Category Archives: Cleaning Products

Lemony Fresh Cleaning

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.

How to Find Green Cleansers

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

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.

Cold Water Laundry

Goodness I do a lot of laundry. That’s how it goes with small children, especially with one still wetting the bed despite diapers.

We’ve been washing our clothes in cold water for years. That’s almost always sufficient, and I’ve never even tried a “cold water detergent.” The regular stuff works just fine.

You can get some great laundry tips on the U.S. Department of Energy’s site. I’m not surprised to see that they neglect to mention line drying clothes at this point, but the rest of the advice is good.

Almost everything I wash comes out fine, as I said, with a cold water wash. Those things that don’t I try a couple things.

Dawn Dish Soap

Great for removing grease related stains. It may take an hour or two, but for tough stains I’ve left it on overnight. Clothes that otherwise appeared ruined come clean.

Baking Soda and White Vinegar

Rub baking soda into the stain. Spray or pour white vinegar. It will bubble up and work on the stain. This works well on carpet stains too.

Not every stain is going to come out. I think that’s one of the big lessons of motherhood. Kids are really good at ruining the appearance of their clothes, sometimes in a single wearing. To me that just means you maintain a playtime wardrobe. Children really don’t care, as a rule, if their clothes are stained or torn if they’re comfortable and allowed to have fun.

Greening Your Spring Cleaning

It’s spring, a favorite time for people to clean out their homes. But for a lot of people that means using all kinds of chemicals that are harsh on their hands as well as the environment.

spring cleaning supplies

Good thing there are plenty of alternatives.

Start your spring cleaning by decluttering. Get rid of the stuff you just don’t need. Whenever possible, resell it or donate it to a thrift store rather than throw it away.

Don’t get rid of things you can reuse just because they’re getting old. Think about creative ways to repurpose things that have broken, and remind yourself you don’t need new versions of things that still work.

Cleaning Without Harsh Chemicals

Have a supply of white vinegar, baking soda, olive oil and lemon juice on hand for cleaning. Vinegar cleans in the kitchen and bathroom by itself or watered down remarkably well. Combine it with baking soda if you need something a little stronger.

The basic way I mix baking soda and vinegar is to sprinkle the baking soda on first. I keep a spray bottle of vinegar so that I can spray the area with the vinegar to get the reaction going. The baking soda also provides a mild abrasive good for scrubbing.

This mixture also works on cloth furniture and carpets. Just work the baking soda into the stains a little with your fingers first, then add the vinegar. I’ve heard it’s safe to run through steam cleaners as well, if you want an easier time cleaning carpets. I haven’t tried that much myself yet, but spot cleaning has been amazing.

With a 3 year old and a 5 year old, we have plenty of spots to test this on. I’m quite delighted with our results.

The olive oil and lemon juice are for your wood furniture. Mix a cup of olive oil to 1/2 cup of lemon juice in a squirt bottle and use just as you would other furniture polish.

Vinegar diluted with water works well for cleaning mirrors, and gives you a chance to use your old newspapers. Newspaper works amazingly well for cleaning glass, and no worries about leftover lint. You can use a little isopropyl alcohol in the vinegar and water mix if you like. This is the combination I’ve used:

1 cup isopropyl alcohol
1 cup water
1 tbsp white vinegar

Mix in a spray bottle and you’ll never miss the blue stuff!

Finish Off Your Spring Cleaning By Planning for the Future

There’s little point to decluttering year after year. As you finish your spring cleaning, promise yourself you’ll think before you buy, and you’ll buy less stuff.

When you buy, buy with the future in mind. This is why buying from thrift stores is good, and buying quality products that won’t wear out quickly makes sense. It’s why buying sustainably produced products matters.

As individuals, the differences we can make are small. But we can have an impact on what is socially acceptable, and the long term impact of that matters.

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