One of the more important parts of “acting locally” to do your bit towards helping Planet Earth is by reducing waste. You are probably aware of the negative effects of landfills: more and more valuable land being taken up just by rubbish, and the associated problems of groundwater being contaminated by leachate. Yes, the people who design landfills take leachate into account, but do you really want to take this risk?
The best way to reduce waste is not to throw so much stuff into the waste system. Much of what goes into the landfill doesn’t need to be in there. Kitchen waste, greenwaste and paper make up a huge percentage of the rubbish in a landfill – and these items can very easily be recycled or composted instead.
But there’s more to recycling than dropping your old newspapers off at the local paper recycling depot and putting lawn clippings and carrot tops into a compost heap. As we all know, the three Rs of waste are Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. The “reuse” stage is one that often gets overlooked.
For some items, reusing them is straightforward. A sip-top bottle that once held bottled water can easily be refilled from your regular drinking water supply – or with fruit juice. Glass jam jars can be washed out and used for storing dry goods or for making your own jams, jellies and why not cleaning products. Ice cream containers (and anything else with an airtight lid) are perfect for freezing items or for lunchboxes. Gift wrapping paper can be used multiple times before it’s too battered and tatty to use. And if you don’t use items this way, there’s bound to be a charity that will!
After reusing the obvious things in obvious ways, it’s time to get creative. Things don’t have to be reused for the purpose that they were originally made. Here’s a just a few suggestions that have worked for me:
Small yoghurt containers: holders for paperclips or drawing pins, pottles for starting seedlings before planting out.
Large clear plastic drink bottles: Cut the spout off and use as a cloche for winter vegetables (use the cut off spout as a funnel)
Drink bottles with handles (e.g. milk bottles): cut in half and use as a scoop for washing powder, sugar or flour – or garden fertiliser.
Mesh bags from onions or oranges: roll into a ball and use for scrubbing pots. My recycled pot-scrub lasted much longer than a conventional Brillo bad or steel wool scrubber.
Pizza boxes: these are the perfect size for holding A4 papers. Good for documents, kid’s drawings or even old letters (the pizza scent will evaporate before long).
Old clothes: cut off buttons and zips before using the cloth as dusters for domestic cleaning, dishrags or for polishing cars.
Old sheets: These usually have a lot of good fabric on either side of the rip that inevitably happens – this can be remade into pillow cases or even children’s pyjamas.
Old towels: use for pet bedding or as a biodegradable weed mat.
Old stained carpet: weed mat, pet bedding or in the garage for your amateur car mechanic (most families have one of these) to lie on while tinkering underneath a car.
Ice cream containers and one litre yoghurt containers: organisers for children’s crayons, felt tip pens, playdough, stamps,
Anything thin and shiny: children’s art projects and collage.
Old rubber gloves: cut up for thick, durable and colourful rubber bands.
One word of warning: don’t hang onto an item just because it might be useful for something. I had to clear up my late grandmother’s house after a lifetime of this principle and it was absolutely chaotic (well, can you think of a use for old trays from airline meals?). If you can’t think of a use, even with your best efforts, then recycle the item if possible or, as a last-ditch resort, throw it away. You can only use so many flour scoops and funnels.
Don’t forget that the “reusing” can be done by other people. If you no longer need an item that is in still pretty good condition, don’t throw it into the tip. Sell it on EBay or a similar site if possible, hold a garage sale or give it away to charities. Even ripped old clothing can be given away to charity organisations – these get shredded for reuse (as carpet underlay and stuffing or even in paper manufacture) or sent to manufacturing plants to clean machinery – soft old T-shirts and sheets are perfect.
This last point may seem like a statement of the obvious, but it’s astonishing how many people throw perfectly useable things into the tip. At my local tip (aka resource recover centre), you are charged by weight for rubbish disposal (they weigh you going in, then weigh you going out). The few times I’ve gone in, I’ve almost been able to pick up enough good stuff from other people’s waste to significantly reduce my tip fee. And I’m sure that if I waited for long enough, I could drive out heavier than I came in. Yes, it takes a bit of chutzpah to ask a perfect stranger “You’re not going to throw that out, are you? Can I have it?” but most people don’t mind. Items I’ve scored this way include a near-new pillow, a child’s bicycle, skis, a single bed and some wallpaper that was perfect for card making. What can you find?
