Two years ago I was on a green home streak. My oldest daughter had allergies, I was tired all the time, and I was worried about all the chemicals I sprayed around our house on a daily basis. I decided to throw out all my harsh chemical cleaners and clean my house with nothing but baking soda, vinegar, castille soap, water, and elbow grease. The web sites said that was all I needed. I believed them because I can be naive that way. It turns out they were lying like a bleached blonde tramp in a poolroom full of whiskey shooting rednecks. Here’s a summary of my research.
Mold and Mildew
First off, I live in Virginia between two major rivers. There is a lot of humidity here. With humidity comes mold and mildew. It grows on trees. It grows on the side of your house. It grows in your shower. It grows on your front door. Before I went green I would add a bit of bleach to a bucket of water, slop it all the mold growth, and return later to find that the mold had disappeared. A quick spray with a hose and I was good for a month or more. No so with vinegar. The web site said it would fight mold and mildew. Maybe it does a good job on pansy ass mold that spends its days drinking wine and eating cheese. My mold is beer-guzzling steak-eating mold. It takes the freaking vinegar solution and makes a tasty marinade for the pig roast later that night. What I’m trying to say is vinegar was ineffective. I spent way too much time scrubbing my front door and showers with an environmentally friendly sponge. It was time I will never get back. Damn you, vinegar solution. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty when I bought the big ass jug of bleach at the grocery store. Bleach is an effective tool in the war against mold and mildew. I’m sorry it has to be that way, but that’s just the way it is.
Windows and Mirrors
Next up were the windows and mirrors. I tried five different homemade solutions. None of them worked. Maybe they would work on the household grime from a family that doesn’t have children and pets. They do not work on toothpaste dotted mirrors and dog saliva covered patio doors. All they do is spread the muck around and rearrange the dirt from a noticeable pawprint or splatter pattern into nasty streaks. I finally tried Method window wash. I have no idea if it’s any better for the environment than Windex. They don’t list what chemicals are in it. It has a nice minty smell instead of a chemically smell so I decided to use it instead. It did a little better than my homemade window wash. Not perfect, but good enough. I decided to skip the harsh cleaners and homemade cleaner in favor of this one. I also bought a pretty blue chamois to clean the windows with. At least I wasn’t killing trees.
Dusting
Dusting was the next challenge. I am proud to say that I am all natural when it comes to dusting. I found that a slightly damp (with water) baby washcloth works great. When I feel extremely ambitious I use orange oil to condition and polish the wood. I’ve also found that the allergen furnace filters, a HEPA air filter, and daily vacuuming can greatly reduce the amount of dusting I have to do in the first place.
Soap Scum
I have two girls. They like bubble baths. They like fancy soaps. They create a lot of soap scum. The amount of soap scum in my tub in any given year could be recycled in enough soap to clean more than one West Virginia coal miner. I’m talking Sunday morning clean not just a Wednesday clean. The best way I have found to get rid of soap scum is with a Mr. Clean Eraser. I start by softening the scum with a spray of very hot tap water and then scrub. It doesn’t take me much longer than scrubbing with harsh chemicals. The only drawback is I don’t get light headed and floaty when I’m done.
Laundry Detergent
Don’t get me started on homemade laundry detergent. Don’t waste your time, like I did, grating up castille soap and driving to hell and back to find washing soda. It’s not going to work. Your whites will not be white except where the soap dries out and leaves soap residue on your board stiff clothing. I’d suggest a front load washer and some HE detergent. I haven’t tried any of the commercial environmentally friendly detergents. If you have, let me know what you think of them.
Dishwasher Detergent
After the laundry incident I decided to not try the dish detergent. I might one day but today is not that day.
Miscellaneous
Tile floor get clean enough with a bucket of water, a little vinegar and a few drops of dish soap. You can add some essential oil for a clean smell.
Vinegar and baking soda works fairly well on copper.
Baking soda and a lemon in the garbage disposal freshens things up quite nicely.
Go ahead and try baking soda and vinegar in a clogged drain. It might work. Don’t hold your breath. It works a little better on a slow drain.
