TweetWater is the closest humanity has to a universal solvent. This means that just plain water is one of the best natural cleaners that you have on hand. Best of all, it’s free (assuming that you live in a developed country with clean water quite literally on tap, which you probably are if you are reading this article).
In fact, if you take a look at the ingredients list of most proprietary spray-on cleaners , you’ll find that water is fairly high up the ingredients list. All the other odds and ends – which includes the powders and solids, natural and otherwise – that get added into cleaners are usually just there to help the water do its work better. I’ll skip the heavy-duty science, but if you take soap as an example, all this does is adjust the surface tension of water so it gets things wetter and can float the dirt out of whatever you’re washing in a bowl full of lathery suds.
A lot of general household grime will wipe away easily with a damp rag. You know the sort of thing – toothpaste smeared all over the vanity unit, splatters of tomato sauce on the front of cupboards, coffee stains on the table. These things are very easily dealt with if you wipe them up with a damp cloth as soon as you notice them.
Most dirty dishes that are too much for the dishwasher or the scrubbing brush to handle with a regular wash will become a lot easier if left to soak. Fill them with cold water and leave them alone over night (or longer – but wash them before the water starts going green!). The hard-to-remove bits just float off. The worst offenders that are hell to scrape off if they dry (or get burnt on) are pastry, breakfast cereal and flour-based products.
Many stains will yield to a good soaking in plain cold water. Fresh protein stains in particular (e.g. blood, and egg yolk) plus coffee and beetroot will be removed very easily by soaking in cold water.
Just remember to make sure that the water is cold – hot water will set the stain.
As we all learned in primary school, water comes as a solid, a liquid and as a gas. While the liquid form of water is used most often as a Ice can be used to remove bubble gum from hair, carpets, etc. Hold an ice cube over the sticky stuff until the gum hardens. Then use a razor blade, fingernails, a knife, etc. to scrape the gum off. In the case of hair, holding the ice cube on and then working the gum around until it crumbles off is a better idea. Steam also uses heat as well as water to loosen dirt. Every second-hand car dealer knows that steam-cleaning a car engine gets even an old crock looking sparkly and new (and now you know it, too). However, steam is also great for cleaning gunge off your microwave. Just put a bowl of water in a very dirty microwave and zap it for four minutes so all the water boils into steam. Leave the microwave closed for a few minutes after so the steam can do its work. Then open it up and give the inside a jolly good wiping. A similar method works for faces, except the steam shouldn’t be as hot. Fill a pudding basin with boiling water (and throw in some herbs, spices or essential oils) and sit with your face over it, draping the bowl and you with a big towel. The steam will loosen dirt, dead skin, etc. and may help you sweat out any deep dirt in pores. Ten minutes is ideal, and remember not to touch the water. This method works a treat if you have a blocked nose and add peppermint oil to the water.
TweetWho’s who in your circle of friends and family? And how can and does each type benefit from natural cleaning methods?
Who: Cleanies
What: These are the people with immaculate homes. No matter when you drop in, the place is always perfectly ordered. These people are the most likely to have white sofas and carpets. The house usually smells either of clean, fresh air, or of air freshener and disinfectant. Cleanies know the names of every single cleaning product on the market and then some, and can become fanatical about their favourites. No self-respecting germs or vermin will dare poke their noses into a Cleanie’s home and even the toilet is so hygienic and germ-free you could eat off it (but don’t try this). Dust is also unknown and unseen, and this home is most likely to be clutter-free… unless you count the army of cleaning products in a cupboard or under the sink.
How natural cleaning methods help this person: Cleanies can sometimes be over-fond of commercial chemical-laced products, and this can ultimately cause health problems for a Cleanie in spite of all their hygienic precautions. A switch to natural cleaning products is a must to stop a Cleanie slowly poisoning him/herself. Cleanies are most likely to love Enjo cloths (these do an amazing cleaning job with no chemicals and leave everything sparkling) and high-tech methods.
Who: Greenies
What: These people are the ones who try to make minimal impact on the planet. They probably have a vegetable garden and a solar water heater – and possibly a wind turbine. Food served in this house is likely to be organic, vegetarian and grown locally. Furniture in a Greenie’s house is most likely to be made of wood, preferably recycled and unvarnished, with soft bits being made of natural materials such as cotton. Flowers and pot plants abound, and there’s probably a few animals living in or around the house, too.
How natural cleaning methods help this person: natural cleaning products give a Greenie a way to keep their house fit for humans to live in without sacrificing their consciences, as the products break down quickly and easily without harming the waterways or the soil, and producing them is also easy on the environment. Greenies are most likely to love home-made wood polish and lavender oil.
Who: Meanies
What: Meanies are thrifty, and like to cut costs wherever they can. Meanies like to get the most use out of anything they buy and are quite inventive and resourceful when it comes to reusing and mending.
