So I haven’t been cleaning much… May 21, 2008

This is what I’ve been up to:

 

I was so tired of my tea towels and hand towels falling all over the floor. Or being pulled down by a certain destructive and crazy 1 year old. So I dug out this crochet pattern in some obscure crochet mini-magazine I bought when we were living in an apartment before our house was finished being built. I bought it for the toddler poncho (that I never did make), who’d have thought I’d have needed the shell stitch tea towel? LOL. These were pretty fun to make, except the button-hole was BIG, those were the biggest buttons I could find and they are just barely big enough. Next time I’ll make that smaller. But at least for now, I’m not dealing with my towels hitting the dirty floor! Not that the floor is dirty, I’ve been mopping nearly every night, but you know what I mean .

My First Natural Cleaning Disaster. May 14, 2008

Okay, that might be exaggerating a bit. It’s a bad habit. So, I tried the most popular homemade dishwasher detergent recipe yesterday. Equal parts of Borax and Baking Soda in the dispenser, and vinegar as the rinse aid. It was a diaster. Oh, it cleaned fine, but there was a thick white powdery residue on the dishes. I know we have hard water, so I thought it was probably that, and decided to run the dishwasher again with my regular detergent to get the powder off. IT DIDN’T COME OFF. There is still a ton of residue over everything. So my dishwasher is going through another cycle with just vinegar in it. I’m crossing my fingers that it works. It appears I’m going to have to research this a bit more. Apparently I need something a little more involved then just those 2 ingredients.

 

Edited to add: The vinegar worked. I’m still working on a less powdery combination though.

Very simple carpet freshener. May 13, 2008

We have a stinky dog. I don’t know why he smells so bad. None of our other dogs did. But poor Buddha just has bad doggy BO. So in my attempt to keep the carpet smelling good between steam cleanings, I used basic baking soda, which works OK I guess. But I stumbled on a different recipe that works SO well, I have to write about it. You just need 3 ingredients.

1 cup baking soda

1 cup borax

15 drops of any nice smelling essential oil (I use lavendar, orange, peppermint, whatever I feel like).

Mix together and let sit for, oh, at least an hour or more.

Put in a container with holes to shake the powder with. (I bought some nifty glass ones at the dollar store that look like restaurant parmesean shakers). Shake powder onto carpet. Let sit for 15 min or more. One trick I read somewhere was to actually try to work the powder into the fibres, so I stomp on the carpet for a bit. After I vacuum it up, the room smells lovely, and stays that way for awhile. No more doggy smell!

I broke out my sewing machine and serger. May 10, 2008

I haven’t used them since before we moved – so nearly 3 years now. It took me awhile to get them going. I have to go buy some oil, since the old stuff leaked out of the bottle, but everything seemed to go pretty smoothly for sitting for a few years AND being moved.

Anyhow, the reason I’m writing about sewing is because I made some reusable Swiffer Wet Jet cloths! I took some old hemp fleece I had back from my diaper making days, and some old velcro, an old towel for the scrubbing side, and sort of just slapped everything together. Here they are (click to see larger picture, click twice to see the BIG pic):

 Yes, I know the velcro is a tad crooked, and the serging, is well, wonky in spots, but I haven’t sewn for 3 years so I think they turned out alright, especially considering my kids were seriously going nuts around me at the same time. They adhere perfectly to the wet jet, my only concern is that I didn’t make them absorbent enough, but this was more of a design test than anything. I’m going to try them in a bit to see if they’ll do a whole kitchen/dining. If not, I can use them for the bathrooms. I’m just glad I got my design figured out and that sewing after 3 years wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

 Edit: So I tried them out. Wowza! They absorb SO much more than I thought they would! The top wasn’t even wet after doing our whole kitching/dining. Pretty impressive for 2 layers of hemp fleece and 1 layer of an old cotton terry towel. It was a bit more difficult to push around, but it scrubs so much better. And when I’m done I just toss them in the dirty rag pail, and I can wash it all together. I can’t wait to make more!!!

Polishing stainless steel appliances. May 5, 2008

When I first moved into our new house, I was so excited about having stainless steel appliances – they looked so clean and modern.

It didn’t last.

I was used to just wiping down my appliances with a soapy cloth when they got dirty. Well, that didn’t work for my new appliances. It just made them streaky. So I went out and bought some disposable stainless steel polishing cloths, figuring that would solve my problem. They also streaked, and smelled bad. I finally ended up with some liquidy polishing stuff for stainless steel. It worked really well.

