7 Non-Toxic Ways to Clean Your Home
By Jenny Everett, SELF magazine
As you start preparing for the holidays and an onslaught of guests, here's a bit of good news: There's no reason to go crazy disinfecting and cleaning with a bazillion products.
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"We tend to super over-clean our homes," says Alexandra Zissu, co-author of "Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning & Greening the World You Care About Most" (which hits stores on December 28). "Unless there's an illness, there's really no reason to even consider harsh chemicals."
Because of trade secret laws, companies aren't required to list ingredients on cleaning products -- the products we scour our tubs with, breathe in, spray on our food surfaces, etc.
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This freaks us out in a serious way, so we asked Zissu for some easy, green ideas for cleaning our home this holiday season.
Step 1: De-clutter, dust and disinfect
According to Zissu, dust thrives and lives in clutter, and grime piggybacks on dust molecules. So your best bet is to remove as much clutter as possible (piles of magazines, etc.) and do what she calls "wet wiping" -- simply going over surfaces with a damp rag.
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For handles, which are most likely to be covered in germs and fecal matter (gross but true!), opt for an EPA-registered disinfectant. We love these thyme-scented disinfecting wipes from Seventh Generation, which kill 99 percent of germs, including influenza.
Step 2: Tackle glass surfaces
To clean dust and prints off of glass surfaces, Zissu recommends a one-to-one mixture of water and vinegar. Mix some and keep it in a spray bottle under the kitchen sink. If you don't like the smell of vinegar, there are organic glass cleaners you can buy at the grocery store (by companies such as Seventh Generation) that would be more subtle.
Step 3: The bathroom
"Bathrooms are so poorly ventilated," says Zissu, "We tend not to read warning labels on products, and it's funny how many bottles under our bathroom sinks have labels with a skull and crossbones on them." Yikes -- good point!
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The non-toxic approach: Wipe down surfaces and handles with a solution that's about 12 ounces of warm water and five drops (or more if you have a heavy-duty job) of natural soap (Dr. Bronner makes great ones). As for the tub, Zissu recommends mixing a tablespoon of baking soda with a squirt of dish soap and just enough water to form a paste (you can add essential oils to make it smell fresh). It will take a bit more elbow grease, but the grittiness makes it very effective.
Step 4: The kitchen
Assuming you've already tackled surfaces, the main thing left is the oven, which can get pretty gunked up around the holidays when you're doing lots of cooking. According to Zissu, oven cleaners release a lot of nasty chemicals in the air, so she prefers to use a baking soda paste. To mix it: Simply sprinkle baking soda all over the bottom of the oven (where most things drop and drip), then hit it with a few spritzes of water from a spray bottle so it forms a damp paste. Leave it to soak overnight, then simply wipe with a sponge in the morning.
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Step 5: Hit the floor
Use a soap-and-water solution to mop up kitchen and bathroom floors, and go over rugs with a vacuum equipped with a HEPA filter (otherwise, you're just shooting dust and dirt particles back into the air as you go). To keep the floor clean (and save yourself from needing to vacuum on a daily basis), keep cozy slippers by the door for your guests to encourage them to remove their shoes.
Step 6: Polish the silver
Place tarnished silver in a baking dish lined with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Mix 1/2 cup of salt into a large pitcher of hot water and stir until it's dissolved. Pour the mixture over the silver, making sure it's completely covered and that all of the pieces are in contact with the foil. Let it sit until the water cools and the foil turns dark. A magnetic reaction removes the tarnish -- how cool is that? Remove the silver and rinse off any remaining salt with cool water before drying and polishing with a soft cloth.
Step 7: Make it smell pretty
Synthetic fragrance -- a la most scented candles -- contain hormone disrupters (and some even have lead wicks!). To make your home smell pristine (a home feels SO much cleaner when it smells good!), Zissu recommends boiling orange rinds or warming some cider right before your guests arrive.
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Photo Credit: Condé Nast Digital Studio
