Tag Archives: cleaning

21 days to a more natural home series—day 21 wrap up

all natural home series

 

 

We have completed this series.  I hope that you have made some of the changes in your home.  You don’t need to start big, just small baby steps.  If you just change one thing a week or even a month, it will be an improvement upon what you are doing now.

I know for our family personally this has been a huge money saver in our home.  I am constantly thinking that I need to wash that baggie out and save that plastic piece to reuse it.  I know the chemicals that I used before were costing us alot of money, making my own has made things much simpler and cheaper as well.  The only thing is that it takes some time making the cleaners.  I started making my all purpose cleaner and quadrupling it and putting it in an old water milk jug.  So that when i do run out, I don’t have to stop what I am doing and tend to mixing up another batch, now  I just pour directly from my gallon jug.  So much easier.

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough, we must do.” – Leonardo da da Vinci

21 days to a more natural home series….part 20…..tips

all natural home seriesIn todays post I have some miscellaneous tips that you can do to make your home more natural.

  • Want to improve your air quality in the home?? Get an aloe plant.  This easy-to-grow, sun-loving succulent helps clear formaldehyde and benzene, which can be a byproduct of chemical-based cleaners, paints and more. Beyond its air-clearing abilities, the gel inside an aloe plant can help heal cuts and burns.  Great for those that are “non-green” thumb.
  • Take off your shoes at the door.  Shoes track into the home all sorts of toxins from the outside that could impact your indoor air quality.
  • Get an air purifier to help clean your air.  Do some research online to find a good quality one.
  • How about a natural approach and OPEN YOUR WINDOWS.  Nothing is better than good ol fresh air.
  • Make the switch to cast iron or anodized aluminum cookware when it’s time to replace your old pots and pans. Prioritize replacing the cookware used over high heat and pieces that are scratched. PFCs, are used in non-stick cookware. They may keep food  from sticking, but they stick around in the environment and the body for a long time.
  • Avoid  Bleached Products.  Some paper products are often bleached to make them whiter, choose toilet paper, tissue and office paper labeled “Processed Chlorine Free” (PCF). Look for unbleached coffee filters and organic, unbleached tampons as well.
  • Replace plastic water bottles with a refillable stainless steel version, or to replace plastic toy blocks with wooden ones, plastic teething chews with organic cotton, or plastic jars with glass.
  • To select the plastics that are best for your children and for the environment, get to know the easy-to-identify plastic recycling codes you’ll usually find on the underside of the bottle or packaging. Look for these numbers and symbols before you buy. The safer plastic choices are coded 1, 2, 4, and 5. Try to avoid 3, 6, and most plastics labeled with number 7.

 

21 days to a more natural home series part 18…natural air fresheners

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I love burning a nice smelling candle in my home almost every night.  I never thought until recently are there toxins in what I am burning in my home??   That led me to a little research online and YES there are toxins in the candles I was burning.

So, what’s wrong with my candles?
According to a recent study by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), 40 percent of candles on the market contain lead wires inside their wicks. Most often, the candles with lead wicks are scented candles. Fragrance oils soften the wax, so the manufacturers use lead to make the wicks firmer.

A candle with a lead-core wick releases five times the amount of lead considered hazardous for children and exceeds EPA pollution standards for outdoor air, says the CPSC. Exposure to high amounts of lead has been linked to hormone disruption, behavioral problems, learning disabilities, and numerous health problems.

So what can we do with all of that??  First of all, ensure that any new candles you purchase don’t have lead in the wicks. Look for a “lead free” label, or perform the “No-Lead Test”.

  1. Look for a “lead-free” label when shopping for new candles.
  2. For unburnt candles, rub the tip of the wick on a piece of paper. If it leaves a gray mark, like a pencil, the wick contains a lead core. If you’ve already purchased the candle, take it back to the store and tell the manager why you’re demanding a refund.
  3. For candles that have already been burned, you should just throw out any that have metal cores as a precaution. Simply look at the tip of the wick and see if it has a metal core. If you still can’t tell, peel back some of the cotton.

Now if my candles are bad, what else can I do to “naturally” freshen my home??

  • Keep the odors down in your household.  Keep trash cans emptied, throw diapers outside in the trash, wipe up and disinfect “smelly” areas, and keep pet smells under wraps.
  • Give your household a good old fashioned open window policy. Nothing is better than fresh air flowing through your household.
  • If your kitchen is smelly from cooking fish say…..boil some vinegar on the stove or in your microwave.  It will take away the smell.
  • Set a pot on your stove with water and some spices and simmer for a few hours.  I like to do cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.  Or use vanilla or almond extract.  You can boil cut up oranges and lemons as well.  Experiment with different spices to give a great quick scent.   Be sure to keep the water level in your pan as to not burn it.
  • A few drops of essential oils dropped in different areas helps with scent controls.  Or you can mix it with some water and alcohol in a spray bottle and in the air.

