I love your lungs. In fact, I love everything that keeps you healthy, breathing and reading this column. But and however, it has come to my attention that you sometimes use cleaning products that are not good for you, that are bad for the environment and hard on your poor old tattered wallet, the one that used to have money in it.
And
Karen Logan feels the same way about these issues. She’s the author of Clean
House, Clean Planet: Clean Your House for Pennies a Day The Safe, Nontoxic Way. She begins with a list of the bad guy
chemicals, the ones we spray and scrub with, such as ammonia, bleach,
formaldehyde, lye, sulfuric acid and other chemicals. They are especially not
good for young people or for us oldsters who may already have compromised
health and so-so lungs that aren’t what they used to be.
But I didn’t need Ms. Logan to tell me about the
effect of some cleaning products. I know after I use them it is sometimes hard
to breath for the rest of the day, especially after using sprays to shine glass
and mirrors.
What
I did need were some clues about safer nontoxic ways to keep the nest from
looking like a pigpen, a thing I have never seen, but I imagine pigs don’t
clean their bathroom mirrors. So here are a few of her ideas, tested in my own
house, the home of mediocre but well-meant housekeeping. Actually, Ms. Logan’s
products might make me a better housekeeper since I can breath easy after I use
them.
Miracle
Glass and Mirror Cleaner
You
have to try this to believe it, but club soda, applied with a spray bottle, is
a very effective glass cleaner. It takes a little longer to dry than the
commercial blue spray many of us use, but it cleans as well if not better. The
trick is to use a lint-free cloth to rub the club soda around after spraying
and another lint-free cloth to dry the surface to a sparkle. (I just use two
ends of one long cloth---one end to rub the stuff around, the other to dry
with.)
Something
funny happened to me when I first used club soda. The spray bottle began
spraying on its own. Ah, a haunted sprayer.
No,
it was just the bubbles in the fresh club soda trying to get out of the spray
bottle. So I took the top off, let the bubbles out and it’s now behaving.
Another
Cleaner, This for Floors and Other Surfaces
I’ve
tried the vinegar spray routine as a floor and surface cleaner and abandoned it
because I hated the house smelling like a salad, but there’s a way to get the
cleaning and disinfecting power of vinegar and have a spray that smells good.
Here’s Ms. Logan’s recipe.
Fill
a spray bottle half way up with water. (She uses a two-cup sprayer. I go for a
three-cup number.) Fill the other half of the bottle with white distilled
vinegar. (Don’t use wine or apple vinegar, just the clear stuff.)
Here’s the smart part: Add 15 to 20 drops of
essential oil to make it smell nice. She uses peppermint oil, I use clove. You
may use lemon or lavender or whatever you can pick up in the essential oil
section of your health food store. Heck, go for it and use jasmine and pretend
you are cleaning floors in Maui.
This simple concoction can be sprayed on floors
and other surfaces. I’ve begun using it on everything in the bathroom and if
Cranky Pants gets dirty, he may get spritzed.
So white vinegar, water and a scent. Simple.
Clean House, Clean Planet has many other recipes and then, of course, you
can pick up more ideas with an online search. Dr. Andrew Weil has some cleaning
recipes at http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/ART00580.
Now, I think I’ll refill my club soda bottle and
watch it spray all by itself.
Hey,
it’s hot times here at the Mediocre Housekeeping Institute.