Spring Recycling

The other day, a friend was telling me how she'd joined a group online called Messies Anonymous to help her get better organized and become, well, less messy. As she was describing the qualities of a Messy Person, I realized, "Oh, my gosh! That's me!"

Case in point:


This is my bedroom closet. It's supposed to be a walk-in closet, but we can't walk into it because because of all the crap on the floor. We haven't been able to walk into it for, oh, four or five months now. Maybe longer. I forget.

You see, I have this little problem where I know something can be recycled, so I don't throw it away. But then I never recycle it. It just sits around our house for months and months, causing clutter and getting in the way. I swear I didn't have this problem before I went green. Going green has turned me into a packrat!

Spring is often thought of as the season where you throw open the shutters, dig out the cleaning supplies, and deep clean. Well I've decided that this year's spring cleaning for me needs to be all about the recycling.

In that closet pictured above, I have a phone, two laptops, two cameras, a lamp, a wheat grinder, some metal containers, a printer, and a scanner. I need to sell the laptops, put the printer on Freecycle, and see if my husband can fix the scanner. The phone, lamp, wheat grinder, and metal containers can all be recycled at my local recycling drop-off location. I'm pretty sure I can recycle cameras...must research.

In another corner of my bedroom, I have this pile of boxes that's headed for the recycling bin.

I scrounged up all this from under our sinks. The caps are headed for Aveda and the toothbrushes for Whole Food's Gimme 5 bin. To recycle the toothpaste tubes, I need to remove the top plastic part, and then it can go in my regular recycling bin. One of the reasons we use Tom's of Maine toothpaste is because it comes in an aluminum tube rather than plastic.


Last but not least, I've got this monstrous pile of clothing that must be sorted. It's all stuff we've outgrown, stained, or ripped beyond repair. Clothing with fabric I like will be cut up and saved for future sewing projects. (I have high hopes that I'll get to that some day.) The rest will be taken to Goodwill.

All right, I'm off to do some recycling.

How's your spring cleaning going?

____________________

You have hereby been challenged to go green in a year without going broke! Check out the last challenge, or view the whole list of Challengicious Mondays. Sign up for my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, and join my "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook!

• This post was shared at Works for Me Wednesday
  

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Recipes for Homemade Household Cleaners

:: Here are the recipes I use for glass cleaner, all-purpose cleaner, floor cleaner, and wood furniture duster from Better Basics for the Home. And here's the recipe I use for Febreze.

:: Care2 provides a step-by-step guide to creating your own non-toxic cleaning kit, including a creamy soft scrubber, window cleaner, oven cleaner, all-purpose spray, furniture polish, vinegar deodorizer, and mold killers.

:: You can find recipes for laundry detergent at The Simple Dollar and Make it From Scratch and homemade HE laundry detergent at Condo Blues.

:: At the Green Phone Booth, Greeen Sheeep has a recipe for dishwasher detergent.

Need a Reason to Care?




Who else cares about household cleaners?

:: The Environmental Working Group is the go-to source for information about chemicals, toxicity, and health.

:: If you believe in ingredient disclosure and toxic chemical policy reform, check out the Million Baby Crawl and push for the passage of the Kid Safe Chemicals Act.

:: Healthy Child, Healthy World is a great resource for information about kids and chemicals, such as this article on the The Top Ten Products You Don't Need.

:: Jennifer Taggart is the Smart Mama who writes about keeping your homes safe from harmful chemicals.

:: Fake Plastic Fish wrote an in-depth post about the many uses of baking soda.

:: Wisebread lists 254 uses for vinegar...and counting.

:: Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living is the definitive resource for homemade non-toxic cleaning supplies, beauty supplies, and more.

Why do you care?

____________________

You have hereby been challenged to go green in a year without going broke! Check out the latest challenge, or view the whole list of Challengicious Mondays here.

Like what you see? Sign up for my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, and join my "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook! You can also find me over at The Green Phone Booth.