Recycling things is important to cut down the waste, but it’s only one of the three Rs of living sustainably. The other two are Reducing and Reusing. Reusing can often take a bit of creativity and lateral thinking. But if you don’t have a Depression/WWII era granny to get ideas for reusing things from, then try these to start you off:
* Pizza boxes (for large pizzas) are the perfect size for fitting A4 papers and they stack together easily. Blot the grease out and use them as a filing system. They’re easy to label, too. Cover them with newspaper or old wrapping paper if you don’t want the number of your local pizza joint staring you in the face. They stack much better than arch lever files.
* Ice cream containers are ideal for freezing soups and casseroles for later use, and also for freezing a surplus of stewed fruit. They also are something of a staple at many schools for holding crayons and other large groups of bits (counters, rubber bands, milk tokens, drawing pins). One-litre yoghurt pottles have the same uses.
* Thick cardboard of any type can be used to protect CD(-ROMs) in the post instead of bubble wrap. Keep a small supply on hand, but don’t hoard it – it can build up to excess if you’re not careful.
* Large clear plastic bottles. If you don’t want to re-use these as drink bottles (if you’re going out for a long time, then they take a lot more water than the little sip-top bottles), then try (a) cutting the top off just below the neck (at the “shoulders”) and using this top as a funnel for changing the oil or for children to play with in a sandpit or the bath; (b) cutting the top off at the shoulders and using the bottom as a mini-cloche for giving young plants a head start in early spring.
* Bottles with handles: cut them on the diagonal and use them as scoops for sugar, flour, etc.
* Old sheets and towels. Rip or cut them up and use them for dishcloths or anywhere you’d use a tissue (apart from as a handkerchief in public, of course – but for removing makeup, they’re great). You can also use them as cloths for domestic cleaning and polishing.
* Screw-top jars (glass or plastic). Wash them out and keep them for your own home-made jams and pickles. Or for storing things like cornflour and cocoa. Or for storing home-made natural cleaning products and bath salts.
* Zip-lock bags. Does anyone throw these useful things away? Use them for smaller batches of frozen food, and for school lunches.
* Rubber gloves. Once they’ve got holes in the fingers, cut the wrist parts up for extra thick, strong rubber bands.
The big thing to remember when you are keeping things to reuse is not to be a hoarder. Only keep as much as you will actually need. If you have already got scoops for your sugar, your salt, your flour and the cat kibble, then don’t make another scoop. If your freezer is full up with frozen goods, don’t hoard any more containers for freezing. Just recycle the items instead!
If you have never used a dishwasher before, they seem like magic. They hide all those nasty, dirty plates away out of sight so your house looks instantly cleaner like you had a professional domestic cleaner around and so that flies (and badly behaved cats) aren’t attracted to the scraps left on the crockery and spread disease. And they save you about twenty minutes or more a day by getting your dishes spotlessly clean for you. And, according to one study, they do a better job of getting things clean (even if you’re hyper-meticulous) so you’ll have a healthier home.
On the flip side, a dishwasher does require strong alkaline powder to work (although see below for some alternatives), and they use a bit more electricity and possibly more hot water, which may put a bit more on your power bill. And if you’ve never used one before, they can be a bit daunting and confusing. Even the instruction books that come with them may not be super-helpful, although you can get an idea of how to load them from the books.
* Check all items before you pop them in the dishwasher. Some things may not be dishwasher suitable, and others may say “top rack only”. Follow these instructions, or you will end up with a mess of melted plastic and/or warped kitchenware.
* It’s probably not the best idea to wash massive saucepans in a dishwasher, as they take up too much space.
* The most economically efficient way to run a dishwasher is to only run full loads and to use a lower temperature setting, if you can. This also applies to washing machines.
