt bottle. Then measued in my water. I do not have any essential oils at the moment but hope to get some too. When i get some i may to like 20 drops or so. Not neccesary but i don't care for the vinegar smell. She has some good lists of essential oils and what all they do. Once everything is in the squirt bottle give it a good swirl to mix up the corn starch since it does settle. You'll have to do this whenever you use it. My first mistake was spraying it all over my mirror like i did with my blue cleaner. It's not like blue cleaner. I wiped that mirror and wiped and wiped and wiped and wiped some more. Eventually it dried up and i had a pretty nice shiney mirror. As well as a great upper body work out! I read back over her blog post and saw i missed a sentance that mention spraying it on your cleaning cloth. That works better! Still don't soak your cloth. i also found that my old cut up bath towels work better. She also mentiong you can polish up your mirrors and glass with black and white print news paper after you are done cleaning. Haven't done that. Seems my old towels work fine as long as i don't soak them or the mirror! I use this on the shiney black door to my fridge, the shiney oven door and sometimes as a quick cleaner for my counters and floor. So many people swear by cleaning with vinegar and water. Also, to my mixture i added orange peels. My 3 year old eats about 3 a day and i hated seeing them in the trash. I stuffed them into the squirt bottle to soak in my mixture for a week. Was great til i had to fish them out of the tiny opening on my squirt bottle. So next time i'll let them soak in the vinegar in a jar or something then strain and pour into my squirt bottle. But now i have the awesome cleaning power of orange in it! And it cut the vinegar smell down. I will continue you make this since it works and i don't have the yucky blue chemical crap any more! Well i keep a bottle for David. Not sure if he trusts my mixture. :) Have you figured out Alvin Corn? Alcohal, Vinegar, Cornstarch. The writer of Crunchy Betty is so clever :)