The home of a Meanie is likely to be cluttered (“You can’t throw that out; it might come in useful one day”) and may be a little on the sloppy side, as commercial cleaning products are so expensive and no way will a Meanie employ a cleaner to do it for them. Meanies are also likely to have a vegetable garden.
How natural cleaning methods help this person: natural cleaning products are cheaper than commercial ones – take the example of baking soda, which costs about a quarter of what a bottle of spray-on bathroom cleaning goop costs but lasts longer and can be used to clean more. The same goes for vinegar. Meanies are most likely to love soap gel (the best use for old soap scraps that are too small to wash hands with properly) and vinegar.
TweetQ: How often should I clean my bathroom?
A: Weekly is about right, unless someone has made a real mess. Toilets – if you have a toilet in the bathroom – may need cleaning even more frequently.
Q: How do I clean the bath?
A: Shake a whole lot of baking soda inside it. Then scrub at that grey ring and the like using a soft cloth. If you really want to cheat, you can use those face flannels that need to go out to the wash. Work systematically round the bath. Don’t forget the lip around the bath. You may need to pick at soap scraps with your fingernails to get them loose. Then rinse off the residue. Finally, get a dry flannel or dry cloth and give the taps a good buff-up. If they have a lot of limescale or soap scum on them, spray them with a mixture of vinegar and water first.
Q: There’s a bit of mouldy stuff where the bath meets the wall. What can I do about it?
A: If the mould is growing on the wall itself, douse the wall with neat lemon juice or vinegar to kill the mould spores. If the mould is growing on a flannel or loofah type thingy, then remove it, soak it in vinegar and leave it for a bit. Then wash it as normal and leave it to dry. Return it and make sure you hang it up so it can drip-dry properly and won’t get mouldy again. If the mould is growing on a home-made facemask, throw it out immediately and do not attempt to use it. If the mould is growing on an apple core left after you had a few nibbles in the bath, you are an utter slob and you should hire a professional cleaner if you don’t like cleaning to stop this sort of health hazard happening again – or else change your ways.
Q: How do I the glass shower door?
A: Clean this exactly the way that you’d clean other glass things, which includes the mirror. Shake up a mix of vinegar, water (about 50:50) and essential oil, then spray it all over the glass. Then give it a good rubbing with a soft cloth and you will find all the soap scum, etc. vanishing.
Q: How do I clean the carpet in the bathroom?
A: Get rid of it immediately. Bathroom carpets are highly insanitary. Double or even quadruple that if the loo lives in the bathroom. The same goes for those little mats that sit around the bottom of the toilet – yuck, yuck, yuck! If you find cold feet are a problem, wear slippers. And if you need to catch drips after getting out of the bath so you don’t slip, then learn what bath mats are for. Change and wash bath mats weekly or twice weekly, or whenever they get so sodden they don’t have a snowball’s chance in Gehenna of drying.
Q: But I can’t rip it up – this is a rental property.
A: Why do landlords seem to think that rental properties can have substandard decor and good taste (although, to be fair, my landlord doesn’t)? I’d like to say that you’re excused from cleaning it apart from the regulation hiring out of a steam cleaner when tidying up prior to moving out, but this would be unhygienic. Raise the matter with the landlord next time he/she pops in for a property inspection, and mention the increased potential for wet and dry rot as well as the sanitary reasons. Consider moving to another place.
Q: I’ve got blood on the bathroom carpet. How do I clean that up?
A: If the blood got there from a nosebleed, a cut finger or that-time-of-the-month, then sponge it very liberally with fresh cold water, then scrub it with soap and more cold water before blotting up. Repeat if necessary. If you have killed the landlord in sheer frustration at having to live with the bathroom carpet, then cleaning up the mess is only one of your worries – and the boys and girls in blue will still be able to find traces and slap you behind bars. Plead insanity induced by vile wallpaper patterns – which you probably also have to live with.
TweetVery recently, the prestigious London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine released a press statement claiming that organic food has no notable nutritional benefits when compared to conventionally grown food. This was answered by a swift counter-claim from the Soil Association that claimed that indeed, organically grown crops do have a higher level of nutrients.
Well, it makes a good headline, and I guess it’s no bad thing that we have a good, hard look at what goes onto our plates and into our mouths. So debating the organics issue is a good thing. But is the nutritional content of organic foods the whole story? How many people are paying the premium price for organic food in order to have more nutrients?
Unless I’m a lone nutcase, I thought one of the real benefits of buying, growing and eating organic food was because organic food doesn’t have large amounts of pesticides chucked all over it. Forget the nutrient levels – this depends on a number of factors, including the soil the vegetables are grown in, the variety of plant and how fresh the food is. What I’m interested in is the toxin levels. I don’t really like eating pesticides. And surely I’m not alone.
