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I'm a green convert - join me!
I'm on a quest to rid our house of harsh nasty chemicals and I started with making an all purpose cleaner. Amazingly, it worked better than anything else I've tried. I'm convinced!! I found myself trying to keep it off my hands out of habit so I had to keep telling myself I could LICK the bottle and still be fine!!
My recipe (loosely based on lots of recipes I found online)
-fill a squirt bottle half full of distilled white vinegar
-fill the rest of the bottle with water
-I added a few splashes of Dr. Bronner's soap
VOILA.
That's it. Super easy. And it WORKS. It smells a bit funky at first but the odor goes away. I've heard of people adding some real lemon juice to make it yummier.
My next quest will be laundry products. I guess there is fairly green detergent sold at Costco and I ordered some PVC free dryer balls from Nellie's Naturals.
Anyone else have any green "recipes" for household products? I'm all ears!!
Re: I'm a green convert - join me!
Nice! I've been doing the switch to natural cleaners as well and love it. Vinegar and baking soda work like a charm on everything.
Drain cleaner (like Drano)
1/4 cup baking soda (approximately, I just dump a bunch down the drain)
1/2 cup vinegar (use as much as needed to dissolve all the baking soda, love the chemical reaction)
Wait 5ish minutes,let it do it's magic and flush with hot water. It's worked better on our drains than anything else.
Nicole and Sam 10/3/09
I use vinegar/water and dishsoap - works so well! To scour the bathrooms and kitchen sink and stove I use baking soda and Dr. Bronner's. It's awesome.
After you've been using the natural stuff, if you ever use the chemical cleaners, you'll notice a major difference.
Mr. Sammy Dog
"soft scrub" -- mix dr. bronner's and baking soda into a paste. Works great on the sink, tub, tile and grout.
toilet bowl cleaner -- pour a bucket of water in to empty the toilet. sprinkle with baking soda and a little dr. b's and scrub. Flush and "rinse" with vinegar.
glass cleaner --1/4 cup vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon Dr. B, 2 cups of water in a spray bottle.
furniture polish - 1/4 cup vinegar or lemon juice and 1 tsp. jojoba oil (you can use olive oil)
Use vinegar in the rinse cycle to soften clothes and get out soap residue. Baking soda helps freshen extra stinky clothes and brightens.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
I use the two above when cleaning. For glass/mirrors I use 1/2 & 1/2 vinegar and warm water in a spray bottle and then the reuseable glass cloths.
For drains I use the 1/2 cup baking soda and then 1 cup vinegar and wait 30 minutes. Flush with hot water for 1 minute. Then I take 1/4 of a lemon or lime or orange and 1 ince cube and run the disposal to clean and freshen it.
I use a paste with baking soda and water frus scrubbing most anything.
I'm curious about this one. How much vinegar do you use and when do you put it in? Do you just dump it in on the clothes?
I've heard of doing this between cycles to clean out the washing machine. I think when we switch to the new detergent I'd love to give it a good "cleaning." I suspect our washing machine is kind of gunked up because clothes are coming out smelling REALLY strongly of detergent - I'm worried the clothes aren't getting fully rinsed for some reason. I fear a lump of dog hair stuck in there somewhere clogging stuff because we often wash the "dog blankets".
Any input on this would be greatly appreciated. :-)
***
I'm SO glad to hear other people are doing all of this too! How funny that stuff that is relatively cheap and super easy to find does all of these things!
I don't know that I'll ever be brave enough to use Dr. Bronner's as toothpaste like they advertise...but I'll use it for probably everything else. :-)
I started making this over the summer. Easy peasy. I used Ivory Soap in my latest batch.
Laundry Detergent
A SIMPLE RECIPE
Each batch yields approximately 32 ounces (between 32-64 loads based on how many Tbsp used per load).
1 bar of shaved bar soap (I use a cheese grater) (Ivory, ZOTE, Fels-Naptha)
1 cup of borax
1 cup of washing soda
Thoroughly stir together for 5 minutes and enjoy the results! That?s it folks?seems too good to be true, but it is true indeed!
I have also been using borax to clean my toilet, bathroom sink, and tub.
I use vinegar instead of fabric softner.
I use the auto detailing micro-fiber cloths instead of disposable swiffer cloth things (I just wrap one on my swiffer sweeper). I use those micro-fiber cloths a lot, like dusting or cleaning up spills.
I also only use vinegar and water on our wood floors, too. Although I have heard good things about Bona Care, I am just cheap and keep putting it off.
Murphy's can actually be bad if your floors have been installed/refinished in the last 30 years or so (don't quote me on the date) but if they aren't wax finished, you don't need Murphy's. I have heard the same goes for Pledge and most wood furniture made recently.
Boy/girl twins born at 37w1d and 37w2d
I don't know the date either but I've seen the results of Murphy's first hand. My parents had theirs refinished a while back and what a mess. The new stain (or maybe it was the poly, I can't remember) bubbled up. They had to have someone come back out to redo it differently.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
I put it in the rinse cycle. I don't measure but I'd say maybe half a cup or so. I do it mainly for darks that I air dry otherwise I feel like they have white linty type stuff on them.
I always wonder about the dog fur, too. It has to go somewhere, but where?
I've used it for toothpaste, shampoo and body wash. I was pretty creeped out about it but I was whitewater rafting and I didn't have the space to bring a bunch of different stuff.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
Our washer drains into our giant 1950's concrete laundry tub/sink. (I'm pretty sure that isn't up to code....oh well.) :-) We have a mesh lint catcher thing on the end of the hose that drains and it fills up with dog hair often. I wonder if there is some stuck down in the tube too closer to the machine. Either way I have very hairy dogs and it needs to get out somehow! :-) I'm going to go ahead and try some vinegar in the next load.
I too use vinegar in my laundry. I wish I could use it for other cleaning, but the smell of it makes me ill. (There's seriously a gene that makes people hate vinegar. I have the gene. I cannot stomach vinegar in food either.) I use Method and 7th Generation products instead.
Anyway, for the laundry, I put about a half of a cup in the fabric softener dispenser. It also works fabulously for removing the mildew smell in towels. Sometimes I add even more than half a cup, and I'll put some in the detergent spot too. (I have a front-loading machine.) Vinegar in laundry also makes colors not run.
Another thing I do is cut up DH's old undershirts into squares to use when I do things like clean off the kitchen counters. Basically I use them in place of paper towels. Works great and are washable and reusable.
We have the same laundry set up and 2 cats. I switched from a lint catcher to an old pair of nylons. I wear knee highs a lot for work so I just attach one to the end of the hose that sits in the sink with a rubber band. It's long enough to keep the lint from building up in the hose but I still have to change it once a month or so. You'd be amazed at what that thing catches!