We used to buy screen cleaners in spray bottles and packets of moist towelettes, but no more. We discovered how easy and inexpensive it is to make your own DIY screen cleaner spray. Facepalm… “…coulda had a V8” moment!

It was time for a quick break from sitting at my desk in our sunroom working on an article on DIY citrus cleaner. I came back after 5 minutes or so and my screensaver had kicked on, so my computer screen had gone to sleep. There, with the sun streaming in through our southern facing sunroom windows onto my black computer screen, all of the fingerprints and many smudges glared back in full reveal.

Yikes… definitely time to clean the screen!! But since I was on this DIY bent, I wondered how easy to make homemade screen cleaner. It turns out that it’s VERY EASY and cheap to do. So we did and are now sharing it with you.

DIY Screen Cleaner is Cheaper for You and Better for the Environment

Making your own screen cleaner not only saves you money, but it also saves excess use of disposable plastic bottles. If you buy screen cleaner, then you have to keep buying (and then disposing) the bottles. But if you buy new refillable bottles, you can use them until they wear out. ones to once and reuse them many times

If you save all kinds of old bottles like we do, chances are you won’t even have to buy a spray bottle. But if you do, that is one up-front added expense that you won’t have to keep on buying, as you can reuse those for years to come.

Spray Bottles for Homemade Screen Cleaner

There are all kinds of spray bottles, depending on your needs. For DIY screen cleaner, we favor the small 4 ounce mister spray bottles.

You can buy bulk packs of mister bottles from Amazon for a cheaper per-bottle price than individually. We use the extra bottles to stash some screen cleaner in each room, for travel and/or for gifts. Alternately, you can buy even cheaper spray bottles in singles for under a dollar each (or less), at your local pharmacy or dollar store.

If you end up buying any of the bulk packs, you can use any extra bottles to give screen cleaner as gifts. Beyond screen cleaner, you can use those bottles for making essential oil sprays. Essential oil sprays are great for room air fresheners, body sprays, potpourri fresheners, aroma diffusers and calming concoctions.

You’ll love this super simple recipe. And while you may be tempted to give it some aroma, especially if you’re into essential oils, don’t. Anything else added can create a greasy mess on your screens. Instead, save the pleasing and healing aromas for making your own essential oil sprays.

So let’s get to it. You’ll be done in five minutes or less!

How to Make DIY Screen Cleaner Spray

Ingredients for Screen Cleaner Spray

• 1 part rubbing alcohol (or white distilled vinegar)
• 1 part distilled water

It’s very important to use distilled water or else you’re likely to end up with mineral residue on your screen. I like to make up a larger batch in a quart sized measuring cup and dispense it from there into refillable 2 and 4 ounce spray bottles. Anything leftover I store in a jar or larger bottle as a backup refill.

Materials Needed for DIY Screen Cleaner Spray

• Spray bottle (preferably the mister type).
• Adhesive Label and Sharpie for labeling your screen cleaner

We like to use the 2 oz bottles for the car, laptop, backpack, purses or briefcase, and the 4 ounce bottles for the desk drawer. But when I made a batch for photos for this article, I only had a new batch of 6, 4 ounce bottles. I like these. Neck is really narrow but it’s no problem to dispense with a funnel. So for 6 x 4 oz., I made 24 ounces and distributed it evenly amongst the 6 bottles.

To Fill 6 – 4 oz Spray Bottles:

• 12 oz. distilled water
• 12 oz. rubbing alcohol

Stir gently with a clean spoon. Using a funnel, pour carefully, leaving about a 1/2″ of space at top to allow room for any liquid space taken up by the spray tube.

It’s always a good idea to label and date your homemade products and supplies, especially for perishable food products and herbal remedies. You don’t want to get it mixed up amongst your other home concoctions. While your homemade screen cleaner isn’t likely to go bad, it’s still helps to know when it was made if you want to know how much you go through and to keep it rotated.

We recently ordered these waterproof labels of different colors and sizes and which include two marker pens. I use these for our dried herbs and tinctures, where the different colors and sizes come in handy for color coding the different types of homemade cleaners, oils, tinctures, salves and such.

Or, as indicated above, the 4 oz spray bottles I purchased that are pictured in this article, came with labels for the bottles and the caps which was really cool. If you’ve ever stored essential oils and spices in a drawer, you’ll know how helpful it is to have identifiers on the tops of the containers as well as on the sides.

For more homemade cleaners, here’s an inexpensive DIY citrus vinegar cleaner that’s super easy, inexpensive and effective. You can also check out more benefits of white vinegar here.

Best Cleaning Cloths

If you’re wondering what kind of cleaning cloths are best for cleaning your screens, here are a few of our favorites.

• Microfiber
• 100% cotton –
  • T-shirt fabric
  • Flannel

A word on microfiber cloths: I ordered these for kitchen rags, but they’re very bad for that. They’re water resistant so they don’t absorb water when wiping counters and tend to leave them wet.

However, they work great for cleaning screens and glasses with this homemade DIY screen cleaner spray. Just do NOT put them in the dryer with towels, rags or blankets or they’ll attract every bit of strings and lint, which will cling to them as “pills”, and are a pill to get off!