Easy Floor Cleaner
May 1, 2009 Budget Environmentalism, Cleaning Products, Eco Friendly Home
Cleaning floors is not one of my favorite things. Somehow my kids always manage to make it just a little pointless, generally by getting particularly dirty in the back yard later that day or the next, and tracking in tons of dirt, chalk and/or mud. They’re talented that way. And I love it.
They’re some of the big reason why I love making my own floor cleaner rather than buying it. No nasty chemicals, cheap, and I can even make my kids use it if they mess things up too quickly.
Here’s my basic formula for tile. Just as easy as mixing something bought at the store.
Basic Vinegar Floor Cleaner
Add about a half cup of white vinegar per gallon of water. My husband hates the smell of vinegar, so I add a bit of lavender essential oil to cut the vinegar scent until it dries. Mop as usual.
This mix is generally safe for tile and wood floors; just make sure that you don’t get the wood excessively wet. Your mop should be just damp. Some people like to add some vegetable oil to give wood floors a bit more of a shine.
Tags: cleaning, floor cleaner, homemade cleansers, vinegar
Teaching the Kids to Clean the Bathroom with Vinegar
Mar 26, 2009 Cleaning Products, Eco Friendly Home, Eco Friendly Parenting
Like most kids their age, my kids can make a rather horrendous mess in the bathroom. The biggest part of it lately has been due to their rediscovery of the process by which dirt becomes mud.
Lots and lots of mud. To dig in or even smear on their skin.
I’ve had to haul the hose out a few times to get them clean enough to even be allowed in the house. Yep, it’s pretty cute and the times I’ve taken the camera out for it has made for some great pictures.
But it sure leaves a mess in the bathroom when they’re washing up from being just slightly dirty.
This lead to a quick decision by my husband and I. They get to clean their own bathroom from now on.
It’s a nice help. They both make quite a mess in there, and my son creates the additional messes that little boys are prone to creating. They’re old enough to do it. And vinegar is so safe I don’t have to worry about their health as they clean.
It’s a pretty easy skill to teach if you don’t expect perfection. I presented my kids with paper towels and a spray bottle of vinegar. I plan on moving to microfiber towels
Then I showed them what I wanted done, helping them figure out how to do it and how to notice where dirt was still clinging to surfaces. That was actually one of the bigger challenges. My kids aren’t much worried about dirt these days.
Results were pretty good. Sure, it took longer to supervise and help them than to do it myself, but it’s a way to help them learn to be responsible. And it’s nice to have them cleaning with something that they won’t be hurting themselves with.
Lemony Fresh Cleaning
Feb 17, 2009 Budget Environmentalism, Cleaning Products
I do a lot of my cleaning with baking soda and vinegar, but sometimes another choice is better. That would be cleaning with lemon juice.
You can’t beat the smell for one thing. An area cleaned with lemon juice smells good!
A classic use is as furniture polish. There’s a reason why so many store bought furniture polishes are lemon scented. You can put two parts of olive oil to one part lemon juice to make your own hardwood furniture polish.
Plain lemon juice is also good for cleaning wooden cutting boards.
Mixed with baking soda into a paste, it can polish chrome or copper. Salt can work in place of the baking soda, as it provides grit for scrubbing. I like baking soda in most cases, although it is less gritty.
Lemon juice is also good for your laundry, as it can help with natural bleaching. Hanging clothes out to dry in the sun can help with stains too, but sometimes you want that boost from lemon juice. Just add a half cup of lemon juice to the rinse cycle, then dry in the sunlight. A small amount of lemon juice also just makes clothes smell good when they dry, but honestly I’ve never found the need to worry about how my clothes smell after washing.
You can also soak clothes in a mix of vinegar and lemon juice to get a stain out. Just soak for a half hour before washing.
Lemon juice is a pretty flexible cleaner, and delightful for those times you don’t want the smell of vinegar when you clean. Sometimes scent matters.
