Expensive Cleaning Products and the Environment
If you kept track of just one month of your cleaning expenses, you would be very surprised. When we look at each individual cleaning product we really do not consider the cost because it is usually around four to five dollars each. We use laundry detergent, softeners, and stain removers just for our laundry.
Now in the kitchen, we buy dish soap, dishwasher detergent, spray cleaners for the counter and floor cleaner and shine.
The living room requires furniture polish and floor cleaner.
The bathrooms and multiply for each bathroom in your house, you have window cleaners Sydney for the mirror and tub and tile cleaners, plus the toilet bowel cleaner and floor cleaner. Yes, some of these overlap, but only a few of them. This quite a bit of money spent each month.
Not only have you spent a lot of money for these cleaning products but also the chemical mixture you have put in your house affects your family’s health. The person doing the cleaning gets more exposure to all these different types of chemical first hand. The average home uses about 63 different cleaning products. Of the 63 cleaning products 17,000 petrochemicals are available and only 30% have been tested for environmental safety and human exposure. Your home can be more polluted than any outdoor exposure.
Make Your Own Affordable Cleaning Products- people have done so for many years
Most of the safe homemade remedies are crossed with items you already have in your home. They are inexpensive and safe for your family. These house cleaning Sydney alternatives usually are multi-tasked as well. Take a look around in your cupboards and you will see some safe items that have many cleaning abilities like
- Baking Soda- neutralizes and deodorises
- Lemon Juice – cleans and deodorises
- Vinegar – dissolves, removes, polishes, and deodorises
- Borax – cleans, deodorises, and inhibits
Some of my Favourites
Some of my favourite safe alternatives are vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda, and tea tree oil. Some essential oils from our natural fruits and vegetables make great cleaning products as well. The oils are much better for refreshing your house with those great healthy smells in your potpourri pots. You only use a few drops, so these oils last for quite a while.
A few Homemade Cleaning Remedies
Baking soda or sodium bicarbonate
- sprinkle to extinguish grease fires
- cleans and polishes aluminum, chrome, silver, jewelry, plastic, porcelain, stainless steel and tin
- softens fabrics (half cup in with your laundry)
- removes stains (make a paste with water)
- very effective underarm deodorant (mix equal parts baking soda and cornstarch and add just enough coconut oil to hold it all together). Add a bit of essential oil such as lavender or lemon, and you have an effective and very cheap deodorant)
- makes great toothpaste. Pour a little mouthwash (natural, of course) over your brush and dip it in the baking soda.
Lemon juice
- cleans glass
- removes stains from aluminum, clothes (test a small portion first) and porcelain
- lightens/ bleaches if used with sunlight
Vinegar
- dissolves mineral deposits (soak a cloth with vinegar and wrap it around your faucet spout and leave on for an hour or so)
- removes grease, traces of soap and wax buildup
- polishes some metals
- deodorizes bad odors
Borax
- deodorises
- inhibits mold and mildew growth
- boosts the cleaning power of soaps or detergents (toss a half cup in with your laundry)
- stain remover
- kills cockroaches when used with an attractant such as sugar