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Challengicious Monday: Green Your Household Cleaners

Mondays are challengicious at The Conscious Shopper. Here's your next trash-related challenge:

Green Your Household Cleaners

My household cleaners (the oatmeal container is really borax)

To complete this challenge, you can...

BABY STEPS

• Buy less toxic commercial cleaners. Look for products that disclose their ingredients, and avoid chlorine, ammonia, glycol ethers, monoethanolamine (MEA), diethanolamine (DEA), triclosan, alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs), pthalates, and petroleum-based ingredients. Also note that the labels "natural," "organic," and "biodegradable" are not regulated for use on cleaning products and can be misleading or inaccurate.

JOGGING STRIDE

• Buy less toxic commercial cleaners in concentrated or bulk sizes. Provide your own water and save unnecessary packaging.
  

MARATHON RUNNER

• Make your own household cleaners. Making your own cleaners is so easy. Here are a couple household cleaner recipes to get you started, and I'll have a few more for you later this week.

I lumped this challenge with the other trash challenges because it didn't seem to fit anywhere else. But if you just take the Baby Step, greening your household cleaners probably isn't going to make much of a difference on your trash production. On the other hand, choosing greener cleaners will reduce your exposure to potentially toxic chemicals and prevent those chemicals from contaminating your water source

If you choose the Jogging Stride or Marathon Runner steps, you'll produce less waste and save your family money!

Will you take the challenge?

____________________

You have hereby been challenged to go green in a year without going broke! Check out the last challenge, or view the whole list of Challengicious Mondays.

Like what you see? Sign up for my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, and join my "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook! You can also find me over at The Green Phone Booth.

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More on My Charlie's Soap Internal Debate

I received a response from Taylor Sutherland, president of Charlie's Soap, earlier this week (as I've said before, their terrific customer service is one of the reasons I've always liked this company). Here's what he had to say:

Howdy,

I've attached a note from Charlie that goes to the heart of why we're really hesitant to fully disclose all the workings of Charlie's Soap. Long story short, no one makes detergent this way. It was a breakthrough that has never occurred to the Big Boys so we just don't tell them. If they found out, we'd be out of business because they'd copy it and we wouldn't be able to compete. Butyl celosolve has been the subject of misinformation for years now. It rhymes with methyl and ethyl celosolve and those two are horrible to be around. The amount of Butyl that we use breaks down in the earth completely in a month (97.3% in 28 days) and is non-toxic based on a the recommendation by Duke University. The scale they use is that 50 parts per million in the air (a dense fog of pure Butyl celosolve) is the limit for being non-toxic. We use a tiny percentage in water. If you smell the product you're smelling a microscopic fraction of the 50 parts per million which is the non-toxic level.

On a personal note, we made Charlie's Soap to be safe not only on paper or for a government regulation, but because when it was created, we knew personally all the workers at the textile plant that were going to be using it. Being sued is bad enough, but being made a pariah because you made Mrs. Collins from down the street sick is MUCH worse. We made Charlie's Soap to such exacting standards of efficacy and safety for just that purpose. And 16 years (1976 to 1992) in industry work with no recordable safety incidents speaks volumes. These people were using it 25% strength all day long, hosing down machinery, scrubbing and rinsing. The were soaked head to toe all day long in Charlie's Soap. I personally was bathed in it as a young baby. My brother has MCS and actually makes the product getting raw ingredients all over himself and he's fine.

I hope this helps give you a better understanding just how safe Charlie's Soap is but also give you an idea of just how secretive we have to be, within the law, of course.

According to the document he had attached, here's what's in Charlie's Soap:

• The powdered laundry detergent (what I use) contains coconut oil based surfactants, sodium carbonate, sodium silicate, and soda ash.

• The liquid laundry detergent contains coconut oil based surfactants, sodium carbonate, soda ash, and water.

• The all-purpose cleaner contains coconut oil based surfactants, a natural solvent (this must be the butyl celosolve), sodium carbonate, soda ash, and water.