Tags: homemade cleansers, lemon
How to Find Green Cleansers
Aug 4, 2008 Cleaning Products, Eco Friendly Home, Environmentally Friendly
While I enjoy making my own cleaning supplies, I know it’s not for everyone, even when much of it is as simple as baking soda and vinegar. Maybe you like the scents of other cleansers or maybe you just can’t quite believe they’re effective enough.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t go green with your cleaning supplies.
There are a number of greener cleansers out there. Clorox may have a name for itself as the producer of some really nasty, toxic chemicals, but if you can get past that they have their Green Works line of products. You can get these locally at Home Depot and other stores. I’ve tried them, and they work fine.
If you’re buying products, do at least consider buying concentrated versions that you have to water down before use. This will at least cut down on the packaging and weight of shipping. It also saves you quite a bit of money. One of the Green Works products I bought, an all-purpose cleanser, can be diluted to 1:24 a bit and is still effective.
There are other products you can buy as well, such as the old, reliable Simple Green. I used that one for a long time before starting to make my own products.
When in doubt, look at the labels.
The very first thing I don’t want in a product is for it to be antibacterial. These can leave residues, encouraging resistant bacteria to grow, and don’t do any better a job of cleaning. With the residue left, it may even be doing worse. Just remember that a good soap allows you to wipe those germs right off the counter. Keep your cleaning cloths clean and you won’t be spreading too many germs about.
Besides, a few germs around are good for the immune system. It’s the excess that is far more likely to make you or your family ill.
In addition, look for warning and danger labels. Right off the bat either of these tells you that your cleanser has something toxic in it. You’ll probably want to wear gloves when using such products, or better yet, find an alternative that’s less toxic.
Caution labels are on many products. It’s on my Green Works bottle, for example, because it’s a potential eye irritant. Eyes are very easy to irritate.
I prefer to avoid ammonia, bleach, hydrochloric acid, chlorine, petroleum products and many other ingredients commonly found in cleaning products. I’m also not big on added fragrances, unless it’s an essential oil such as I add when I use vinegar so my husband doesn’t complain about the scent.
A simple rule is that if you can recognize the source of the ingredients in your cleaning product, it’s probably safer. Not always, as nature can come up with some really nasty toxins.
Just remember you don’t need products with special agents to make them foam up, or really harsh chemicals to get the job done. A bit of elbow grease and a natural product can do the job just as well. You won’t have to worry about what you’re sending down the pipes or in the trash if you pick your products more carefully.
Why I Don’t Like Antibacterial Products
Jul 22, 2008 Cleaning Products
I find one of the benefits to making my own cleaning products to be that I don’t have to search for things that aren’t marketed as antibacterial. It never ceases to amaze me just how paranoid many people are about germs because the commercials have told us to fear them.
Exposure to germs is normal, after all, and within reason a healthy thing for you. You can’t build up immunity to things you aren’t ever exposed to.
Wandering around online, I came across this article from last year on the difference between how regular cleaners work and how antibacterial ones work. The more traditional soaps and such simply loosen up dirt and such so they could easily be wiped away. They don’t tend to leave residues.
Antibacterial products, on the other hand, generally do leave residues. This can encourage the development of resistant bacteria.
I’m sure many of you know that resistant bacterial diseases are a problem already due to overuse and misuse of antibiotics in medicine. Too many parents demand antibiotics when they aren’t the answer, and many people don’t use the full prescription, allowing the more resistant bacteria to survive and reproduce.
Frankly, I’d like to avoid having the same thing happen in my home.
That’s why I don’t use antibacterial products. If regular cleaning can simply get rid of them, what more do I need?
Worse, antibacterial products like triclosan are contaminating the environment already. That’s more chances for bacteria to develop a resistance to these things.
These are very simple reasons to avoid antibacterial products, I think. At the very least they’re good enough reasons for me.
Tags: antibacterial products
