This week: washing the dishes without harming your hands - or the environment
Housewife / house work / cleaning / washing
Definitely a homemade homemaker Getty
Unless you live a life of constant takeaways and restaurant excursions, washing the dishes is an unavoidable fact of life. Whether you don the marigolds and do your washing up the old fashioned way, or bung it all in the dishwasher and let technology do the job for you, you can't avoid the question of what you use to get the dishes clean.

Unfortunately, most commercial washing up liquids are made with a chemical cosh of unfriendly substances, a number of which may cause allergic skin reactions, hormone disruption and respiratory problems. They're not very friendly to the environment either - phosphates used in dishwashing detergents pollute our rivers and lakes and can lead to runaway algae growth in our waterways.

Fortunately, there is an ever-growing range of environmentally-friendly washing up liquids, dishwasher powders and rinse aids on offer in the shops (try Ecover, BioD or ClearSpring all available here) - but why not go one better and make your own? The most basic recipe for creating your own washing up liquid is just a very simple mixture of pure soap flakes - available in all good supermarkets - and water. You could also add some lemon juice to help cut through the grease and make it smell nice.

If you're feeling a bit more ambitious, why not try the following recipe from Nanette Blanchard, who uses lavender oil as both a fragrance and an anti-bacterial agent. Bear in mind that it won't create as many suds as you're probably used to - the absence of the near-ubiquitous ingredient sodium lauryl sulphate, added to create foaming in everything from toothpaste to shampoo, will see to that. But it will get your dishes lovely and clean!

For suggestions on buying Castile soap and glycerine please see the previous column.

3 tbsp liquid Castile soap
2 cups warm water
2 tsp glycerine
2 tbsp. white vinegar
10 drops lavender essential oil

Mix all ingredients in a jar, cover, and shake well to blend. Use about 1 tbsp for dishwashing.

Dishwasher powder

If you're after a dishwasher powder to go in your machine rather than a washing up liquid for the sink, your best bet is to mix together equal parts washing soda and household borax. Both of these should be available in your local supermarket or chemist but if you do have trouble finding them, you can buy them both direct by mail order from the manufacturer Dri-Pak, who also stock a range of other traditional ingredients like bicarb and laundry starch. In place of petrochemical-based rinse aid products, you can put white vinegar in the rinse compartment, which will do the job just as well.

Stubborn stains

You can also use homemade preparations to get rid of burnt-on food and stains before regular cleaning.

· To get rid of tea and coffee marks, soak cups and mugs in hot vinegar before washing them. Really persistent stains can be zapped by rubbing salt directly onto the stain.

· To clean tea-stained cutlery, mix together 2 tablespoons of vinegar with one teaspoon of borax and some hot water. Immerse the cutlery in the solution before rinsing in hot soapy water.

· Vinegar can also be used to get rid of burnt marks in your saucepans - boil it up with an equal quantity of water and then leave to soak for several hours, preferably overnight. Finally you could try raiding your vegetable rack. Boiling up slices of onion is said to help loosen burnt on food, while stained aluminium pans can be cleaned by boiling cabbage leaves or even rhubarb!