It also says that their products have been tested for toxicity by Duke University, for biodegradability by Japan Food Research Labs, and for effectiveness by SGS U.S. Testing Labs.

What I Think

I can totally see their point - as a small company, they're worried about losing market share to bigger companies if their formula is revealed. But from a consumer standpoint, how can I decide if a product is safe if I don't know what's in it? Because Duke University says it's safe? There are so many ingredients that companies claim are safe that independent researchers say are not. Think BPA. So how do I know who to trust?

The other problem is with the generic label "coconut based surfactants," which I see on all sorts of "all natural" products. I learned today from Jennifer the Smart Mama that sodium lauryl sulfate is a coconut based surfactant, and that's one of those ingredients that we're supposed to be avoiding. So it almost seems like companies are using the term "coconut based surfactant" to avoid admitting that they're using ingredients their customers might not be happy about.

What Now?

I'm always coming back to the same old questions about non-toxic cleaning products and beauty supplies. For now, there just don't seem to be products in those categories that meet all of my qualifications: non-toxic, affordable, and get the job done.

It's like with my whole shampoo dilemma: the non-toxic products that I tried left my hair a greasy mess, and I'm sorry but I'm no dirty hippy. But the Lush shampoo bar with sodium lauryl sulfate leaves my hair looking normal. And it's affordable and comes with zero packaging.

Or the makeup dilemma: the makeup brands that score really well on Skin Deep are way out of my price range. But I can find organic makeup in recycled paper packaging from my corner drugstore.

For now, does the answer have to be less toxic is good enough?

I'm interested to hear your opinions both on the Charlie's Soap issue and the wider non-toxic/less toxic dilemma!

____________________

You have hereby been challenged to go green in a year without going broke! Check out the latest challenge, or view the whole list of Challengicious Mondays.

Like what you see? Sign up for my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, and join my "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook! You can also find me over at The Green Phone Booth.

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I'm Tired, and I Need to Vent

Sometimes the purpose of having a blog is to vent, and today I feel like I need to vent...

I've been using Charlie's Soap laundry detergent for four years - ever since we switched to cloth diapers. I've always loved it: It's made by a small company here in North Carolina, and when I've contacted them, I've gotten quick responses from the president of the company. I've been happy with how well it gets my clothes clean - with no added fragrance to cover up any lingering smells. It's a really affordable product - $.10 per load if you buy it in bulk (which is the same cost as making my own laundry detergent and cheaper than Tide, the last time I checked), and I know they're working on getting stores to provide their product in bulk bins. And I thought I knew what was in it...

Then a couple days ago I read a review of Charlie's Soap on Kitchen Stewardship, and Katie mentioned that the Charlie's Soap all-purpose cleaner contains an ingredient called butylcelosolv. This ingredient is not listed on the Charlie's Soap bottle as far as I know, but Katie emailed the company to find out what was in the product because she noticed that it stinks. They claim that butylcelosolv is a safe, non-toxic ingredient, but when I googled the term, I found some not-too-pleasant results, including this one from The Good Human.

I don't use their all-purpose cleaner because I make my own, but finding out that their "non-toxic and biodegradable" cleaner contains an ingredient that might not be wonderful made me wonder if there's anything in the laundry detergent that I should be worried about. The packaging of the laundry detergent says it contains washing soda, sodium silicate, and coconut-derived detergents and also says that the product is non-toxic and biodegradable. Because I like the company, I accepted that. But have I been a victim of green-washing?

To be honest, I'm not sure I'd stop using Charlie's Soap either way. Even with the butylcelosolv in the all-purpose cleaner - the jury seems to be out on how bad of a chemical that is. I've always been happy with Charlie's Soap, I think they're a great company, and I'm not super strict about possibly toxic chemicals in my life at this point. There's still sodium lauryl sulfate in my Lush shampoo. My make-up is a mess. I color my hair. Let's face it - in this category, I'm falling really short right now (though I'm making progress at doing better).

