Green Cleaners: Clean Your Home with Natural Household Cleaners
Organic cleaning methods, including vinegar, baking soda, washing soda, soap flakes, oil soap, borax and ammonia.
July/August 1990
By Ann Larkin-Hanson
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by Ann Larkin-Hanson
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
When I decided to stop using harsh chemical cleaning products in my house and to find environmentally safe alternatives, I didn't have to look far. I just called my mother. People who have been cleaning since before synthetic formulas became widely available (after World War II) know what works.
My town's library proved to be a big help too: An entire section is devoted to household hints and advice, much of it from before the '50s ushered in "better living through modem chemistry."
But I also knew that many of the old-time cleaning recipes I'd found were never intended for use with today's synthetic materials and household appliances. Over the past 50 years we've opened our homes to the likes of polyester, Formica, vinyl and myriad other forms of plastic, and we've enlisted the aid of dishwashers and automatic washing machines and dryers.
So, with help from my mother, the library, various environmental groups and some recent, ecologically conscious household-hints books, I experimented. I adapted. I experimented some more. And eventually I came up with my own arsenal of formulas for modern-day biodegradable cleaning.
The Sanitary Seven
Believe it or not, you can handle all your day-to-day cleaning with just seven easily available, inexpensive, environmentally benign substances. Baking soda, washing soda, soap flakes, oil soap, vinegar, borax and ammonia will take care of just about any mess. (Ammonia is, of course, dangerous in its concentrated form, when skin contact or breathing the fumes can cause injury. But it's an extremely effective cleaner, and it is not harmful to the environment. Just store it in a safe place well out of the reach of children and use it with care and a clean conscience.)
The first commercial cleaning product I replaced was scouring powder. I use baking soda instead, applied just as you would any of the store-bought products, dampened with a little water. Many commercial scouring powders contain both bleach and phosphates. Bleach, whether chlorine or non-chlorine, contains halogen compounds, which are persistent and toxic in the environment. The stuff may kill germs in the toilet bowl, but it also kills the bacteria that sewage and septic systems need to work properly. Phosphates create foaming in lakes and streams and stimulate algae growth that chokes out other aquatic life.
Baking soda doesn't kill anything, but it does a terrific cleaning job on sinks and tubs. (Unless your fixtures are old and porous. Then you might want to try a commercial powder, such as Bon Ami, that contains no bleach or phosphates.)
Combined with vinegar, baking soda produces an impressive foaming reaction that gives off harmless carbon dioxide gas. I pour a cup or more of vinegar into the toilet bowl, then toss in a handful of baking soda. The kids love the frothing, which scrubs the porcelain. The vinegar, being a mild acid, will strip off hard-water lime deposits if you leave it in for a while. A residual hard-water ring sometimes still shows just above the waterline, where the vinegar solution doesn't reach. But I figure I can live with that in exchange for not having to worry about the poisonous potential of toilet bowl cleaners, which often contain both lye and bleach.
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