Natural Cleaning Products: A Simpler, Safer, (and Cheaper) Alternative
By Joshua Dunn

Natural cleaning has become a priority for us. Next time you go to the grocery store, take a slow stroll down the cleaning isle. And yes, it takes up a whole isle now. Pick up any of the products and read the ingredients.

Do you know what any of those ingredients are?

We know we don t.

Our very basic rule for natural cleaning is that if we don t know what an ingredient is, we don t buy it and bring it into our home. This goes for food, cleaning products, anything. If it s a word we can t pronounce, chances are it s a chemical and it probably isn t good for us. Ever wonder how people in the 1920 s kept their homes clean? Did they do it with chemicals? Nope. They used homemade natural cleaning products, many of which are probably in your kitchen or pantry right now.

Naturally Cleaning Your Air

We don t use canned or plug in air fresheners. These are chock full of chemicals. There are a myriad of natural options. Here are just a few.

Plants which reduce toxic materials are: Aloe Vera, English ivy, fig trees, chrysanthemum, spider plants, Chinese evergreen, bamboo palm, and lily. Decorate liberally with these plants and they ll act as a natural air purifier.

Beth s favorite air freshener is vanilla, which by the way was voted the number one erotic scent by males. Place 1 tablespoon natural (not imitation) vanilla extract in a ceramic bowl and place in a room. If the room is large you may want to use more than one. As the vanilla evaporates, a light, refreshing vanilla scent will waft into the surrounding air. Replace every day.

Josh s favorite air freshener is eucalyptus, which leaves the whole house smelling fresh and springy. If you have a diffuser, you can put a couple of drops of eucalyptus oil in it and freshen the air for hours. We don t actually own a diffuser, so we simply use an old sauce pan, with a little water in the bottom on low heat. Works the same way.

We write a lot about vinegar on our site. Along with Borax, vinegar is our favorite cleaner and so versatile. Mildly acidic white vinegar dissolves dirt, soap scum, and hard water deposits from smooth surfaces, yet is gentle enough to use in a solution to clean hardwood flooring.

As far as freshening your air, white vinegar is a natural deodorizer. It absorbs odors instead of covering them up. We use it to get rid of pet odors, like our dog Barlow s bed, which needs a good natural cleaning quite often.

Clean Your House

The following recipe is my favorite of all time, and it s not for food. It is a recipe for an alkaline all-purpose natural cleaning agent. We use it everywhere: in the bathroom, the kitchen, to spot clean the carpets, and to get that black gunk off the walls. It neutralizes odors, dissolves grease, and removes stains.

- 1 teaspoon or 40 drops antiseptic essential oil (thyme, sweet orange, lemongrass, rose, clove, eucalyptus, cinnamon, rosemary, birch, lavender, or tea tree)

- 1 teaspoon baking soda

- 2 teaspoons Borax

- 1 teaspoon liquid detergent

- 2 c hot water

Combine ingredients in a spray bottle. Shake to blend before each use.

We ve added up the cost of this natural cleaning solution. It costs 3 cents to make once you have all of the ingredients. A bottle of store-purchased, chemical-laden all-purpose cleaner costs around $4. We honestly think this works better than the store bought stuff too. Hmmm, tough choice here.

This is the best glass cleaner. Forget about what you buy in stores.

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The Wonders of Borax

For those of you not versed in the magic that is borax, you need only take another stroll down your grocery store s cleaning isle. In the laundry section you ll find a medium sized cardboard box marked “Borax”. Also known as sodium borate, it is a complex mineral found in lakes and other evaporite deposits. It is a laundry booster, which has been around for over 100 years, but it works for so many other things as well.

If you have a flea problem, sprinkle it on your carpets, wait a day, then vacuum it up. The fleas eat the borax, it dehydrates them and they die.

We use borax most often as a carpet cleaner. Whenever we rent a wet carpet cleaner from the grocery store we use 1/2 cup borax to 1 gallon of hot water. Fill the machine up with this instead of the cleaner sold with the vacuum, which is full of chemicals. Borax deodorizes and disinfects. One half cup to 1 gallon of water satisfies a hospital s germicidal requirements.

Stop Buying Drain Cleaner

Drain cleaners use incredibly powerful chemicals to eat away clogs in your pipes. These chemicals then find their way into our water systems. They are extremely expensive and we never use them. Try these recipes. If they don t work, chances are a chemical drain cleaner won t either. You ll probably have to snake your drain or if all else fails, hire a plumber.

For natural cleaning of drains, pour 1 cup washing soda down them every week or so. Washing soda (sodium carbonate) is a chemical relative of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). It is soda ash that is processed differently than baking soda. It is caustic so wear gloves when using. It is available in the laundry section of the grocery store.

For clogged sinks, pour 1 cup washing soda into the water surrounding the drain, as close to the drain as possible. Within a minute, the water should go down. If water hasn t yet backed up, or you don t have any washing soda, pour 1 cup baking soda down the drain followed by 3 cups boiling water.
You can also try pouring in

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