What's bothering me is that I'm really really really tired of having to try so hard. Why do I have to read the label on every single product I buy? Even for the companies I thought I trusted? And besides that, I'm not a chemist. I don't know very much about chemicals or how they react with each other or what by-products are produced when they're made. And for goodness sake, I shouldn't have to!

I am so tired of not being able to trust any companies and feeling like the only answer is to do it myself. I don't want to have to make my own laundry detergent. I don't want to have to grow all my own food or make all my own clothes. And I don't want to have to be a chemist and a botanist and a farmer and a seamstress and a gourmet chef on top of all my other roles in life.

I just want to be able to go to the store and believe that when a product says non-toxic or recyclable or organic or fair trade, it really is.

I'm reminding myself that my word of the year is PATIENCE, but sometimes patience can make a person really really tired.

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Make Your Own: Homemade Febreze

I have a five-year-old bottle of Febreze that's starting to get on the low side. Obviously judging by how long I've had it, I don't use Febreze often. But let's face it. There are just some times when you need a quick and easy way to cover up a smell. (Like when your potty training child has an accident and you have guests coming over any minute. I know I'm not the only one who's been there...)

I decided to try making my own Febreze mainly because the ingredients list on the back of the bottle is awfully cryptic: water, alcohol, odor eliminator derived from corn, fragrance. "Odor eliminator derived from corn?" What does that mean? And what kind of fragrance? Natural? Synthetic? I have this thing about only using products when I can identify the ingredients.

I tried googling for homemade deodorizers, but most of the recipes I found involved fabric softener, which I haven't bought since back when I was battling Second Son's eczema (and we haven't missed it). I think you can probably find some eco-friendly fabric softeners, so if you're interested in that recipe, here's a link.

I think a greener solution would be this recipe from my favorite resource, Better Basics for the Home:

8 drops lavendar oil
4 drops each bergamot and clove oil
2 drops oil of peppermint
1/2 cup vodka
1/2 cup distilled water

Combine the ingredients in a spray bottle and shake well. Spritz into the air four or five times in areas you feel need freshening, being careful to avoid your eyes when spraying.

Other Resources

:: Best Green Home Tips uses the same recipe but with alternate essential oil combinations.

:: Darla Shine's Happy Housewives Club has a recipe with the simple combination of lemon juice, baking soda, and water.

:: About My Planet provides a number of suggestions for naturally eliminating odors, including making your own potpourri.


Photo by KitAy

This post was included in the Make It From Scratch Carnival on August 25 at It's Frugal Being Green.

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Reduce Clutter: Start a Swap Network

This post is my submission for the Green Moms Blog Carnival. The topic is "Green Spring Cleaning." Check out the musings of all the great Green Moms on March 10 at Tiny Choices.

I have a huge pile of stuff in my bedroom. It's taking up one corner, and sometimes creeps toward the center of the room until I fight it back into the corner with a couple of swift kicks. My husband keeps asking me, "Why is that stuff there?" I keep telling him, "I'm going to give it away when I get around to it."

It's almost spring, so now is a good time to work on reducing the clutter. I could sell it on Craigslist, but...I don't enjoy selling things - I'd rather give stuff away. So I could Freecycle it, but...I'd rather give it to someone I know. And that's why I'm starting a Swap Network.

I'm sure I read about Swap Networks somewhere, but when I tried to research the concept for this post, Google was a bust. So maybe I made it up. Either way, I think it's a good idea. :)

(But if I stole this idea from you, please let me know so I can give you credit.)

There are three advantages to being part of a Swap Network, rather than just using Craigslist or Freecycle:

1. Besides swapping stuff, you can also trade time and skills. For example, I'm hoping to utilize my Swap Network as a babysitting co-op, coordinating babysitting trades and playdates with my friends.
   
2. You can borrow and lend, rather than just give stuff away. Say you're a poor college student with a tiny lawn and no lawnmower, and your neighbors are starting to give you the cold shoulder because your lawn has turned into a jungle. (True story, by the way.) Wouldn't it be great to have a network of friends with lawnmowers who would loan you one for a weekend? Or friends with tools? Or a Wii? (Everybody needs a friend with RockBand.)
   