* Don’t expect miracles. You should scrape and rinse excess of plates and saucepans first. Really dirty pots and pans with burnt on bits should be soaked overnight, scraped and rinsed before going into the dishwasher. This will also mean that you can avoid using the heavy duty cycle on your dishwasher, which helps conserve power. After all, if only one pot needs heavy duty treatment, why do you need to wash the knives and cups on heavy duty as well? As a hint, a tiny dash (half a teaspoon) of dishwasher powder does wonders for burnt on bits when added to the soaking water overnight. You only need to use cold soaking water.
* You can make your own dishwasher powder that is an environmentally friendly cleaning product and uses fewer toxins. Mix borax and baking soda, then use white vinegar for the rinse cycle. It may not get everything quite as sparkling, but it will get things clean and sterile – it’s the water that does most of the work, after all.
* If you stick with conventional powder, you will release fewer toxins into your environment if you let the dishwasher cool down before you open it to unload. This avoids the cloud of alkaline-laden steam being released into your face when you open it.
* Store conventional dishwasher powder out of reach of children, as it is really dangerous – more so than the liquid used for washing dishes by hand.
* You can cut costs and chemicals by not using the rinse aid. All this does is to put a bit of extra sparkle on your glasses. If you skip it, everything will still be clean and hygienic.
It’s a pity that few of us have the space to grow enough lavender to make our own essential oil for use around the home for domestic cleaning purposes, among a myriad of others. However, most of us have enough space – even if all we have room for is a pot on a balcony – to grow our own lavender as a supply of fresh scented flowers and dried flowers to use as moth repellents. You can put lavender in the cleaning liquid when doing the regular kitchen cleaning or the floor cleaning.
Don’t just grab the first lavender you see at the garden shop. French lavender is decorative and is pretty popular (i.e. popular because it’s pretty) but doesn’t have much scent to it. English lavender (Lavandula augustifolia or L. latifolia; a hybrid of the two called L. x intermedia is also available) is the type you want. You can take your pick as to the exact colour the blooms will be when they come out. You can get flowers in shades ranging from white to pale blue-purple (classic lavender colour) through to purple and pink.
Lavender also grows from cuttings, so if you have a friend who has a lovely patch of lavender, you can ask for a cutting or two. Lavender also grows from seed, but this can be a bit of a gamble, as lavenders hybridize with each other readily and come up with offspring that are nothing like the parent plant you took the seeds from. Always ask first before taking cuttings or seeds; we don’t all have the chutzpah of one middle-aged lady who will remain nameless who was an expert at nipping off seed-heads from strangers’ gardens within easy reach of the footpath.
Lavender likes the sun – the more, the better. While lavender is mostly pest-free, it is prone to fungus if you plant it in damp, shady areas. It likes well draining soils and doesn’t mind stones (rather like good wine grapes). Taller varieties of lavender can be planted as a hedge (try L. augustifolia “Vera”, which has nice silvery leaves and gets to about 90 cm high). Lavenders repel insects – except for bees and butterflies, which love the flowers – so it makes a good perennial for companion planting near the vegetable garden. One delightful suggestion for planting lavender this writer has come across was to plant lavender near your washing line where the sheets can flap against it, picking up some of the scent as they dry outside.
Lavender prefers an alkaline soil. An acid soil can be corrected with ash or lime.
Plant lavender in autumn for best results. If you’re planting a hedge, put the plants about 30cm apart – you don’t need to crowd them. One of the bonuses of a lavender hedge is that it doesn’t lose its leaves over winter. You can’t really call it an evergreen, but you could call it an “ever-silver” or an “ever-grey”.
Lavender hedges should be pruned after flowering (never before, for obvious reasons – you miss out on the flowers). Dry the prunings and use them for kindling or on a barbecue – they will release the scent as they burn.
The dried flowers of the scented English lavenders can be used in multiple ways around the home to keep it naturally scented and fresh. Beside the clean, sweet-sharp and slightly old-fashioned scent of lavender, all those toxic artificial thingummies seem pretty pathetic.
Dried lavender and the scent of lavender have long been associated with linen cupboards and laundry. This is because lavender contains a natural insect repellent which helps to keep moths and other unwanted lodgers at bay, such as ants and silverfish (and probably cockroaches, at least to some extent). Lavender smells much nicer on clothes than mothballs by a long chalk. It may also be used in the vacuum cleaner to prevent the bad smell of dust when doing the domestic cleaning.
