Green Spring Cleaning!
What’s good for you is good for the Earth. And what’s good for the earth is good for you.
In the last couple of days, I’ve had several conversations with people who want to keep toxic chemicals out of their homes and to save money at the same time.
Voila! I have an answer for you!
You can clean almost anything in your home with seven ingredients. You probably already have most of them in your kitchen:
- Vinegar
- Baking soda
- Borax
- Lemon juice
- Olive oil
- Vegetable-based liquid soap
- Washing soda
Many people seem to think that cleaning naturally is expensive and inconvenient. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s cheap. It’s easy and it’s effective. AND you’re not exposing yourself to a toxic soup that that includes allergens, carcinogens, neurotoxins, hepatotoxins, central nervous system depressants that can cause everything from liver failure to life-threatening allergic reactions to cancer to death.
We are all exposed to toxins every day. We can’t avoid them. Research tells us that even newborn babies already have nearly 300 toxic substances in their bodies, passed on from their mothers. Over our lifetimes, that toxic load builds and builds until, one day, we may tip the balance and experience one of the terrible side effects of toxic overload.
So if we can reduce our toxic load as much as possible, we can avoid that toxic load, we can postpone or even overcome toxic overload.
Back from my toxin rant: Natural cleaning products work. They are safe, easy and cheap. What’s not to love?
What could be simpler than combining ½ teaspoon of vegetable based oil, 3 tablespoons of vinegar and 2 cups of water in a spray bottle to make your windows sparkling clean for a nickel a bottle? Add a few drops of lemon essential oil to long-lasting shine, a great scent and to help energize the window washer!
How about scrubbing sinks, tubs and showers with a gentle paste of baking soda and borax? It works just as well as commercial cleaners with no toxic fumes and again, it costs mere pennies.
Pour a cup of borax in your toilet and leave it overnight. That’s it takes to wipe out my least favorite household task. Add a few drops of tea, tree, lavender or white thyme essential oil for disinfection.
If your oven is an embarrassment like mine can be, try this:
Sprinkle water in the bottom of your oven, then cover the yuck with baking soda. Sprinkle some more water on top and let it sit overnight. In all but the worst cases, you’ll be able to simple wipe it clean the next morning. If there is still stubborn baked on grease, add a little washing soda to the mixture to cut the grease. Rinse well.
The best book I’ve read on non-toxic cleaning is Annie Berthold-Bond’s Clean and Green. See her books below of visit Annie’s website.
A final thought about being clean and green: All of these recip0es are nontoxic and they don’t require any power tools. If you have a truly untenable stain or grease sploch, you might consider buying a Scunci steam cleaner. It uses nothing but water. In fact, you’ll damage it if you try to add any cleaners to it, and the superheated water will clean just about anything for a few pennies worth of electricity.
Kathleen Barnes, author of this article, is author or editor of 13 books, most of them on natural health and sustainable living. She is also president of Take Charge Books, she produces teleseminars, and is an avid blogger and Twitterer. Find her at http: www.kathleenbarnes.com
