BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Cleaning Cleaning naturally?

Does anyone clean with natural products? Be it water, vinegar and baking soda or commercially made "natural"?

I just did a review on a commercially produced line that was impressive. Here's the story:
Howard Naturals

I use alot of vinegar and baking soda because I have Porphyria and cannot tolerate other chemicals. I use vinegar in my dishwasher rinse cycle (where the jet-dry goes) I also use it to power off stuck foods and grease in soaking. I use baking soda in the bathroom as a cleanser/scrub.

Ravyn

I'm huge on vinegar, baking soda and lemon juice. I'm crafting an article on it now and holding off a bit because I just reviewed a commercial product and I feel like it might "slam" commercial products in general. But man--between the cost savings and the health benefits, it's crazy.

We use olive oil for furniture polish, too. And my floors are all washed with a combo of vinegar and water. I started toying with essential oils to make it smell nice and I really like it.

I'm a big fan of making my own cleaning products. As long as you don't leave things until they are really bad, then it's okay. However, I am somewhat lazy ... once I moved into a (rented) house where the stove was filthy and the shower hadn't been cleaned in what looked like ever. So I got some EZ Off and some of that shower cleaner that has the bubbles. Whew! Then I went right back to my homemade stuff! Besides, if it's homemade, I can add orange oil so my house smells nice! Now if only I knew how to "make" swiffer pads!

Lately, I've been especially aware of some of the "old" ways of cleaning. For some reason, I bought myself a feather duster. I had never owned one before. I have discovered that feather dusters work better than the new, modern products designed to pick up dust and cause minimal disturbance to your "stuff."

In my experience, the newer products do NOT pick up ALL the dust. You're left with a light coat of dust. Also, you still have to move small things to keep from knocking them over.

I noticed that the feather duster seems to get ALL the dust. What doesn't stick to the feathers gets knocked to the floor. If you save your vacuuming for AFTER you dust, that problem is solved. Also, the feather duster seems less likely to knock things over--and it's GREAT for lampshades. Either way, nothings 100% at not knocking things down. You have to use your own judgement about what to move as you dust.

Another great "old" invention is a contraption for hard floors that has a very wide dust "pad" covered with removable, washable terry cloth. The pad is on a stick. You can scoot it over your wood or tile floors in no time flat, shake it out the back door, and be assured you've removed a ton of dust. Again, this "old" invention works better than the new duster mops. It's cover is washable, so, you're not constantly using up paper resources and throwing them in the landfill. Plus the space the "old" thing covers is far greater than what the new ones cover.

I'm now looking at all my cleaning products with a suspicious eye and working toward purging most of them. I get the feeling that the big manufacturers have been reinventing the wheel and telling us they have have something completely new when they really don't.

A couple natural cleaning tips I've read lately are:

To clean a toilet, drop a spoonful of tang in to the toilet bowl at night. In the morning, swish and flush. The citric acid in the tang cleans the toilet.

Another one is to put a cup of water in the microwave, cook on high for 2 minutes and then let it set inside with the door closed for 5 minutes. The steam loosens any food or grime inside the microwave for easy removal.

I can't stress enough the advantage of using vinegar to de-grease pots and pans! I recently had a frying pan burn with maple-flavored sausage so it was a goopy mess of black sticky grease and sugar. Overnight with straight white vinegar and the next day it scraped up with minimal effort and was completely gone!

Ravyn

Joan, I clean my microwave and the one in the office that way all the time. I usually "cook" the water for 4 minutes though. Sure makes cleaning the microwave easy.

I'll have to try the Tang method.

I love my feather dusters. They are wonderful.

I remember the hardwood floor contraption. I do like my dustmop for that. I use endust with it and it helps a lot. I can shake it out and throw it in the wash.

I don't care for the Swifter things. The cleaning agent on the cloths is great though but I prefer an old-fashioned mop.

I like to use kitchen terry cloth towels instead of paper towels. I can keep a role of paper towels for months because I use the terry towels for everything.

I have heard that the cleaning solution on the swifters and the all-in-one mop thingies is toxic to pets. I use Windex all-purpose for my floor.
Ravyn

Ravyn, I hadn't heard about the cleaning solution being toxic. I don't have pets now but I will definitely keep that in mind. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the cleaning agents we use are more heavy duty than they need to be.

This was an e-mail rumor about the Swiffer WetJet. About.com and Snopes both verify that this is false.

There is an article on Scott Common Sense that lays out ways to make cleaning solutions for all of your household cleaning needs including an all purpose cleaner made with vinegar, bathroom cleaner with dish detergent and baking soda, and toilet bowl cleaner with baking soda and vinegar. Check out the article for all of the specifics.

Actually, there's at least one article on our cleaning site, too--have you seen it?

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art29321.asp

I actually created a section called "Green Cleaning" and will be adding more to it, but there are already a few articles in there.

Denture tablets work wonderful in toilets - they are made to clean deposits from porcelain, after all. I use denture tablets for anything with water rings, also, like a vase.

This brings up an excellent point. We have a Scooba for our kitchen floor cleaning but I do also hand clean sometimes and I used the Swiffer mat things on a stick. I just ran out. Rather than buying more disposable things, do you think I could just use a microfiber towel and wrap it around the stick thing I use (with a rectangular base)? If so what would I soak the towel in?

Lisa i do that all the time. It works just fine. I don't like buying throw away anythings. :-) You can use it dry or spray it with a 2:1 water/vinegar solution.

Yeah--what Jill said. And if you don't like the smell of vinegar (it dissipates pretty quickly) then put a drop or two of essential oil in there. The EOs are expensive, but they last forever. My personal favorite is Thieves because it smells awesome (albeit it very autumn-ish) and kills EVERYthing. I'm working on an article on EOs in cleaning, but it's a ton of research.

Heather, that sounds like a neat idea about the oils. I have a ton of them that i use to make linen sprays and such.

I like the scent of vinegar - to me it just smells *clean* - but i can see where it isn't as nice as, say, Febrese Springtime or whatever is the latest! lols.

Bob hates the smell of vinegar - we've tried it in the Scooba several times and it drives him crazy. Very sharp. I guess to us it smells like "bad wine" which we're already trained to be on the look out for.

I'll try the essential oil idea, we have those already for other projects!