Most people associate dried lavender flowers in the home with dried flower arrangements and potpourri. If you want it for the scent rather than for the looks, the old-fashioned pot-pourri bowl is best. Stirring the dried flowerheads of the lavender releases the scent. If the lavender gets a bit old and tired and loses its scent, replace it with fresh lavender or else add a few drops of lavender essential oil to recharge the scent.
Lavender bags are another traditional way of keeping your linens (and all your other clothes) smelling fresh and for keeping insects away. This allows the scent of lavender to get into the clothing in your drawer, but the dried flower heads don’t break off, leaving you with itchy dried bits in your knickers. You can buy ready-made lavender bags at gift shops and the like. These are usually made from delicate floral cotton lawn and trimmed with lace and ribbon, but this fabric choice doesn’t affect the scent. A hanky tied shut with a rubber band or a bit of string does just as good a job, and there’s no rule engraved in stone saying that you can’t make a lavender bag out of camo print tied shut with thin rope (now there’s an unexploited market niche…). If you put some lavender bags in your wardrobe will make your room smell fresh and like it’s just been cleaned by your house cleaner.
A lavender bag can be used as a bath bag. Drop one in your bath. This can only be used once or twice. If you want to make a larger lavender bag, you can use it as a cushion. The scent will be released when it is sat on.
Bunches of dried lavender kept in one piece by bits of string or ribbon are best kept for sheets and pillowcases, as these get shaken out before use and so the problem of little bits getting stuck and itching you is less of a problem. Tuck these bunches of lavender into piles of sheets at regular intervals and move the periodically as the sheets get used. Make sure the lavender is dried before you put it into the sheets – dry stuff might go off or get odd smears on your best white Egyptian cottons.
Lavender bottles are a fancier variation on the bunches that have slightly less likelihood of shedding bits. To make a lavender bottle, get a bunch of fresh lavender and tie them tightly together just below the flower head. Then bend the stalks down so they enclose the flowers in a sort of cage. Tie the stems down below the flower head just below where you tied them at first, and then tie them together again at the ends. It looks a bit like a very long-necked bottle; hence the name.
Lavender bunches and bottles can also be kept in kitchen cupboards to deter ants and the like. It’s best to store them in dried goods that won’t get too badly affected by the scent/taste of lavender. A good suggestion that doesn’t leave you with lavender-flavoured salt or beans is to put the bunches on the shelf or in the cupboard between the boxes, containers and bags of dry goods, which should put the ants and silverfish off before they find their way into your flour.
Lavender essential oil should have a place in any natural cleaning fan’s cupboards. With its antiseptic germ-killing properties and fresh scent that everybody loves, lavender oil is one of the most popular essential oils in use.
So how do you use lavender essential oil? This may become a part of your daily routine and during the house cleaning.
1. To make disinfectant spray. Mix equal proportions of vodka and water, or 2 units of white vinegar to one unit of water in a spray bottle. Add in about 10–20 drops of lavender essential oil. Shake well. This mixture can also be used for cleaning glass as well as being used as a general everyday disinfectant.
2. To make air freshener. Either put 10–20 drops of essential oil in water in a spray bottle, or put the same amount of lavender essential oil in a 50/50 mix of water and white vinegar. Shake well before use to disperse the oils. You can also use the disinfectant mixture as an air freshener.
3. Scenting your rooms: Dab a little lavender oil on a cold lightbulb before switching on, or rub a little onto a radiator. When the lightbulb or the radiator heats up, the lavender oil will be released and dispersed through the room. Alternatively, use an aromatherapy burner of the type heated by a tealight candle.
4. Scented stationery. Put a few drops of lavender oil on a bit of tissue paper. Tuck the tissue paper into writing paper, scrapbooks, journals, etc.
5. Bath salts: Get about a cup full of common table salt of any type and put it in a screw-top jar. Add in 20 drops of lavender oil. Shake well so the smell is dispersed through the salt. Leave it to mellow for a bit before using. If you want, you can tint the salt a delicate purple by mixing a few drops of food colouring into the salt.
