What Everybody Ought to Know about Cleaning Wooden Cutting Boards

When we cook all the time, our wooden cutting boards can really take a beating � especially if our breakfast, lunch, and dinner recipes require lots of vegetable chopping. Ever wonder how to clean wooden cutting boards properly after you've been cooking all afternoon? Thanks to Nicole Raudonis over at the �Hometalk� website, we now know how to do it perfectly. If you spend a great deal of time cooking, or even if you only cook for a few minutes a day, it's really important to keep your kitchen as clean as possible. Washing dishes and wiping down counters after every meal is crucial to keeping a healthy kitchen environment. But even if we keep our dishes scrupulously clean, there is one thing that often gets neglected: the kitchen cutting board. Most people just wipe it off with a cloth when they're done chopping vegetables, mincing garlic, or cutting bread on it, but it's one of those places where bacteria can build up if we're not diligent about sanitizing it after each and every cooking adventure. How can you naturally sanitize a cutting board without using heavy-duty toxic chemicals? You use natural ones instead. To clean your vegetable cutting board, you only need three special ingredients - it's almost like a recipe in itself � a cutting board cleaner recipe for when the cooking is done.

The first cleaning ingredient you will need is a lemon. Because lemons contain such a high acidic content, they have natural antibacterial and antiseptic properties and can be used as potent cleaners in every room of the house. Squeezed lemon juice diluted in water is excellent for cleaning your entire kitchen after you are finished cooking. You can even add some to your dishwater before doing the dishes. A good lemon cleaner recipe to use is to mix four tablespoons of lemon juice with eight cups of water, put it in a spritzer bottle, shake, then use it to spray your counters down after you've done the dishes. This will also work for cleaning your windows because nothing cuts through grease quite the way lemons do. Not only does lemon juice sanitize everything, but it also makes the room smell good. Lemon juice can also work wonders in the bathroom, naturally sanitizing the entire room and making everything smell fresh and clean. Add lemon juice to your mop water when you are scrubbing the floors for a luscious citrus scent throughout the entire house.

Another special ingredient in this cutting board cleaner recipe is coconut oil. This goes on your cutting board after you've cleaned it entirely. Organic coconut oil also has antibacterial properties that can keep bacteria from growing on the cutting board after you've done a great deal of cooking. It also cures and protects the wood naturally, and keeps it from splitting. Your cutting board will last a lot longer if you treat it this way. Be sure not to use any other kind of oil, except possibly mineral oil, as other oils can go rancid and cause the cutting board to smell bad.

This cutting board cleaning recipe comes from the Hometalk website where you can find all kinds of handy hints that make cooking, cleaning, and home improvements a great deal easier. Hometalk is the world's largest Do-It-Yourself community where you can learn so many creative DIY projects, like how to make flower towers from stacked flower pots, recycle antique drawers, turn an old knife block into a DIY crayon holder, clean your cutting boards for cooking new recipes, and so much more. You are also invited to ask home-improvement related questions at Hometalk, so it's an excellent resource if you are starting a new DIY home project or need inspiration.