Transitioning to Simple Homemade Cleaners
To clean our houses and ourselves, we don’t need toxic brews of ingredients we can’t pronounce, emptying our wallets while polluting our own households and the greater natural environment. Many conventional commercial products release hazardous organic compounds which stay in the air all day; some cause eye irritation or respiratory problems, and many have been linked to cancer.
Instead we can use home remedies with simple combinations of baking soda, salt, water, vinegar, and/or lemon. There are also eco-friendly commercial products such as Seventh Generation, ECOS and ECover brands.
Christina Kiefer teaches classes on environmental household strategies, as a naturalist at the Forest Park Nature Center in Peoria, Illinois. In her own home, Kiefer uses a lot of water, vinegar and baking soda to clean, disinfect and deodorize. “It smells a little bit, but it disappears very quickly,” she says. Nothing could smell worse than some of the horrible chemicals in conventional cleaning products, I think! She explains that traditional cleaners are filled with chemicals we don’t know much about, yet we use them around our homes, children and pets, trusting that we would not be sold something so toxic.
“There are 70,000 chemicals approved by the EPA to be used in cleaners,” she says, “and there’s only a small amount of those that have information available on what effects there may be on human health.” Homemade recipes are as effective as commercial products, she explains. “There are a lot of home remedies out there that work really well,” Kiefer said. “I didn’t expect them to work as well as they did.
“Living a life free of toxic products, is a step-by-step process, she says. (Phew, I think to myself, because I can’t figure this out all at once!) It takes some time and experimentation to find alternatives. “I feel more confident by being educated,” Kiefer says, “reading labels and trying out alternative products.” A few of her favorite homemade recipes are: an all-purpose cleaner made with 1 quart warm water plus 4 tablespoons baking soda plus 1 teaspoon vinegar; carpet stains take baking soda plus water or club soda; windows and glass take half-part vinegar plus half-part water or rubbing alcohol plus water; the toilet bowl takes 1/2 cup liquid soap plus 2 cups baking soda, mix well, then add 1/4 cup water plus 2 tablespoons vinegar to make foam.
Here’s a great resource about the infinite uses of baking soda for personal care, kitchen, bathroom, laundry, camping, and more. This site discusses becoming dentally self-sufficient, including recipes for homemade toothpaste.
http://www.ecospace.cc/home/green-household-cleaners-1107.htm
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