Tea tree oil is reputed to kill germs but I found the smell to be pretty bad and it caused a mild allergic reaction.
Do you have any environmentally friendly cleaning tips? How about a cleaning/not cleaning story? I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment or leave a link to a blog post. I’ll add the links here:
March 18th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Forget the Method, 7th Generation and the other non toxic cleaners. They are good for the enviroment but do not clean. One exception is Sun & Earth natural cleaning products. The laundry detergent is great and made for HE washers. The other cleaning products work and I can buy them in the grocery store, not in Whole Foods where everything is so expensive. More importantly they are the least expensive of all the natural cleaners I have tried. The products are made in the U.S.A., somewhere near Phila.
March 18th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Thanks Joe. I ordered the samples from Sun & Earth and I am looking forward to trying them out.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:10 am
It makes me nuts too.
WE have mold galore AND dogs too and the vinegar doesn’t cut it except for washing the floor.
It was the same when we got the carpets cleaned..we hired a crew that used this earth friendly orange cleaner…but it just couldnt’ cut it.
For laundry my nod to helping energy etc..is using the tide for cold water and always washing in cold.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I wash everything but bedding and towels in cold water and HE detergent. Hot water is supposed to kill dust mites and help out with my daughters allergies.
I was smart when we got new carpets. I bought the color my cream carpet turned into once we had kids. It’s still looking great three years later. :)
March 26th, 2007 at 8:29 am
My husband created and markets an earth friendly orange oil based cleaner. It conditions wood and if you use it along with a pressure washer will bring the color back into wood bleached gray by the sun. its removes soap scum very well. You just spray, let it sit for a few minutes and wipe. It will remove mold with a little bit of elbow grease (or a pressure washer, we use a pressure washer on the outside of our house) but not hours of scrubbing. I live in Arkansas so i know all about the mold your talkig about. Its not cheap though. Its 81 dollars for a gallon of concentrate.
what kind of window cleaning solution were you using. I use a strong mixture of vinegar and water and I have two cats, 2 large dogs, and 8 cats. I’ve never had trouble keeping my mirrors or windows clean.
March 26th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Dragonfly - I tried several different recipes I found from blog searches but none of them did very well. I don’t clean my windows very often. That might be part of the problem :)
If you like, I can add a link to your husbands cleaner in the blog post.
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I use Ecover products almost exclusively — like them hell-yeah-better than Sun and Earth (and I thought sun and earth was all right-enough).
I buy everything by the case.
Let’s see:
The all purpose cleaner works for everything and is safe for all floors (I have hardwood, lin., and tile)– excepting carpet… It is a clean, mild citrus scent. Vera’vera’ concentrated. A case lasts me about a year.
The Tile floor cleaner supposedly rocks (heard this from a friend, but I’m too ‘frugal’ to buy it, since the good ol’ all purpose cleaner works well.)
Dishwasher tablets outperformed/ were as good as the cascade complete in Consumer reports testing, and are cheaper (gasp!). Good for the environment too.
The dishwashing soap rocks — soooooo loyal to this one. I’ll never use another brand EVER. Once again, I get a year minimum out of a case, and we have a LARGE family and do lottsa dishes. WAYYYY better than anything out there, iwth a light, clean scent.
The Toilet Bowl Cleaner is my absolute fave of the bunch… it smells like those evergreen/pinetree-stickers I used to get from my first-grade teacher, for being good-ish… (I was an ornery kid), and cleans seriously better than the strongest stuff I’ve bought commercially. Once again, with two bathrooms, a case has lasted me over a year (It’s been a year and I’m only a third through the case, and I clean the bathroom everytime someone drops a load, pardon-the-french)
The mirror cleaner…. meh. Skip it. It has an annoying scent (too floral) and sucks at what it’s supposed to do. In all honesty, the best advice I received was to use straight rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle. But you can use Windex *g*
Guess this is a little late to reply, but I’m sure enjoying your blog… just couldn’t stop reading….
Naomi
April 4th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Thanks Naomi. I’ll have to try out a few of these. I never considered alcohol in a spray bottle. I’ll give that a try as well.