3. You swap with people you know, building a sense of community and friendship.

Ideally, you would create a Swap Network with your neighbors, perhaps through your homeowner's association. You could utilize your association's newsletter or website for posting needs and wants. You would get to know your neighbors, and the stuff wouldn't have to travel far.

But since I'm new to the area, and I live in an apartment mostly housed by college students who are constantly changing, I'm going to try the Swap Network with friends from church. My plan is to set up a Ning page where we can post our needs and wants, and then swap the items at church, since we all see each other there once or twice a week anyway.

Sample ads would look like this:

I have a huge pile of baby boy stuff that my kids have outgrown, including an infant carseat, an Exersaucer, a bunch of clothes, and some toys. If you would like any of these things, let me know!

I am going to a fancy wedding this weekend. Anyone have a dress I could borrow?

I would like to learn to knit. Who knows how and would be willing to share their skills? Could we start a knitting group?

I need to spiffy up my wardrobe. Anyone want to be part of a clothes swap?

You get stuff you want, get rid of stuff you don't, trade skills, and make friends. What could be more fun than a Swap Network?

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Laundry Day

I hate, hate, hate doing laundry. It is my least favorite of all chores because it is so mindlessly time-consuming. If I were ever to consider paying someone else to do my household work, laundry would be the first chore to go.

When my husband and I first got married, he was assigned to laundry duty, but he never did it the way I wanted (nothing ever got folded and put away), and since I am a control freak, I decided to do it myself.

Since laundry is such a time-consuming task and relates to three of my Baby Steps toward energy efficiency, I've thought a lot about laundry over the past month, so I wanted to share some thoughts and also get some feedback.

• Shift your load to off-peak times.
• I halfheartedly attempted to do this at first by waiting to toss a load into the washer until right before I went to bed. Then I got the bright idea of looking on my energy company's website to figure out when times are off-peak in my area. Turns out that you have to sign up for a Time of Use policy to get off-peak rates, and since I'm in an apartment, this isn't really an option for me. It's worth looking into in your area, though.

• Question: Even though I'm not saving money, I'm assuming it would still be saving energy to do loads at off-peak times, right? Is it worth the hassle? Update: Yes, it still saves energy to do loads at off-peak times. I've found though that I never remember to turn the dryer on at the end of the day because I'm tired.
  

• Wash clothes in cold water.
• I had long ago switched to doing some of my laundry in cold water. Our weekly laundry includes about three loads of colored clothes washed in cold; one load of white clothes (mostly underwear), two loads of towels and cleaning rags, and a load of sheets washed in warm; and two or three loads of diapers washed in hot. According to my energy company, by doing those three loads a week in cold, I'm saving $4.80 a month. If I were to wash the whites, towels, and sheets in cold, I would save an additional $6.40, for a total of $11.20 a month.

• Question: Is it safe to wash underwear, towels, and sheets in cold water? Seems like that wouldn't kill all the nasties. Update: I ultimately decided that it wasn't worth the health risk to me to wash underwear, towels/rags, and sheets in cold. My kids don't always wipe well, I use rags to clean the bathroom, and I have bad allergies. Lots of people do it though, so give it a try.
  

• Give the dryer a rest.
• I've been saying forever that I would line dry my clothes if only I had a yard. I decided it was time I stopped putting it off, so I've worked out a system where I can line dry all of our clothes and some diapers (excluding small things like underwear, socks, and cloth wet wipes) by hanging them on hangers over shower curtain rods and empty spots in the closet. I was worried this would end up making laundry time last even longer. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case, but I have had to spread laundry out over the week instead of doing it all on one day. Eventually, I'd like to get one of these so I can do towels and sheets and such too. (Luckily, my older sister does not read this blog, or at this point she'd be dying over my tackiness.)

