Is It Really Clean If I Only Use This?

How many cleansers do you have in your home? One of my pet peeves is the number of cleaning products that are marketed to people. Do you have a soap for the dishes, another for floors, shampoo for your hair, the dog, and on and on? I’ve narrowed down my soap collection to just Castile soap.

Castile soap is so versatile that you can use it to bathe a baby or clean the toilet. You don’t need every new cleaning product on the market. Not only are they environmentally unfriendly, but they don’t really clean any better than homemade recipes. Many people hesitate to use simple home-made cleansers because they feel it’s not really clean if you don’t use strong chemicals. In fact, the opposite is often true. Commercials cleansers often leave behind a residue for the dirt to cling to and the surface gets dirtier quicker.

Lately Americans have become obsessed with germs. It seems almost every new cleaning product contains germicides. Remember when hand sanitizers could only be found in hospitals? Did you know that only 10 percent of the cells in our body belong to us? The rest are germs. Mostly they’re in the digestive tract.

We need bacteria to help us break down food. Germs also make vitamin K. Without it our blood wouldn’t clot. Ever heard of pond scum? That’s the blue-green algae that makes oxygen. We need germs. Instead of trying to kill everything in our environment, we need to strike a healthy balance.

I’m sure you know at least one good use for vinegar and baking soda, but there are a many ways to use them in your home. Vinegar and baking soda, when used separately or together, can clean many of the items in your home just as well, if not better, than the cleaning products on the shelves of your local store. But what exactly can they be used for?

In the Kitchen

Replace chemical drain cleaners by putting the following ingredients into your drain: 1 cup table salt, 1 cup baking soda, and ½ cup plain white distilled vinegar. Let them sit for at least 15 minutes. Then, carefully pour two quarts of boiling water into the sink. Follow that with running water for at least one minute. Your sink should now flow freely, and no chemicals have entered the water supply.

Clean your microwave by boiling a mixture of one-fourth of a cup of vinegar and one cup of water. Boiling this solution will create steam in your microwave that will help loosen any stuck-on food. Just remove the food with a soft cloth or sponge.

In the Living Room

Is your carpet stale? Sprinkle baking soda straight from the box onto your carpeting. Leave it on the carpet for at least 15 minutes, and then vacuum it up. Your carpet will smell fresher, and you won’t be adding unneeded chemicals to indoor environment. If you’d like a light fragrance, mix a few drops of lavender essential oil into the baking soda, then use as described above.

Is that a stain on the carpet? Remove stains with a mixture of two tablespoons of salt dissolved in one-half cup of white distilled vinegar. Rub this mixture into the stain and let it dry. Vacuum the stain right up! Add two tablespoons of borax to the mixture if the stain is large or from a dark liquid.

What about the paneling? Does it look dull? Mix one pint of warm water, four tablespoons of vinegar, and two tablespoons of olive oil. This mixture, when applied to the paneling and left to soak into the wood, will clean your paneling. Polish the wood with a dry cloth to help revitalize it.

In the Bathroom

Never throw old toothbrushes away. They’re great for scrubbing around faucets, toilets, and baseboards. Dip an old toothbrush into undiluted distilled white vinegar. Now scrub away the dirt and stains from the grout between the tiles in your shower or around your sink.

If your shower stall and doors need to be cleaned, make a solution of one-half cup white vinegar, and one-fourth cup of baking soda added to one gallon of warm water. Wipe down the walls and door with this solution immediately after a shower. If course there are environmentally friendly commercial cleaning products available. It would be unrealistic to expect people to always make their own products, but the choice is there.