6. As a massage oil: Mix about 10 drops of lavender essential oil in a cup or so of light oil (sunflower oil is good, but olive oil is a bit too strong, although it’s lovely for the skin). Leave it to mellow together for a week or so before use. This oil can also be used as a bath oil.
7. In the bath: Simply put 10 or more drops of oil into the bath while it’s running. As lavender oil is very calming and soothing – one of the reasons it is prized in aromatherapy – this is the perfect way to unwind after a hectic day.
8. As a steam inhalation. Fill a bowl with boiling water and add 5 drops of lavender oil. Cover the bowl and your head with a towel in a sort of tent. Stay under this tent (don’t touch the water) for at least five minutes, breathing deeply. Great for relieving congestion and headaches caused by a nasty cold.
9. Making liquid lavender soap. Get an ordinary bar of soap and chop it up into rough cubes. Put this into a container. Pour about a pint of boiling water over the soap. Leave the soap to melt and then re-congeal into goo. Add about 20 drops of lavender essential oil and decant the goo into an airtight container. Use this for washing delicates (the lavender scent is perfect for woollens and repels moths) or for handwashing. You can use it for washing nearly anything, including the floor and the car!
10. Ironing spray: Fill a spray bottle with plain water and add 10 drops of lavender oil. Spray your shirts, etc. with this before ironing them. Makes the chore of ironing into a pleasure!
More ambitious people can also try their hand at using lavender essential oil to make their own perfumes and cosmetics, or in other handcrafts like soap and candle making.
Most of us do it, or at least have heard of the practice. But most of us are ashamed to admit it. We’ve all sung along to a favourite CD or tape while cleaning the house, but only when we’re alone!
But why not listen to music while you’re doing the housework? Not only does upbeat music give you something to concentrate on if you’re doing a task that is reasonably mindless (e.g. ironing) but it can also help you work faster and harder – and even makes the job enjoyable.
Listening to music and singing along with it is also a great motivator if you need a bit of help to get started with the residential cleaning in the first place – it’s a good incentive to children. More than once, I’ve followed up the age-old parental order of “clean up this room; it’s a pigsty” with “Now, what would you like to listen to while you’re doing it?” Keeping a special album for cleaning can be an incentive – you have to do the cleaning in order to listen to it – but this can backfire, as you will one day hear the song on the radio and it will instantly make you think of vacuum cleaners and dusters. Having a “stable” of CDs will avoid this problem.
So what music is best for house cleaning to? First of all, something positive and upbeat is a must. If you’re going to be scrubbing out a filthy toilet, the last thing you want to listen to is something with gloomy lyrics lamenting how awful the world is or how the singer’s heart is broken. This seems to me like a guaranteed method of feeling depressed. Conversely, something bubbly and lighthearted can lift your mood so even the grottiest cleaning job (e.g. cleaning up after a pet that hasn’t learned the fine art of housetraining) can become a pleasure – almost! Something with a driving beat is also good, as this type of music gets the adrenaline flowing so you can work harder and faster. Hey, it works for aerobics and exercise videos!
It also helps if you choose music that you can sing along to, so pick something that suits your vocal range. However, this step is optional. Housework is often a solitary activity, so why not sing along to make the work go faster? Nobody’s going to hear you – and if they can, then press-gang them into helping with the housework. You can even use feather dusters, vacuum cleaners and brooms as fake microphones or even air guitars if you’re sure that you’re alone. After all, anything that injects a bit of fun into cleaning up helps (cue that old Mary Poppins song “Just a Spoonful of Sugar”).
So, to get practical, what are some good albums with music to cleaning house to? I’ve heard many people speak highly of Abba albums as being great to sing and dance/clean to. My personal favourite albums (at least at the moment)for domestic cleaning to include: Dido’s Life for Rent, The Magic of Boney M, U2’s Best of 1979–1989 and Cliff Richards’ Private Collection (especially the track “Never Say Die” – the lyrics encourage you to keep going even when it’s tough). Albums that aren’t so hot (mostly because of pace) would be anything by Enya, slow jazz music and classical music (in my opinion – a bit of Vivaldi might get you going).
You can even provide your own music the old fashioned way by whistling or singing with no album. The shower’s not the only place you can sing safely (or you can limit your solo efforts for when you’re cleaning the bathtub). Try it if you dare!