• Tip: To keep your clothes from getting wrinkly while line drying, pop them in the dryer for about 10 minutes before hanging them up to dry. This seems to be working for us, and I've discovered something amazing: some poly/cotton blends are dry after only 10 minutes in the dryer!
  

Some Thoughts on Laundry Detergent
I've been using Charlie's Soap ever since I switched to cloth diapers because it's supposed to be good for people with sensitive skin. Yesterday, I went to Whole Foods to pick up some more and discovered that they've changed their packaging from paper bags to cloth bags. This seemed like an odd switch, so I emailed the company to find out more. Here's their response, which they posted on their website:

These new cloth bags were developed because many of our customers were having trouble with breakage. Too much money was being lost in soap spilled all over I40 and beyond from the back of UPS vans. These new bags are much more durable, and yet since they're natural cotton and contain no plastic, they can be thrown away and will go right back to nature. If you wish, you can use them for small item (glasses, credit cards, marbles?) storage. We'll even run a promotion for a free gift to the person with the best story of how they used them.

Then they emailed me this additional awesome response:

Above is what was posted online. To expound on that, the company that provided the paper bags for us has time and again shown themselves to be not worth doing business with. First they kep pushing their delivery dates back every time we asked for an update. Then when the finally did deliver, each time since the first order placed with them a few years back, the bags themselves got shoddier and shoddier. Since we could not find another domestic source for paper bags, we made the decision to step away from them altogether and go with something that would ultimately hold up better during shipping, be more pleasing to the eye, and yes, be reusable. Many other vendors are thinking of providing Charlie's Soap in buckets that their customers would come back and fill their bags from. This is something we're pursuing with Whole Foods.

The bags are honestly very cute (they're about the size of a one pound flour bag), and I have always had great success using Charlie's Soap on my clothes. Plus, anyone who reads my blog knows I'm a sucker for great customer service. So...

Last Question: Any ideas for how to reuse the Charlie's Soap laundry detergent bags? Update: These would make great produce bags, but I'm really hoping Whole Foods will start selling Charlie's Soap in bulk as mentioned in the second email.

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Speaking of Not Disclosing Ingredients...

I mentioned in my last post that one of the reasons I make my own cleaners is that it bothers me that commercial cleaners don't disclose their ingredients. Let me explain more about why I think that's important.

I'm assuming that none of you are purposely ingesting your household cleaners, but they still get into our bodies in other ways: inhaling them, touching them, drinking them in our water. It's even worse with our hair and body products (which also don't disclose ingredients). We purposely rub shampoo into our scalps, lotion onto our skin, deodorant onto our underarms, etc. And most people never give a second thought to what they're putting on their bodies.

I tend to be pretty cynical when it comes to harmful chemicals. Let's face it. Everything is harmful. Everything causes cancer. There's not really much you can do about it in our modern society. You're going to be poisoned in some way.

What bothers me, though, is that the companies making these products have no accountability for the things they're making. They have no need to feel accountable because the government has basically given them a free pass on this.

Our government has a sort of "innocent until proven guilty" attitude when it comes to chemicals. In 1976, they created the Toxic Substances Control Act, which requires a company to submit a new chemical notification to the EPA before putting the chemical into a commercial product. The EPA then reviews the notification, but little (if any) testing is done to determine if the chemical is safe, and the company does not have to prove the chemical is safe before getting approval. Then the company is allowed to use the chemical in commercial products until it is proven dangerous. So first the EPA has to suspect the chemical is dangerous, and then it has to prove its suspicions are true before the chemical will be taken off the market. Also, the 62,000 chemicals that were already in use before the act was passed were automatically assumed to be safe, without any additional testing.

I'm sure I'm oversimplifying things here. I don't work for the EPA and definitely don't have firsthand experience in this area. Most of my knowledge about this subject comes from the Enironmental Working Group, which is certainly a biased organization. Maybe I'm falling prey to conspiracy theories. So let me get back to my first point about disclosing ingredients.