You want to avoid all the “heavy-strong” smelling factory made air fresheners.  Most all contain carcinogens.  Look at part 2 of this series for links to the Cancer Prevention Coalition website that lists many products that contain these harmful substances.  They cause many harmful side effects as well.  Even though they smell so great, you want to avoid all those chemical laden product, for the safety of your children and yourself.

Look for part 19…how to repel bugs naturally

21 days to a more natural home series part 16…wipes

all natural home series

 

Convenience that is the name of what we want nowadays.  We want convenient foods, convenient people, and definitely our cleaning to be convenient.  So what if it is more of a pain to drag out the spray bottle and paper towels to clean up our messes all of the time??  What if we didn’t want to get a washcloth wet every time we changed the babies bottom??The answer is wipes.

It is so easy to make your own cleaning wipes at a fraction of the price of store bought ones.  All it takes is some time and creativity to make some.

There are numerous ways you can do this. You will need good sturdy paper towels.  I would recommend Bounty, for the extra cents it costs the quality will be better and easier to rip apart.

We then need to decide which type of container you are going to be using for storing the wipes in.

Option 1:  You can take an old wipey box and unroll and fold paper towels to neatly fit inside your container, would probably take awhile and I know would drive me crazy.  images

Option 2:  You can take a roll of paper towels and cut in half with either a sharp serrated knife, an electric knife,  or use a band saw to easily do the job.  images (2)

Then place them in a smaller plastic container.  You can use numerous containers— ice cream buckets, large coffee cans with lids, or regular plastic tupperware containers.images (1)

Option 3:  Get a roll of paper towels, and find a container that it will fit into and you will have no need to cut or fold your wipes.  I believe they will fit in a large reusable store bought wipe container.

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I gave all the options I knew of because it all is going to depend upon what size container you have to put them in. If you have the money save some heartache and go buy a store bought wipe container and use it up and then start making wipes from it next month:).

For your type of wipes you can make all sorts.

  • cleaning wipes—using our all natural all-purpose spray solution.  Just pour over top of the wipes and you are ready to use them.
  • baby wipes–2 cups distilled water–or boiled then cooled
    1 tablespoon castile soap (or other natural, mild soap)
    1 tablespoon aloe vera gel
    1 tablespoon witch hazel extract
    1 tablespoon sweet almond oil (or olive oil)
    10-15 drops essential oils of choice (optional)
    combine above and pour over your paper towels.  You may have to invert the container a few times to make sure that the towels get completely wet.
  • window cleaning wipes.  Pour in the all natural window cleaner solution and you have instant wipes.
  • makeup remover wipes.  Just cut your paper towels into a smaller size and use like a sour cream container to store these in. 2 cups of distilled water–or boiled then cooled, 2 tablespoons of coconut oil, and 2 squirts of castile soap.

This is just one way to start making those small steps from convenience to homemade.  The more steps you take the more you are on your way to a more simplier and plainer lifestyle.

21 days to a more natural home series part 15….household items

all natural home seriesOn part 15 of our series we are going to find yet another way to make our homes more natural.

When we think of “all natural” we can think of things that have sustainability, things that we will have for a while, things that don’t need to be thrown away.

One item we replaced in the last few years is cloth napkins.  We wasted alot of money on paper napkins.  I ended up going to Goodwill and finding multiple sets of cloth napkins that we reuse again and again.  I find that cloth clean up better than paper does and then we just throw them in the washer, ready for the next time.

Grocery bags———–oh the numerous bags we have in our household each month.  For our family, we do once a month shopping, it isn’t very feasible for me to buy reusable bags for our grocery shopping, we would have to have much.  But we do recycle and reuse our grocery bags from lining the bathroom trashes, to scooping out the kitty litter.  After each month has passed we are usually in need of more bags.

We do use the material  reusable bags for library books and for toting things to friends homes.  I try to keep some in the car, so that if I do not remember they are always there.

Another way to add to your “all natural home” is by cutting down on the obvious–paper plates, cups, plastic silverware, plastic bags, etc.    We try to reuse our ziploc baggies, by rinsing and hanging with a clothespins on the window to dry.  We don’t wipe off foil and reuse  but I try to use a piece that does not have food on it more than once.  (we do not have a microwave, so we reheat items in the oven and need foil to cover them).  Anything you can do to reduce the amount of items that we throw away in the trash.

Paper towels are a biggie for some of us.  You can use small pieces of cut up rags and then just throw them into the wash to help save on buying paper towels.

Up tomorrow……wipes…….wipes……..wipes……the new “instant” craze