And, going back to the original research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (which was a literature review, incidentally, not new research actually testing the peas, carrots and apples in question), the review didn’t find NO difference in the nutrient levels between organics and non-organics; they found a SMALL difference, and organically grown food does have a higher nutritional value. The Soil Association folks produced the statistics, using the same papers and research that the LSHTM did. Organically grown produce has:
* 53.6% more beta-carotene (this is considered a small difference????)
* 38.4% more flavonoids
* 13.2% more phenolic compounds
* 12.7% more protein.
And that’s just a few of the figures. OK, the LSHTM did say that only a few studies had been done, so the results weren’t conclusive.
The verdict? Should you pay more for organic vegetables? Well, the argument about pesticide levels doesn’t even seem to be addressed in this study, and that’s something of a clincher for me. However, it’s still true that any vegetables are better than no vegetables – a conventionally grown carrot has more nutritional value than a pack of crisps – and the fresher you eat things, the more vitamins they have.
Personally speaking, I’ll be getting out there into my garden with a spade and some compost. Growing your own vegetables means that you have full control about what sprays (if any) go into your garden. Organic growing is cheaper at the home garden scale – much cheaper than “conventional” methods, as you’re not forking out for fancy chemicals. And you can’t get any vegetables fresher than what comes out of your own garden – straight from the garden to the kitchen, with only a bit of washing and chopping before you can eat it (OK, maybe some cooking in the case of potatoes).
PS. Read the original report for yourself at http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/organicreviewappendices.pdf.
TweetThe best time to remove a stain is right now, so if you have searched for this article online, print it out (on recycled paper, preferably) and take it with you as you get back to the job. The longer a stain sits, the harder it will be to remove.
But what do you do? How do you get that stain out? And does stain removal have to involve harsh chemicals that do goodness-knows-what to your skin and make your eyes water when you use it?
First aid for all stains is plain cold water and lots of it. Water is the closest thing we have to a universal solvent, and it can start dissolving and breaking down the stain. Well, most stains, anyway. What’s more, it also saturates the thing being stained so less of the unwanted substance can get into the fibres of the fabric, allowing a good bit of the stain to float out and away.
Every household that has human beings living in it (and other species as well) would pay to have an emergency stain home cleaning kit. Like the first aid kit and the natural disaster emergency supplies that should also be part of all sensible households, everyone in the house ought to know how to use the stain removal kit.
The kit should contain:
A jug for pouring water onto the spot. If you have to clean a stain out of a carpet, don’t overdo the water, or you will start spreading the stain. Try to keep the stain contained.
Salt: If you spill something really staining (red wine being the most common culprit) onto the carpet, the sofa or the tablecloth, dumping a generous amount of salt onto the stain while it’s still wet prevents a lot of problems. Salt absorbs the moisture more easily than fabric does, so the wine will go into the salt rather than into your carpet. Vacuum or sweep up the salt once the moisture has evaporated.
Several towels: Once you have flooded a spot with water, you need to blot up as much fluid as you can, which will contain the stuff that stains. Blotting with a towel is also the first step when cleaning up puppy pee (or human pee, in the case of a child who is still getting the hand of being potty trained), and a towel is also the best thing for scooping up vomit.
Methylated spirits, isopropyl alcohol, vodka or some other strong spirit: Any one of these is great for removing grass stains, permanent marker and biro. Hairspray is also supposed to remove permanent marker, but this writer hasn’t tried it.
Sard Wonder Soap: If you can get hold of it (it’s made in Australia), this is great for general stain removal in the laundry. It even gets grass stains out of cricket whites.
A scrubbing brush: Often, a good hard scrub with soap (Wonder Soap or ordinary soap) is all you need to clean a stain out of a carpet. The dirt floats up in the foam and can be rinsed or blotted up.
Kerosene: Not exactly natural, but removes tar. Handle with rubber gloves and don’t breathe the stuff in if you can help it. Rinse everything well afterwards, including your hands.
TweetWas one of your New Year resolutions to cut down on waste and to live more sustainably? These quick tips should help.
1. Make your own household cleaners using natural ingredients. Not only does this mean that you will be less exposed to some of the most common sources of household pollutants and toxins, you will also cut down on the amount of waste your household produces (you won’t have to buy and dispose of one product for cleaning windows, one for cleaning floors, one for cleaning the bathroom, one for cleaning kitchens, etc, etc. ad nauseam) and you will also be easier on the environment, as producing cleaners like vinegar, baking soda and soap is less polluting and often uses by-products of other industries.
2. Dry your clothes naturally using the sun and the air. A good washing line or clothes horse gets clothes beautifully dry, whether you dry clothes outside or just stand the clothes horse near a home heating source. This not only means that you’re using less electricity to power a dryer, but you will also cut down on the need for anti-static products and you may even be able to get away with doing less ironing.
