Cleaning the Green House

When I started keeping house with David we bought the brand-name cleaners because it was what we were used to. I had no idea how to clean a house and was influenced by what I had seen in my own parent's cupboards and what was advertised on TV. After a while we started to see these products as way over-priced and gravitated towards what we percieved as the only other viable alternative, the no-name cleaners. Sometimes these worked, but often they required using twice as much, which pretty much negated the price difference. After a while I discovered that some things (like laundry detergent) needed to be the expensive brands, while other things (like window cleaner) could be no-name. And that's pretty much where we stayed on the cleaner front until I started to become more interested in our environmental footprint a few years ago. It started because I was concerned about the lack of ventilation in our small basement apartment and using strong scented cleaners bothered me. We also had two cats, and I wanted to make sure that anything I used would be safe for them. So I started to try out a few of the 'green'  brands out there.

My first purchase, if I remember correctly, was Method all-purpose cleaner. I was really drawn to it's grapefruit scent, which wasn't overpowering but pleasant. It didn't clean as well as a more chemically cleaner, but it cleaned pretty well all the same. I've tried other Method cleaners since then and that statement holds true. They tend to smell nice, when they're scented, and provided you don't need a really strong cleaner, (say, soap scum) they work quite well.

After Method I experimented with a vairety of vinegar and baking soda combinations, along with sea salt, saline solution and lemon juice.  Some of these worked very well, others...not so much.  I still to this day use baking soda to clean my bathroom because it gets the ring off the bathtub and the sink better than any cleaner I had tried before.  Sea salt and lemon juice cleaned the copper bottoms of my pots very well, and a vinegar and water solution is the perfect substitute for glass cleaner.

At some point in this green experiment I stopped buying paper towels and switched to cleaning cloths, steel wool pads and scrubbers.  I also got rid of my mop and purchased a floor steamer.  At this point we moved from the big city to a small town and I found myself with a bit of a cleaning dilemma.  On the one hand, I really liked the lessened environmental impact that I was having, but on the other hand I had two cats and a baby on the way and I was worried about my house being clean. 
I stopped using the homemade cleaning solutions for a while and tried some of the other major green cleaner brands, starting with the Green Works line of cleaners by Clorox.  I found they worked very well to get rid of  surface dirt, but they seemed very close to being simply a slightly better alternative to mainstream cleaners.  Plus, I really didn't like the chemical smell of them.  The next purchase was thegreenline all purpose cleaner in citrus sage scent.  (Sorry, I can't find a website)  Thegreenline is a Walmart product, certified by EcoLogo, and is non-toxic, biodegradable, not tested on animals and contains no dyes or artificial perfumes as well as having a fully recyclable container.  It was also pretty cost-effective since it fell under the Walmart Great Value line.  This time I had no problem with the scent, in fact I found it very pleasant and not over-powering.  As for effectiveness, it worked just fine, and I have continued to use it in my bathroom pretty regularly.

By the time the baby came home from the hospital I felt pretty good about my cleaner solution.  I was using steel wool pads with soap to scrub my sink and stove top and anything that could stand up to it.  For the rest of the kitchen surfaces I used a scrubber or cloth with soap.  I steamed my floors instead of using a chemical cleaner, and although I did use cleaners in the bathroom I made sure it was thegreenline all-purpose cleaner for the toilet and baking soda and vinegar for everything else.  My mom also introduced me to Biosource cleaners, and I tried their all-purpose, glass and window and kitchen and bath lines, adding them to my collection.  For the most part we were happy with the compromises and concessions we'd made.

It probably would have stayed that way except for the fact that we decided to try cloth diapering and to wash our cloth diapers we were advised to use an enzyme-free detergent.  I also started to wonder about the effects of traditional detergent residue on a new baby's skin, and even on David and my skin, since we both suffer from eczema and psoriasis.  So I tried a variety of green detergents, including a powdered one by Rockin' Green and a liquid one, Sunlight's Green Clean.  We opted for Sunlight because of its availability in the area we live in.  Once the laundry detergent was considered I couldn't help but wonder about the dryer sheets, and that's when we gave dryer balls a shot.  They are two plastic balls, about 2X the size of a golf ball, with nubbies all over them.  You toss them into your laundry and they decrease static cling, theoretically.  We never noticed a difference and stopped using them.  In fact we stopped using fabric softener all together and, since it was starting to get warm outside, we hung our clothes on a line to dry.  I also brought out my indoor hanging rack and started draping clothes over that as well.

With so many cleaners re-examined over the past few years you would think we'd have nothing left to think about!  These days I still use thegreenline and Biosource cleaners, occasionally Method for light cleaning.  I have cut all paper towels out of my life and use either cloth cleaning rags or microfiber cloths, which also leave a streak-free glass surface.  I recently stopped using steel wool pads with soap and switched to plain steel wool pads or plastic reusable scrapers, like the ones from The Pampered Chef.  Although I do occaisionally give my floor a 'hands-and-knees' cleaning with water and all purpose cleaner I find that my floor steamer does a wonderful job for most cleaning situations without having to use any chemicals at all.  And of course the old baking soda and vinegar standby works wonders on a variety of surfaces.  We have two more products that we really need to examine and they are our dish detergent and our cat litter choices.  We have switched from a scented clumping cat litter to an unscented version of the same, but that's all we've managed to do so far.  We have tried recycled paper litter and silica crystal litter but neither is really the right choice for us, so we're at a bit of a loss.  I think one option might be to try wood shavings, which are very common around here.  The other option is sand, which isn't as prevalent but I'm willing to source!  I'm not sure why I've never tried switching my dish detergent; you'd think that that would be way ahead of, say, dryer balls, but it has just never come up, somehow.  I'll need to start trying to find a brand I like.

What we've taken away from all of this is that lessening your environmental impact is a process, not an instant fix.  It isn't hard to take that first step, but it may be hard to determine exactly what it is you need your products to do, what you can and can't compromise on and how green you feel comfortable being.  Even for us the process has had its ebb and flow.  At some points I cleaned entirely chemical free and then went back to chemical cleaners for a while.  A balance can be found.