If a chemical is even suspected to be dangerous, we as the consumers have a right to know if it's in our shampoo or our soap or our toilet cleaner so we can make our own educated decisions about the products we use. Maybe we'll choose not to believe the hype about parabens or sodium laureth sulfate, but we have the right to make that choice for ourselves.

I'm a big believer in voting with your dollar, and that's why I think it's important to support companies that list their ingredients on their packaging. The really cool thing about doing that is that after awhile you start to get familiar with the ingredients and what they do, and then you can make choices about the type of shampoo you use based on what ingredients will work best on your hair, for example.

If you're looking for a more organized way to voice your complaints with the current system, the aforementioned Environmental Working Group has teamed up with Seventh Generation to campaign for chemical policy reform through the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act. You can sign the declaration here.

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I Need...Household Cleaners

A friend asked me to describe my homemade household cleaners in more detail. So first off, why I switched...

When Second Son was about a year old, he developed a terrible case of eczema all along the backside of his legs. After I eliminated possible food allergies, someone suggested that the likely culprit might be household cleaners. But there was a problem with this suggestion. If you've ever looked at the back of a typical bottle of all-purpose cleaner, you may have noticed that they don't list their ingredients, or if they do, it's one or two "active" ingredients. When you're trying to figure out what your kid might be allergic to, you kind of need to know what's in the products you're using.

I began doing some research on what I could do (this was before I started shopping at Whole Foods regularly, and long before I ever heard of companies like Seventh Generation and Ecover), and I came across a great book called
Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living by Annie Berthold-Bond. This book is a great resource for homemade non-toxic living, including recipes for everything from toilet cleaner to facial lotion.

Annie Berthold-Bond lists five essential ingredients for less toxic cleaning: baking soda, borax, liquid soap, vinegar, and essential oils. Except for the essential oils, all of these ingredients are super cheap and can be found at any grocery store. I bought a box of borax when I first started making my own cleaners, and at the rate I've been going, I'll have to buy another one when I'm 50. Basically, that puts the cost of making your own cleaners at almost nothing. (Annie Berthold-Bond says that on average the recipes in her book cost 10% the cost of the commercial product.)

According to the Story of Stuff, "there are over 100,000 synthetic chemicals in commerce today. Only a handful of these have ever been tested for human health impacts and NONE of them have been tested for synergistic health impacts, that means when they interact with all the other chemicals we’re exposed to every day." I don't know how many of those chemicals are in typical household cleaners, but I do know that it really bothers me that they don't even tell us what's in the stuff we're using. I like that with my homemade cleaners, I know exactly what I'm using, I know that inhaling it is not going to harm anyone in my family, and I know that throwing a bucket of mop water out my back door is not going to harm my plants or contaminate the water.


So here are the recipes:

All-Purpose Window Cleaner

• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 1/2 tsp. liquid soap
• 2 cups of water

Combine the ingredients in a spray bottle, and shake well to blend.

All-Purpose Cleanser

• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. borax
• 1/2 tsp. liquid soap
• 2 c. hot water
• up to 1 tsp. antiseptic essential oil (I use tea tree oil)

Combine the ingredients in a spray bottle. Shake to dissolve and blend the minerals.

Basic Floor Cleaner

• 1/4 c. liquid soap
• 1/2 c. vinegar
• 2 gallons warm water

Combine the ingredients in a large plastic bucket.

Wood Furniture Duster

• 1/4 cup vinegar
• a few drops olive oil (or jojoba oil, which is more expensive)
  
• 3-5 drops essential oil for fragrance

Combine the ingredients in a bowl, dab some on a rag, and use it to dust.


I didn't ever solve Second Son's eczema (though it did eventually go away), but I've been happily making my own cleaners for two years now. If you're wondering if they work, the short answer is yes. The long answer is that sometimes (like if I've put off cleaning the bathroom too long) they do require a little bit more elbow grease than I would have to use if I just bought a bottle of Formula 409. But for me, the cost and the environmental impact make it worth it.

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