Make your house sparkling clean and gloriously green with these simple cleaning tips using environmentally friendly cleaning process and products.
Going green at home is often one of the first steps to a sustainable lifestyle. Adopting environmentally friendly cleaning products at home is a great place to start on the path to non-toxic living.
With the environmental damage caused by chemicals, it’s important to rethink the way in which we care for our home. Now is the time to look at environmentally friendly cleaning processes at home.
Opting For An Environmentally Friendly Cleaning Process At Home
In the race to develop chemical-based modern cleaning products, we’ve lost sight of tried and true cleaning options. Natural green cleaning products are a smart way to clean your house the safe, non-toxic way.
Take a look at these handy tips for green cleaning in your home with store-bought cleaning solutions, or try environmentally friendly cleaning products at home in your kitchen, bathroom, toilet, and windows.
Environmentally Friendly Cleaning Products
Almost every natural cleaning product today uses the same cleaners our grandparents used. These ingredients are not all completely safe so where possible try to keep them away from your children and your pets
However, they are less toxic than many commercial cleaners, and a lot less expensive. A good natural cleaning kit includes many items you can find in your cupboard.
7 Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products You Have In Your Cupboard
- Baking soda: Sodium bicarbonate is a gritty scrubbing agent, which also reacts with acid based products such as lemon and vinegar
- Washing soda: Sodium carbonate is a caustic cleaner, a stain remover, and a laundry cleaner
- Borax: Disinfects, whitens and deodorizes
- White Vinegar: disinfects and loosens dirt
- Lemon juice – disinfects, cuts through grease
- Olive Oil: Picks up dirt and is also useful for polishing wood.
- Castile Soap: An all-purpose foaming cleaner.
Commercially Available Green Cleaning Products
A number of green cleaning products are commercially available. One of the benefits of going commercial green is there is no measuring or mixing and they have proven to be effective in the home with less effort than home-mixed options.
Homemade or DIY cleaners do a good job but they usually demand more scrubbing and scouring to get surfaces as clean when compared to a good-quality, green commercial cleaning product.
Happily, commercial-grade green cleaning options are readily available for window, floor, bathroom, oven, kitchen and all-purpose cleaning applications.
Windows of Opportunity
Rather than using harsh, chemical-based cleaning products for your windows, try cleaning your windows by adding 1/4 cup of vinegar to 2 or 3 cups of water. If you wish, add a few drops of liquid detergent. If you prefer to avoid using artificial fabric cloths to wipe down your windows, use a clean old cotton rag or even a wipe made from old newspaper if newspaper inks aren’t a concern.
Turn Your Bathroom Green
Most bathrooms typically are enclosed, high humidity areas with less than stellar ventilation. In these situations avoiding breathing in toxic chemical vapours in favour of green cleaners make a lot of sense.
Most bathroom cleaning needs respond to using baking soda and vinegar as a toilet scrub, while borax also enjoys rave reviews as a tile and tub scrubbing agent.
Drain Your Cleaning Troubles Away
The easiest way to prevent drains clogging is to use a strainer to keep hair, food and material from building up in the drain. If you cook with a lot of oils, try pouring a pot of boiling water down the drain once a week to flush residual fats and oils away.
When it’s time to unclog that troublesome drain, first try using a plunger, this often works faster and more effectively than even powerful chemicals. If your drain is still proving troublesome, try adding 1/2 cup of white vinegar to 1/2 cup of baking soda, then combine, pour down the affected drain then cover the drain.
The resulting foaming pressure should work its magic. Another option is to blend 1/2 cup of salt and an equal amount of baking soda, followed by pouring 6 cups of boiling water down the drain. Wait a few hours, then flush the drain with cold water.
Green Cleans Wooden Surfaces Too!
There are many different recipes available for cleaning wooden surfaces. Most involve a combination of olive oil and vinegar. The ratio of vinegar, oil and water can vary depending on the type of wood and how the wood surface is finished.
For wood floors, try 1/4 cup of vinegar mixed into in 1 gallon of hot water. To clean wood furniture, begin by mixing 1 cup of vinegar with 1 teaspoon of oil.
Oven Magic
Life has been good since the introduction of the self-cleaning oven. If you don’t possess one of the wonderful beasts you are in for an interesting time. There aren’t many green cleaning options that work in oven environments and commercial oven cleaners tend to favour the caustic product approach using lavish amounts of toxic compounds.
Die hard DIY cleaning advocates recommend sprinkling baking soda on the oven surfaces, then spritzing water on the baking soda and leaving it to soak overnight. Yes, I know this makes cleaning the top and sides of the oven interesting!
The following morning, scrub and scour the over using lavish amounts of Mark One muscle. Alternatively, opt a commercial oven cleaner and use it carefully and selectively. After cleaning, remember to place a layer of foil at the bottom of your oven to make this cleaning chore easier the next time around.
Fresh Air Is A Green Cleaning Option
Don’t kill yourself, your children or your beloved family pets just to get a sweet smelling house. Many commercial household air fresheners you buy in the supermarket contain hormone-disrupting chemicals known as phthalates.
Keeping your house clean will usually eliminate most odours. Alternatively, try natural odour-eaters such as vinegar or baking soda. However, by far the best air freshener of all remains fresh air and an open window!
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Final Word
Adopting organic and environmentally friendly cleaning products goes a long way in going green at home. Looking back to simpler solutions for inspiration enable us to still use clean, innovative technologies while enabling us to become more environmentally responsible. Keeping in mind these basic principles of green cleaning will keep you on track as you become greener around the home.
