Enjoying My Shark Steam Mop – A Review
Dec 9, 2009 Cleaning Products
I got a nice hand-me-down from my mother a couple months ago. She had a Shark steam mop
Let’s see… cleaning my floors with steam rather than chemicals or even plain vinegar. Reusing something she doesn’t want. Yes, I’ll try!
The Shark steam mop
They love that it picks up the many sticky spills they make on the floor so easily. And believe me, they do leave some messes about, and they had to really scrub in the past with the old mop. It may take several passes with the steam mop, but that’s still easier than the scrubbing they had to do with the other one.
They use washable cloth pads, which is another great feature. They also let me know just how much yeeech was on the floor. They don’t generally come back perfectly white for me after a wash, but hey, they’re just for cleaning the floor.
The water container is kind of small, but so is our kitchen, so that works for us. Just about everything else in our house is carpeted so we don’t have a lot of tile or other hard floor surfaces to worry about.
Reading some of the steam mop reviews
Tags: cleaning, hand-me-downs, steam cleaning, steam mop
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.
Are Paper Towels Really Necessary?
May 21, 2008 Eco Friendly Home
I’ll admit it. I can be a bit of a paper towel junkie.
Not too bad. I don’t dry my hands with them (I use a cloth towel for that), but I still use paper towel probably more than I should, given the waste.
It’s 99.9% the convenience of it all. Kids are messy and paper towels are fast. When you’re cleaning up several spills a day most days, you get very fond of convenience.
At the same time I do think about the overall impact. Overusing paper towels generates quite a bit of waste. Using cloth over and over can be better.
There are some things which I do like paper towels better for. I use cast iron frying pans, and oiling them for storage I find paper towels are simpler. Otherwise I’d get a single use out of a clean towel and have to get oil out of it. I’d pretty much need a dedicated set that I didn’t mind the oil on.
If you can, I recommend switching to primarily cloth towels. If you have a nice supply in the hand towel
One of the tricks is to know that they often can be reused. If it’s a stinky or germy job you may only get one use before you need to wash, but just drying off your hands won’t require that you immediately send the towel to the wash. Keep that balance.
Different kinds of cloths can do some jobs better. There are some things I prefer the old style cloth diapers
Other jobs do well with the standard terrycloth kind of towels. You’ll develop your own preferences as you go. The nice thing is that a cloth towel can do the job of several paper ones, as a rule, so you may be saving more than you think if you just count by the job.
Will I be giving up paper towels entirely anytime soon? Probably not. But I am working to steadily decrease my usage of them. It’s a challenging thing to give up with young children in the house.
Tags: cleaning, cloth towels, paper towels
How to Clean Outside Areas
May 12, 2008 Eco Friendly Home, Environmentally Friendly, Gardening
I got thinking on the topic of summer today when my daughter’s kindergarten teacher commented that there are only 4 Mondays left in our school year. It was one of those “wow, summer’s almost here” moments for me.
That, of course, brought me to thinking about cleaning up the outside of the house. Living in southern California, it’s pretty practical to keep the outside areas of the house nice all year. We don’t get much rain here, after all, never mind significantly colder weather.
One of those things that has always been a bit annoying is how some people like to clean their walkways and driveways with the hose. Considering the water situation in our area, I hope to see very, very little of that this year, but I know people will do it just because it’s faster.
A good broom
Most of the time, that’s all you need. If there’s a dried up mess outside then yeah, you might want to get the hose as the fastest way to clean it up. But most of the time you don’t really need it.
The same goes later in the year for leaf blowers and such. Get a good rake and a broom for the walkways, and get your yard cleaned up without wasting fuel, electricity or water.
Of course, many people do one thing that is pretty green is add plants to their garden. That can be more or less green, depending on how you garden. The plastic containers that many plants come in can be problematic, although some garden centers may take them back if they’re in good condition. Use compost instead of fertilizer, and you can make your yard more beautiful without hurting the environment much.
