As I was rolling out pizza dough last night, I thought about my counters. I work with a lot of food directly on my counters. For this reason, my counters get scrubbed down at least 5-6 times a day. I need them to be pristine before that tart dough, pizza dough, bread dough, puff pastry, or fresh pasta comes in contact with it.

As a Chemistry Major who has worked with all types of chemicals in lab and research settings, I am very hesitant to buy and use a lot of the commercially available kitchen cleaners. Some of them don't list the ingredients (HUGE RED FLAG), while others do and I don't like what I see. Almost anything you use is going to leave a residue and/or emit fumes into your house. As I'm smashing wet sticky dough into that hard counter top, the last thing I want is some nasty chemical residue to get picked up and incorporated into my food, no matter how minute the quantity. I also don't want my kids breathing in god-knows-what. For this reason I make my own kitchen counter cleaner and it works really well for me.

• 1 part distilled white vinegar
• 1 part water
• 1 squirt eco-friendly dish soap

Mix well in a clean squirt bottle. You can find cheap ones at a hardware or cooking supply shop, or you can find a pretty one at The Container Store. If you want it to smell nice, you can add a few drops of a natural essential oil like orange, lemon, or lavender. This cleaner works well on floors too, and you don't have to worry about fumes, residues, or even your kids dumping it on their heads.

Plus this stuff is CHEAP. Way cheaper than the $3.50 per bottle you are spending on that store-bought stuff. Plus you are eliminating a lot of unnecessary packaging and wastefulness. Yippeee!

NOTE- If I'm working with something particularly germy/nasty, I'll use some diluted bleach instead of or in addition to this counter cleaner.