Polishes for leather, wood and metal are some of the last chemical cleaners to go. Nobody really wants to risk ruining a good pair of shoes or a leather upholstered sofa (or the leather seats of a favourite car) by using the wrong sort of polish. The same applies to jewellery.
Well, don’t panic. How do you think people got by in the past? Leather, wood and metal have been used in homes ever since we had homes. Often, the leather, wood and metal were used to make the homes.
This is not to say that modern humans have cornered the market in nasty chemicals – after all, people used to think nothing of lead paint all over the show, including the face – but most of the polishes and house cleaners used in the past did the job and were made with what folk had to hand, which was usually benign. Only rich people could afford horrible poisonous chemicals.
And since then, we’ve had the chance to develop ways to make good polish that works and doesn’t contain nasty chemicals. These methods can be applied for floor cleaning too. Here are a few:
To polish leather:
Leather can be cleaned with warm soapy water. Put the warm soapy water on with one cloth, then rinse it off with a second cloth dampened in fresh water (warm or cold). Any of the following should work as a polish:
* A blend of olive oil and vinegar in equal proportions. Use the leftover as salad dressing.
* 1 part of vinegar to two parts linseed oil.
* castor oil (dark coloured leather only)
* petroleum jelly (Vaseline) for light coloured leather.
All polishes should be applied sparingly with one cloth, then buffed up with another cloth.
To polish wood:
These polishes should be applied with a soft cloth, then left for a few minutes to sink into the wood. After leaving, buff them dry and shiny with another soft cloth.
* Linseed oil – all cricketers know how good this is for cricket bats. It’s good for other wood too (note: don’t over-oil a cricket bat. It weakens the handle).
* A 50-50 mixture of olive oil (or any other vegetable oil) and vinegar.
* 1 part beeswax, melted and stirred into 4 parts linseed oil. Add a bit of essential oil, if you like.
* Very strong tea, left to steep for 3 days, can be used to stain and polish dark wood.
* 1 part of lemon juice to 2 parts olive oil.
To polish metal:
This really depends on the metal, of course, as each type has its own properties, as you probably learned in high school science class.
* Copper and brass: Mix salt and vinegar to a paste. Apply to the metal, then leave for five minutes. Clean off with a damp cloth, rubbing hard as you go.
* Stainless steel: Rub it hard with a vinegar-soaked cloth to get rid of those white water/soap spots. Cutlery can be dunked into a solution of 2 T baking soda in a pint or so of boiling water – buff them dry after soaking 10 minutes, but don’t burn yourself getting them out.
* Silver: Line a bowl with aluminium foil (or dig out that old aluminium saucepan that you shouldn’t really be using to cook food in but haven’t got around to recycling yet). Add in some boiling water and a generous dollop of baking soda. Drop the silver in and leave it in the water for 5 minutes. Fish the silver out with tongs to save burning your fingers, then buff the silver dry. If the silverware has a lot of decorative engravings that are prone to tarnishing, scrub the tarnish out with a toothbrush.
* Gold should just be washed in warm soapy water to remove the grease, or else cleaned with toothpaste. Toothpaste is better, as it rinses off without leaving a residue.
One of the wonderful things about natural cleaners is that they are safe for children to use. Most of the ingredients used to make these home-made cleaning products don’t need warnings on the label to store out of reach of children and to use the product in an adequately ventilated area; neither does it need the number of the local poisons centre in case of swallowing. And this has another advantage: if the product is child-safe, you can encourage children to help with the cleaning with minimal risk to small systems (and young, delicate skin).
The same applies to most organic pest control methods for the garden.
However, it is important here to add that essential oils should always be kept out of the reach of children and that they should not be taken internally. While children can certainly use natural house cleaning products made with essential oils, any child under the age of eight should not be allowed to use the oils themselves (a responsible eight year old who understands that they shouldn’t eat the essential oil or use half a bottle at a time can have a go, however). And the usual first aid advice applies for anything other than water: if you get something in your eye, flush it out with cold running water.
Some natural home products (and methods) can be made by children with a minimum of supervision.
