Green Spring Cleaning

While we’ve got another several weeks before it’s officially spring, the fantastic weather this weekend - and sunshine streaming in through fingerprinted windows - has many of us thinking about freshening up our homes inside and out. When you’re tidying up inside, don’t automatically reach for a spray bottle of store-bought cleaner – they’re full of chemicals that aren’t listed on the labels that can be toxic to your family’s health, and their harmful fumes can aggravate asthma and allergies. To add insult to injury, most cleaners have synthetic fragrances – and hormone disrupting phthalates as fragrance carriers – added to try to mask the chemical smells. Go easier on your family, and your wallet, by cleaning your home with some simple recipes you can mix up yourself. I’ve been cleaning my home for the past several years with nothing more than white vinegar, baking soda, a can of Bon Ami, and a bit of castile soap. For a full library of great “green cleaning” recipes, check out Oregon Metro’s web site. Here are a couple of my favorite mixtures:

All-Purpose Cleaner: Add ½ cup vinegar to between 1 cup and 1 quart of warm water. (I just glug vinegar into my spray bottle about 1/3 of the way up, and then top off with water. I use this for windows, mirrors, bathrooms, counters, spots on the floor…)

Drain Cleaner: Pour ½ cup baking soda down the drain, followed by ½ cup vinegar. Cover the drain and let it sit for 15 minutes. Follow with a kettle full of boiling water. (The vinegar and baking soda make the “volcano” reaction that you might have used for an elementary school science project – fun for your kids to watch!)

If you need to disinfect, spray the area with vinegar, followed by 3% hydrogen peroxide (the kind you’d find at any drugstore), wait a minute or two and wipe clean. Don’t store the vinegar and peroxide in the same spray bottle. This has been tested by a food scientist at Virginia Tech, and when I spoke with her she said it would work as well as any commercial disinfectant. Super cheap too! Read more about the problems with standard disinfectants in the recent report by Women’s Voices for the Earth, Disinfectant Overkill.