However, in my quest to find a more non-toxic solution, today I did an experiment to see what works best. In my searching for a good natural alternative, I found many ‘options’. The most prevalent were:

Non-diluted vinegar – wipe on with rag.

Isopropyl Alcohol – again, full strength, wipe on.

Olive Oil – put on rag, wipe on, then buff off with dry rag.

Baby Oil – same technique as Olive oil

Others included a soapy rag (tried that) and baking soda paste (made a huge mess), but I won’t include those.

The Vinegar didn’t work at all. Extremely streaky. Same with the Alcohol, although not as bad as the vinegar. The Olive Oil worked reasonably well, although not as well as the commercial product I have been using. Hands down, the baby oil worked the best, was every bit as good as the commerical product (and didn’t smell all chemical-y). Now, I know that baby oil is made from mineral oil & it’s a petroleum product. Olive oil, environmentally speaking, is probably the best choice. Cost-wise, baby oil is far cheaper. I suppose plain ol’mineral oil is the same too, although I’m not sure of the cost.

So, my choice is going to be baby oil for now, since I have some, and my baby girl’s skin reacts to it. I might as well use it for something.

 

I used the Glass Cleaner today. May 4, 2008

I made this recipe last night – I believe I found it on a recipe site, I didn’t write it down.:

Peppermint Glass Cleaner

1.5 cups vinegar

1 tsp borax

1/2 cup warm distilled water (I put 1 cup)

6 drops Peppermint Essential Oil

2 TBSP fresh squeezed Lemon OR 10 drops Lemon Essential Oil (I used the fresh squeezed Lemon juice).

Mix well and pour into a spray bottle with a funnel.

I found this recipe to clean reasonably well. I wouldn’t say as GOOD as Windex, but close. I’m going to tweak it a bit. I found it didn’t cut through the greasy lotion splatters on our window very well (please, don’t ask how those splatters got there!) but I don’t think it was meant for that. LOL. I’m going to tweak it next time I use it, I might add a drop of Dawn, or a TBSP of rubbing alcohol. I find that with this Cleaner, less is more. It doesn’t evaporate as quickly as, say, Windex, so there is a bit more rubbing involved, but the end result is pretty good. The vinegar smell isn’t overly strong either, the peppermint really balances it out. Overall, for my first try, I’m pleased!

EDIT: The next day I added both a drop of Dawn AND a tbsp of rubbing alcohol and the spray was much improved! An awesome substitute for any commercial glass cleaner!

One morning I woke up May 4, 2008

and walked into my kitchen. I realized I could still smell the Swiffer Wet Jet solution I had used to mop the floor the night before. Generally I like the smell of cleaners, even the toxic, chokingly smelly ones, but that this smell had lingered all night long seemed wrong, even to me. I realized I had to change my ways.

I’ve started this blog to document my journey from chemical cleaning junkie, to all natural cleaning goddess. *wink*

I had ‘dabbled’ in natural cleaning before. I’ve always WANTED to have a chemical free cleaning routine, but it seemed something always got in the way. A move here, a baby there (times 4). I got lazy. I cleaned so infrequently that it seemed I needed those extra strong nasty chemicals to eat through the layers of grunge. After baby #4 started crawling, I decided I was tired of living in a messy house, and proceded to do something about it. I splurged on a few convenience cleaning items and I am very proud I have managed, for the most part, to keep the house looking much better for the last few months.

The downfall being, I have really noticed how much money we spend on cleaners, and how many chemicals I am putting into our house affects our indoor air quality I’m sure.

The morning with the swiffer smell was a wake up call. There HAD to be a better way.

I spent the day looking for ways to open the wet jet bottle and make my own cleaning solution. It morphed into a week long search for natural cleaning recipes. I went out and bought some supplies, and am about to embark on my house detox journey. There is going to be a lot of trial and error. I’m looking for cleaners that REALLY work. I’ll never forget trying plain vinegar on my mirrors and ending up with a streaky mess, as well as a horrid smell. However, I am commited to finding the BEST of the best. Recipes and ingredients that rival the cleaning power of commercial cleaners are my goal. I will post what works and what doesn’t, right here on this blog.

Well, the kiddos are in bed and I have to go tidy up, I will post a trial of a glass cleaning recipe tomorrow.