Homemade Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and Gentle Wall Wash (Removes Those Marks Like a Champ)

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If you are a mom or dad with kids, especially the little kind, in your home….then Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are probably a must in your house like ours! I love Magic Erasers and I do go through them very quickly! I also like to clean my walls. But cleaning an entire wall with Magic Eraser is annoying because they just crumble and fall apart.  I prefer to use them for spot cleaning.

So I developed my own wall cleaner, that happens to double for many of the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser duties too! The reason why I specifically wanted a wall cleaner is because we like to clean our walls! And even though I like to clean them, in less than 24-hours, there is already a trail of handprints from 10 little hands touching everything all of the time! The direst walls are any near a lightswitch, the staircase on both sides (apparently a handle bar is useless as they just use the wall!) and in our kitchen by the table.

But first, I want to tell you a story of when I was girl! Perhaps I like to clean walls because my mom liked to clean walls and we were always washing walls! Well, we had this exchange student from Ecuador living with us at the time and one day, she came home and found us all washing walls.  She asked “what are we doing??” You see, she came from a wealthy family in Ecuador and so although American Culture was different, it was also different for a wealthy person to live with someone from middle America.  Once we told her what we were doing, she thought it was so interesting because she hasn’t seen anyone wash walls.  When we asked her what they did, she said…”well, of course our walls are painted every year!”  “Every year!?!,” I exclaimed. And basically her response was “yes, we probably have 15 layers of paint on our walls because my family hires someone to paint them at the start of our summer.”  Well, my mom said, “don’t you still wash them before painting?” because whenever we painted something once every SEVERAL years, we still had to wash it down! And she said that is how they clean their walls, just paint over the dust!

Well, as nice as it would be to hire someone to paint our entire house every single spring, that would also be our family’s vacation money each year…. and since we haven’t painted our house since moving in 6 years ago, I will continue to wash my walls instead 🙂

So, if you are a wall washer, check out my super easy formula for cleaner walls and cleaning with much ease! AND if you are NOT a wall washer, but have those wall marks that you want to find a cheap and natural way to get rid of them, this does that job too…you know the job of Mr. Clean Magic Eraser…Well, step aside Mr. Clean as here comes Mrs. Cheap Healthy Clean 🙂

Here’s the ingredients needed. Each batch just about cleans a small room, so adjust accordingly.  This isn’t something I personally make and store, however, you could absolutely prepare a full bottle and spray on your walls too! I just make a batch and use it all up at that one time.

• 1/2 tsp. of Borax (there has been some question on the safety of Borax, Please see our article here on “Is Borax Safe or Not and Should it Be Used in Natural Cleaners” post HERE. 
• 1 tsp of Baking Soda
• 1/2 cup of hot water

I have found that this combination of ingredients cuts the grease and dirt and neither dry ingredient is abrasive to the walls.  It has also never taken off any paint in my house, even in cases where a bit of elbow grease scrubbing was involved. HOWEVER…. as a disclaimer, 90% of my walls in my house are the beige color.  When I wash my walls, I do get a “dusty” color on my sponge…I suspected this was merely dirt/dust.  To test, I do have one room in my house with Dark Purple and Lavender painted walls.  I washed these walls and still got that same exact color on my sponge…therefore it is the dust/dirt and it is not taking any paint off my walls.  BUT…I would always test a small inconspicuous area in your home to be sure that this is fine for your walls before using it!

Here’s how to make it:

• First, place the 1/2 tsp. of Borax in a shallow bowl.  Then pour the hot water on top and mix with a fork, spoon or whisk until dissolved.
• Then add the 1 tsp. of baking soda and mix until all powder is dissolved and the water is nearly clear in color.
• *Please note: we have heard from hundreds of you that this has worked GREAT, but we have also heard from a few that you have a white film on your walls left.  We have only used this on our walls and it works great, but there could be different experiences based on the type of walls/paint.  We would suggest reducing the Borax and Baking soda to 1/4 each as a little does a lot and reduce the chance of a film on your walls for those few that have had that experience.  In addition, a quick damp rag (with no cleaner, just water) wipe down on the wall after will also take care of the potential residue.  Keep us posted!

• Then using a sponge, start cleaning away!

Here’s a few tips for cleaning:

• In my experience with my homemade wall wash, here’s what it will do very well:
  • General wall cleaning
  • Lead pencil marks
  • Food
  • Other easy marks
• Here’s what you will probably need to put a little elbow grease into to get it out all of the way:
  • Crayon
  • Colored Pencil
  • Pens
  • Markers
  • Tougher Marks
• If you have really tough stains, pull out the Magic Eraser for that spot or apply undiluted baking soda to a wet sponge and scrub directly on the spot for that spot only as this seems to work well! Don’t scrub too hard that you scrub the paint off!

I wanted to show an example that just happened to pop up this week, which is why it reminded me to share this with you!

Our 4-year old did this lovely penmanship practice on the wall….then she tried to scribble it off until I caught her….then while I was having the “don’t color on walls” speech for the 4,oooth time with this imaginative child, her older brother was trying to erase it thinking he was helping…which really embedded the mess nice and deep and to really make sure my recipe is put to the pencil test!

Well, I quickly whipped up a batch of this Magic Eraser solution and it came clean so unbelievable easy.  I didn’t use elbow grease, just a couple of quick swipes and it was clean! It really works and really works well.  Now, pencil lead is the easiest to get off the painted walls.  Read my recommendations above for all of the different marks!

Now as far as the cost…it is literally not even worth calculating..just a few cents per batch 🙂

Here’s a printable recipe that you can put in your home binder:

We also HIGHLY recommend that you put this in your home binder along with many more things we will be sharing! See all of the information on this in our previous post HERE about Put Together Your Home Binder with Free Downloads.

Finally, use this new thrifty and healthy cleaning product as part of our Spring Cleaning Challenge.

If you want even more ideas too, be sure to visit these links!

• Shopping list to be able to make 23 natural homemade cleaning products for a very low price tag of $12.
• And then if you wanted to make them anti-bacterial and anti-viral, we also shared the natural but effective add-ins for much less HERE.