Soap Snot: There’s no denying that the gel made by pouring boiling water (adult supervision required for under 10s) onto chopped or grated soap has a consistency like thick runny mucus – sorry! Once the gel has cooled, it can be used to wash floors; wash soft toys, woolly jerseys and delicate underpants (not that your children are likely to have delicate underpants); and to get aphids off the roses – put a mixture of the soap snot and water into a water pistol and sent out your young SAS squad to gun down the aphids lurking in the roses. Soap snot also has a slippery texture that is quite fun to handle. Soap snot can also be used as shampoo and as liquid soap. Make up an extra big batch for a “messy play day” or as an alternative to a food fight – the kids get to make a huge slithery, slimy mess that has a high gross-out factor but is very easy to clean up.
Vinegar spray: Mix equal parts of vinegar and water to make a glass cleaning spray and mould killer – and an after-shampoo rinse. Add a little essential oil, and the spray doubles as an air freshener for the toilet.
Baking soda paste: Combine baking soda and a little water to make a paste that’s suitable for cleaning down the fridge, inside the microwave and around the bath. You can also clean your teeth with it, but this tastes pretty awful! If the baking soda spray is applied quite thickly and left to dry, spray it with the vinegar spray to see it fizzing.
Take them alive: Send small children to hunt down snails and caterpillars infesting your vegetables. Put them in a container and either feed them to chickens, if you have them, or take them to the nearest park with a pond and feed them to the ducks. Ducks don’t just eat sandwich crusts! Small fingers can also remove aphids by hand, if the child in question has the patience.
While many people know of the virtues of lavender as a natural means of scenting the home and as a source of antiseptic, stress-beating essential oil that’s delectable to put in the bath, not many folk realise that you can also eat lavender and use it in your kitchen. “You can eat lavender?” is a common reaction when the topic of using lavender for culinary purposes arises… if it ever does.
However, the culinary uses of lavender refer only to the dried or fresh plant. NEVER use the essential oil of lavender – or any essential oil, for that matter – in cooking. While some specialists prescribe essential oil for internal use, in general, one should not try eating or drinking the essential oils, not even just a little bit. This applies even if the herb or flower the essential oil is derived from is not poisonous and is something you use in your kitchen every day, such as lemon, clove or cinnamon.
The most obvious and therapeutic place for using lavender in the kitchen is as a tea, and if you’ve never tried using it in cooking before, this is a good place to start. Drunk as a tea, lavender has many of the same properties as the essential oil: it’s soothing and clears the airways. Dried lavender can be used to make a tea on its own, or you can mix it with other herbs. It tastes good mixed with regular China or Indian tea, either black or green. Sweeten with honey. If you’re making tea with straight lavender or with China/India tea, you can add milk if you like.
The next place to try is making a lavender vinegar. This can be used in marinades or as a salad dressing, or you can just keep the lavender vinegar for making your own cleaning products. To make lavender vinegar, cram a jar full of lavender and pour vinegar over the top. Leave it in a dark cupboard for a week, then strain out the vinegar and replace the old, spent lavender with fresh. Do this twice (total of three weeks to infuse, in other words). Then bottle the vinegar and use how you like for the home cleaning. White vinegar and cider vinegar are the best sorts to use.
Next comes using lavender with a herb butter. Simply soften a pat of butter in the microwave or in a double boiler and add in a few teaspoons of loose lavender flowers (fresh or dried). Stir together. Blends well with either cheese or honey (but not both, of course) or on its own on toast.
Lavender flowers can also be added at the last minute to jams and jellies. Apple combines well with most herbs, including lavender, but one food writer swears by adding lavender into marmalade.
Lavender is good friends with rosemary, and can combine with it. It goes well with lamb and chicken, and it can be used as a marinade or as a stuffing. One Moroccan recipe calls for lamb kebabs (and you could probably get away with using beef, pork or chicken) marinated with lots of lavender and cooked over a barbecue grill which has dried lavender added to the hot coals.
The fresh flowers can also be added into salads, like most edible flowers, or can be used for cake decorations.
And after that, it’s up to your imagination. Adding lavender into apple crumble? Using lavender water instead of rose water for Turkish delight? Added into porridge or tapioca? It’s entirely up to you…
