Homestead Simplicity: Natural Clean is a lovely e-book designed to simplify your cleaning cupboard, save you money, and help you develop your own art of cleaning naturally.

Are your cupboards full of different cleaning agents? Do you buy one product to polish your furniture, another to clean the bathroom, another to clean windows, and something else to mop the floor with? With Homestead Simplicity: Natural Clean, you can learn the secrets to using remarkably few ingredients for all your cleaning needs. Author Lisa Barthuly shares how to combine natural, inexpensive items (like baking soda and Borax) into different concoctions to serve a variety of purposes. She explains how to make window cleaner, furniture polish, scrubbing cleanser, fabric softener, dishwasher soap, disinfectant spray, dishwashing liquid, laundry soap, insecticide, spray starch, and more! She even shares recipes for homemade body soaps (including a few for men in particular).

I found Lisa Barthuly's directions easy to follow. Most of the ingredients were easy to find between Wal-Mart and our grocery store. The only somewhat expensive ingredient is essential oil. You really only need one or two jars of essential oil to build a nice, wide variety of cleansers, but Barthuly mentions so many interesting blends it is hard to not want to try them all! Our household is now using homemade fabric softener, laundry detergent, and furniture oil. How exciting it's been to smell my clean laundry and know that one reason it smells so good is the soap I made myself! My favorite recipe is the one for scrubbing cleanser: a mix of Borax, baking soda, and grapefruit essential oil in a Mason jar with holes in the lid for sprinkling. This stuff smells fabulous and scrubs the toilets, sinks, bathtub, and even coffee/juice stains on the kitchen counters.

Besides disclosing recipes for homemade cleaners, Lisa Barthuly shares tips on using natural, God-given resources to make our homes delightful places to be. Following Barthuly's advice will not only help us make our homes healthier places to be and save us money, but we'll be good stewards of the wonderful resources God has provided for us in herbs and natural compounds.

Product review by Deborah Burt, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August 2009