3. Learn how to mend and make do. It’s silly to throw away a shirt or pair of jeans just because it’s got a falling hem or a split seam – or even a hole worn in the knees. These are easy mending jobs, and sewing by hand is a soothing task that’s good to do while watching TV or sitting down to talk – and it can help keep your hands busy so you don’t go reaching for a snack or a cigarette.
4. Consider switching to more environmentally friendly brands, such as Ecover, for home cleaning products that you can’t or don’t want to make yourself. For me, this would be laundry and dishwashing detergent.
5. Start a recycling system. It’s good to have a portable container for putting recyclables because then you can go around your house as you clean up and put things straight where they’re supposed to go.
6. Switch to reusable shopping bags as much as you can. This means that you won’t have half a million cluttering your drawers up. However, you may still need a few, as you will need to make sure meat doesn’t drip all over everything else – and old shopping bags are great for corralling rubbish and recyclable paper (and many shopping bags are themselves recyclable).
7. Find an alternative to retail therapy. Not only will you save money, you will also save on packaging and then filling your house with things that you have to clean and care for. Take up another soothing hobby instead.
8. Get some pot plants for your home. Not only will these help clean the air in your home (especially if you buy plants that absorb and eliminate toxins such as spider plants and peace lilies) but you will also help –albeit a little bit – reduce the overall CO2 in the atmosphere. Every little bit counts!
9. Start a garden. It’s good exercise for you, it makes you more aware of the environment, it encourages you to compost food and other organic waste (which includes the bits from your vacuum cleaner bag – beans love these!) and you can eat the results. Composting makes your house smell nicer, as you don’t have food waste sitting around in the bin stinking.
10. Cut down on waste by finding new uses for old items. Old towels, shirts and sheets can be used as cleaning rags. Old toothbrushes can be used for all sorts of cleaning jobs. Old containers can be used to store home-made cleaning products. Thin little soap scraps can be melted down to make soap gel (used for all sorts of cleaning jobs).
TweetA lot of different ingredients turn up in recipes for natural cleaning products. And you’ve got to wonder whether some of them are all that natural or not. “Natural” is a bit of an ambiguous term that isn’t really clarified. It certainly doesn’t mean “organic” or “of vegetable origin”. Not all “natural” cleaners are organic (e.g. baking soda, which is mined) or of vegetable origin (e.g. soap, which often contains animal fats (tallow)). Some writers have a very loose definition of “natural” when writing recipes for home-made cleaning products and tend to mean something like “any raw ingredient that you can buy cheaply in your local shop and use to make your own products.” By “natural”, this writer tends to mean “has the minimal possible effect on the user and the environment throughout the life of the product from extraction/manufacture to breakdown’’.
Ingredients that are used for making home-made cleaning products can be divided into Organic and Inorganic, and into Nice (meaning that the product has a low impact on the environment and does not expose you to a barrage of toxins and/or horrible smells when you use it) and Nasty (meaning that the substance is poisonous, noxious or repulsive). And it’s not the case that everything organic is Nice while everything not organic is Nasty. No – you find things in all four possible categories. All the ingredients listed below have been used in home cleaning products at some stage or another. Use the lists to help you select what’s right for you.
Organic and Nice:
* vinegar
* essential oils
* glycerine
* alcohol (either ethyl alcohol or some strong spirit from your local liquor store)
* cornstarch
* sugar
* lemons
* beeswax
* olive oil (and any other sort of vegetable oil)
* soap (which also contains some inorganic ingredients)
* potash – make your own by taking the ashes from your fireplace (if you burn wood) and making sure they’re ground finely.
Inorganic and Nice:
* baking soda
* sand
* salt
* petroleum jelly (aka Vaseline). It’s a petrochemical by-product so is bordering on Nasty, but it is fairly low in toxins when you use it.
* fuller’s earth
* borax
* water
Organic and Nasty. Few recipes for cleaning products use these nowadays, but they did in the past. Just have a look at the original Mrs Beeton if you don’t believe me.
* ox gall
* human urine (used as a bleach)
* (possibly) saliva – where did you think the phrase “spit and polish” came from?
Inorganic and Nasty. These ingredients really did turn up in a book on how to make “natural” home cleaning products. If you are switching to natural cleaners in order to reduce the toxins you are exposed to, forget it. If you are making your own cleaners to save money, you may consider these. Your choice. But remember the golden rule for products in this category: NEVER MIX MORE THAN ONE OF THESE TOGETHER.
* Chlorine bleach
* Ammonia
* Petrol (yes, really)
* Kerosene (I have to admit it’s first-class for removing tar)
* Detergents
