Green Your Cleaning

April 2008

Deidre Imus

Author, Environmentalist

We waste a great deal of money and storage on specialty products that contain environmentally harmful ingredients. Along with one nontoxic all-purpose cleaner, you actually only need a handful of versatile nontoxic products to clean your entire house, and you probably didn't realize that a lot of them are already in your kitchen cupboard!

Baking soda
Baking soda is powerful and versatile (and most importantly, natural) stuff! Use it to deodorize your fridge, carpets and upholstery. Or, rub it on aluminum, chrome, jewelry, plastic, porcelain, silver, stainless steel, copper and tin as a polisher. Baking soda can also unclog and clean drains. Pour boiling water, a half-cup of vinegar, and four tablespoons of baking soda down the drain and cover the drain for a half an hour, then rinse. Do not use this method after trying a commercial drain opener, though. The vinegar can react with the drain opener to create dangerous fumes.

Distilled white vinegar
Next time you are about to purchase a specialty cleaning product, go right to your kitchen cabinet and reach for the distilled white vinegar instead. Diluted with water, you can use it to clean coffeepots, windows, brick, stone, carpets, toilet bowls--just about every surface except for marble (on which you can just use a little dishwashing liquid with warm water). A tablespoon added to the rinse cycle acts as a wonderful fabric softener. The acetic acid in vinegar is also great at removing stains.

Lemon juice
Lemon juice is a natural odor-eater that combines well with other ingredients. It can clean glass and remove stains from aluminum, copper, clothing and porcelain, and nothing works better on Formica surfaces. Squeeze half a lemon into the wash cycle to get rid of odors on clothing. When used with sunlight, lemon juice is a mild lightener or bleach.

Table salt
Forget rust remover. When mixed with vinegar, salt polishes metal. To clean copper and brass, all you need is salt, warm water, and some lemon juice. Using a cloth or soft sponge, start rubbing the copper or brass with a mixture of salt and water. Add lemon juice as you go along. After rinsing with cold water, wipe the metal completely dry.

Ketchup
You can also clean copper with ketchup. Just rub it over the surface, rinse it off with warm water, and then wipe it thoroughly dry to preserve the shine.

Toothpaste
Rather than purchasing jewelry cleaner, clean your gold and silver with toothpaste (as long as it's not the gel kind).

Coffee grounds
Loose coffee grounds are great at repelling ants. Just sprinkle some grounds around the perimeter of your floors, where the ants traditionally enter. If you have a serious infestation, sprinkle the grounds all around the outside perimeter of the house.

Essential oils
Toiletries, cosmetics, air fresheners and cleaning products are packed with artificial fragrances. On any given label, the word 'fragrance' can refer to as many as six hundred different chemicals. Instead, use essential oils. Place them in a cold air diffuser (heat can destroy the therapeutic benefits of the oils) and they will eat up odors from cooking, mold, mildew and everyday pollutants. Pressed oils of oregano, basil, clove and thyme are highly antibacterial.

"Foot" note
Here's an easy way to cut down on your cleaning: Leave your shoes at the front door. Your shoes come into contact with tons of different pollutants: germs, dirt, bacteria, pesticides, fungicides, even animal feces. Do you really want to track all of this gunk into your home?

From GREEN THIS! Volume 1 by Deirdre Imus. Copyright Copyright 2007 by Deirdre Imus. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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