Green Cleaners: Clean Your Home with Natural Household Cleaners
(Page 2 of 5)
July/August 1990
By Ann Larkin-Hanson
I also use vinegar and baking soda to clean our drains. I simply dump a handful or so of baking soda into the drain, pour in a big shot of vinegar and put the plug in immediately to drive the carbon dioxide down the pipe. I keep the plug in until the fizzing stops, then run hot water down the drain. This cleans and clears the pipes nicely, eliminating the need for corrosive cleaners. Commercial drain cleaners are sufficiently dangerous that the U.S. Consumer Protection Agency has issued a fact sheet warning users about the nasty things the corrosives can do to the human body, inside and out.
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VINEGAR by itself is unsurpassed for cleaning faucets. I soak a rag in the liquid and drape it over the fixture for five to 10 minutes to strip off soap and lime deposits. Some vinegar in a bucket of warm water works wonderfully on linoleum that isn't heavily soiled, and it doesn't leave a film. Of course, many people still use vinegar and and water for washing windows. One of my friends, though, says that the solution doesn't work on her windows; she uses ammonia and water instead.
Dr. Olaf Runquist, an organic chemist at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, explains that this might be because vinegar and ammonia work on different kinds of dirt. As an acid, vinegar will strip off the metallic grit from screens and dirt from the street. Ammonia, which is alkaline, does a better job of removing the fat that accumulates from cooking. Adjust your window cleaning formula accordingly and you won't need to use commercial cleaners, some of which may contain harmful solvents.
Disinfectants, too, often contain dangerous solvents as well as formaldehyde and phenol compounds. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen, and phenol compounds are now known to be extremely toxic and persistent in the environment.
Frequent cleaning and exposure to sunlight and heat should take care of almost all odor and mildew problems if you are patient and persistent.
Vinegar and borax are both effective but mild disinfectants.
Of course, disinfectants are advertised, as is bleach, as germ killers. But advertisers neglect to mention that it's impossible to kill every germ in your house and on yourself, and that you wouldn't want to anyway. There are more germs living in our bodies than there are cells. We are walking ecosystems that need germs in order to function properly. Most germs are beneficial, and harmful ones are better fended off with frequent cleaning and healthy lifestyles than with the indiscriminate use of toxic chemicals.
I don't even worry about germs in the diaper bucket anymore. Instead of bleach, I use about half a cup of borax in a five-gallon bucket of warm water. When the soaking diapers fill the pail, I wash them. This approach doesn't remove stains quite as well as bleaching does, but—again—I'm willing to put up with the stains in exchange for not having bleach in the house or in the sewage system. The borax eliminates the smell just as effectively, and our children have had no problems with diaper rash.
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