Green Cleaning
Our last day in DC we had four hours in between checking out of our apartment and checking in at the airport. Originally, we’d planned to see some of our favorite sights one last time, but the afternoon ended up being one long downpour. After dragging out lunch as long as possible, we took refuge in a Barnes and Noble. While perusing the shelves for the next two hours, I found this book on the bargain shelf:
The book explains how to clean your entire house using five natural ingredients: white vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, tea tree oil, and borax. Its solutions range from how to get the smell of sour milk out of carpet to how to get rid of dandruff. Here are a couple of my favorites that I’ve tried so far:
Furniture Polish
- Juice of one lemon
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 1 tsp water
Stain Remover – soak item in cold water, rub some baking soda into the stain, wash as normal. (As with most stain removers you are warned to try this on a small area first.)
Cleaning Shower head – Place head (remove rubber washer first) in pot with equal parts vinegar and water, bring to boil and simmer 5 minutes.
Bathtub Scrub – Use two parts baking soda to one part vinegar. Spread mixture with damp cloth or sponge and rinse with cold water.
4 thoughts on “Green Cleaning”
I found a book similar to this at our library a couple years ago, and found it surprisingly interesting to read (because it’s always fascinating to read about cleaning your bathroom, right?) I think it was called Organic Housekeeping. I thought of buying the book, or at least copying down some of the recipes. Then I got lazy and just looked up some similar websites (but I often forget to bookmark them and then I can’t find them again). It’s amazing how useful white vinegar is! I often use diluted vinegar to clean the whole bathroom. It’s nice to know that if my kids come too close, they aren’t breathing in so many chemicals. My recent favorite (ahem, due to potty-training) is to make carpet cleaner by spraying the carpet area with diluted vinegar, patting it dry with a rag, and then sprinkling baking soda over the area to absorb the remaining moisture (and then you can vacuum up the baking soda).
That’s awesome! A while ago I came across a website called MormonChic (when I was looking for quiet book ideas…) Well they also have homemade cleaner ideas you can check out here: http://www.mormonchic.com/dealdiva/homemade_cleaners.asp
I haven’t actually tried any yet, but I’m going to. I did notice their furniture polish is very similar to yours.
I’ll have to try some of these!