Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get Green Clean

It’s time to clean up my act!  My house is post-holidays messy, ok, it’s really beyond messy and needs immediate attention, particularly considering we will be hosting a student from Paraguay for a few weeks starting next week.

I’m not big on cleaning (just ask my husband), I’m much more into creating. I’ve got a sign on my fridge that says, “A clean house is a sign of wasted life” which I hold to be true fact. However, there comes a time when enough is enough and things have actually got to be cleaned.

What to clean with is the first question to answer.  There are so many harsh, harmful chemicals on the market that seem to do more harm than good, which makes me want to go a little lighter on the germ warfare, especially since there are signs that antibacterial soaps are actually doing quite a bit of harm in the world.

To begin, I start with plain hot water. It’s amazing what hot water can manage to clean on its own.  If that fails, I’ll add a little bit of soap (perhaps some Seventh Generation or Mrs. Meyer’s all-purpose cleaner).  Actually reading the label shows that you don’t really need all that much soap just ¼ cup for a gallon of water. More soap just leaves more residue.  

If scrubbing is needed, the first tool is baking soda. That’s easy, scent free, and works amazingly well, not to mention is quite cheap.  You can buy a five pound bag of it at Costco for just under $5.  If baking soda doesn’t cut it, I turn to a mild scrubbing agent, like Bon Ami, or Mrs. Meyer’s Kitchen Scrub.  Often it really depends on the tool that you’re doing the physical scrubbing with. An old toothbrush comes in very handy, as do sturdy brushes with scraping edges.  I often use the green scrubbing pads which I buy in large (6”X8”) sheets and cut to small (2”X2”) squares.

A good microfiber towel works well for dusting, but so does a well broken-in dish towel, or an old fashioned (clean!) diaper.  The attachments on the vacuum cleaner come in handy for this as well.

If you’re dealing with stains, lemons and hydrogen peroxide both work well.  Mother Earth News recently ran an article about homemade cleaners  in which they offer over a dozen recipes for basic household cleaners.  All of which are cheap and easily obtained.

And if things have gotten a bit musty over the past few months, never underestimate the power of fresh air to deodorize your home.  At the hottest part of the day, switch off the heater and throw open the windows, turn on the fans and let air flow through the house.  It’ll smell a lot better than any scent added to cleaners, even natural ones, that is unless another skunk got squashed on the road near you.

If you don’t want to make your own cleaning solutions, there are some good working products on the market.  Bon Ami products are generally entirely scent free, Mrs. Meyer’s are heavily scented with essential oils and Seventh Generation, an A+ rated company, has a full line of cleaning solutions, generally lightly scented with essential oils.  

It’s time for me to roll up my sleeves, get off the computer, and get cracking. This house needs my undivided attention!