
We’ve talked before about how the harsh commercial cleaners we use could actually be affecting our hormones. But there really is no reason to go run out and buy up all the expensive “green” cleaners either. Using normal household kitchen products not only works just as well, it’s much, much cheaper.
I don’t have a lot of wood furniture in my house, just the kitchen table and the master bedroom furniture, but I like to make sure it stays looking nice.
Our dining room table needs all the help it can get. It desperately needs to be re-stained.
I actually fear people coming over for dinner because the leaf looks about 10 shades darker. It used to be pretty.
But instead of taking the time to re-stain it right now, I do my best to apply some homemade wood polish once a week or so. This way it doesn’t look horribly dingy.
I use this one:
Rub with a clean cloth until you don’t feel oil on the surface of the furniture.
Now I don’t know how long this would last sitting around in the cupboard so I tend to mix only what I need, when I need it. Sometimes just using my oil mister (which normally just contains olive oil) to spray the table and then squeezing a lemon over the table as well. It’s easy and I don’t have to worry about storing it.
Homemade Wood Polish {31 days to cleaner living}
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup lemon juice real is preferable as the bottles may have additives
- 1/8 cup olive oil
- basically a 2:1 ratio, two parts lemon juice, one part olive oil
Instructions
- Just mix together and either put directly on a rag or into a spray bottle meant for oils.
Do you use a natural wood polish?

I use the same recipe you use. Sometimes there is less lemon juice (I use the juice from one lemon), sometimes more. The best thing is that it really doesn’t matter. It has worked well for me and I love the scent!
I use it on our unfinished kitchen cabinets. The lemon juice is the cleaning agent, so if you don’t need cleaning and just want shine you could just oil the wood. I typically use a more 1/1 ratio when I use it.
My husband found this recipe elsewhere on the ‘net, and polished all our bedroom furniture. It worked amazingly well!!
We’re phasing out all our commercial cleansing products, and are converting to natural/homemade products and Norwex cleaning cloths, etc. 🙂 It’s fantastic!
So glad i came across this. I just discovered my can of Pledge has disappeared and was wondering what else i could do since i’m cleaning today.