How to Make Homemade Furniture Polish

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How to Make Homemade Furniture Polish

If you’re on a mission to replace toxic household cleaners with natural and safer options, one cleaner you don’t want to forget about is your furniture polish.

Store-bought furniture polish can contain any number of harmful chemicals. Even worse, if it’s in an aerosol can, you have to worry about dangerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and highly flammable propellants.

Fortunately, it’s very easy to make homemade furniture polish.

You might notice several natural furniture polish recipes call for vinegar. While vinegar can clean a surprising number of items around your house, you don’t want to use vinegar on wood or waxed furniture because it can leave these items looking dull and vulnerable to damage.

Instead, this homemade furniture polish recipe uses just a few natural ingredients that will leave your furniture with a beautiful glow.

Ingredients for Homemade Furniture Polish

2/3 cup of beeswax
3 cups of olive oil
30 drops of an natural preservative, such as vitamin E oil or clear grapefruit seed extract
10 drops of an essential oil (optional)

These ingredients will make just over 3 cups of furniture polish.

Directions for Making Natural Furniture Polish

Put the beeswax and olive oil in a double boiler and place on the oven over medium heat. Warm until the beeswax has completely melted.
Stir in the antioxidant and essential oil.
Pour the mixture into a clean, wide-mouth container.
Let it cool until it reaches a semi-hard consistency. This should take about two hours.

How to Use Your Homemade Furniture Polish

Once your natural furniture polish has cooled, you can immediately start polishing your furniture. To use it, simply scoop some out with an organic cotton unpaper towel and rub it into the wooden surface.

If you’re wondering why I always recommend using organic cotton unpaper towels, this post explains whether cotton or microfiber cleaning cloths are more eco-friendly.

You can immediately wipe off the excess polish or leave it on for a few hours to let the oils soak in for a brighter shine.

Important Notes About Homemade Furniture Polish

Although beeswax is very durable and can sit on a shelf for years without going bad, olive oil will start to go rancid sooner. The vitamin E or clear grapefruit seed extract works as a preservative to keep your natural furniture polish fresh.

The essential oils are completely optional and simply add a light scent to your homemade furniture polish. I actually prefer to leave them out because I enjoy the scent of beeswax.

Beeswax is incredibly difficult to clean up, so I highly recommend having one double boiler that you use just for melting beeswax. Then you don’t have to worry about ruining one you use for cooking or making soap.

If you’re storing your natural furniture polish in a glass container, it might begin to pull away from the sides once it cools. This doesn’t harm the quality or effectiveness of your polish. However, if you don’t like the look of this, heating your container before you put the polish in can prevent it from happening.

More Natural Cleaning Products

Now that you see how easy it is to make homemade natural furniture polish, are you ready for even more swaps to easy-to-make homemade cleaning products? If so, check out some of our other popular natural cleaning products: