Everyone from Canadian Tire to some of my natural perfume friends are talking about Spring Cleaning this week and we all have a different view on it.
My favourite way to clean is very natural and simple and I bet a lot of my natural food and skin care readers are getting into natural cleaning too. Let's be real, one of the best things about Pinterest is surfing though posts about weird household things you can use to clean things rather than buying expensive, nasty chemical based stuff from the grocery store.
In my house the things on the list below is what I use to clean pretty much everything. If you read this blog often I'm sure you can imagine that my house is basically unscented and there are certainly no synthetic fragrance laden cleaning products or nasty migraine inducing dryer sheet stenches anywhere.
This is my basic list:
Water
Organic Castile Soap and other lovely natural soap based cleaners
Double strength cleaning Vinegar -regular will do too
Essential oils (We strongly recommend not using any large amount of essential oils for cleaning anywhere your cats mouth or paws might touch and do not use tea tree oil around any pets)
Toilet Bombs (link and recipe to come next week)
Microfibre cloths and occasionally Miracle Sponges
Steamer mop
Spray Bottle- 16 oz or larger
Wool dryer balls
Sports Suds
I have a bottle of ammonia and a bottle of peroxide around for really heavy cleaning and stain removal.
My favourite cleaning blend is to measure out 1 cup of castile soap and 1 cup of vinegar. Heat the vinegar- I use the microwave because I'm lazy but you can heat it on the stove top if you're all old school like that ;)- until it's almost boiling and mix it with the soap in a spray bottle. Go to the yuckiest place to clean in your house. In my house the yuckiest places are either the stove top or the bathtub. Spray your lovely new natural cleaning product on the yucky, sticky oily or soap scummy surface and walk away. Yes, I said walk away. Come back in 15- 30 minutes or so and wipe with a wet cloth. Don't call me to tell how amazing it is, I ALREADY know! It's the best thing ever! Right? I got rid of all chemical cleaners a few years ago and have never looked back. Try it, you'll like it and you'll love how much money you save. Until May 4th you can buy Organic Castile Soap here at 20% off the regular price OR bring in your own clean bottle with a good screw top lid and save even more when we refill it!
My bathroom of course is full of all kinds of fun, clean, green and lightly scented bath products but you know what else my bathroom is full of? Old makeup! For many years I've trained my clients to stop storing their natural bath products and makeup in the bathroom because the heat and humidity from the stuff you do in the bathroom can make these things go bad faster. For some reason I broke my own rules on this one. The preservative systems in your natural lotions and liquid or waxy makeup (foundation, mascara, liquid eyeliner,lip gloss, lipstick) and such are not really meant to withstand a lot of heat. So, your second cleaning tip of the day? Go through all your bathroom stuff and look at dates if there are any, and sniff each and every thing! Weird? Yup! Trust me, it works. If something smells off, you know like the week you were on the diet and ate no butter, then when you gave up the diet and ate the butter that was sitting on the counter all week....? That kind of off. The fancy olive oil you stored in the cupboard above the fridge and forgot about kind of off. Rancid oil off I mean.
I recently took a lipstick out of my bathroom and put it in my makeup case. Just last night in the car on the way home from Easter dinner I asked my son- aka slave boy in the passenger seat who is slowly learning how to hand me orange slices, pain killers and such in a way that I can see them whilst driving- to hand me my lipstick since my lips were really dry. Seconds later after I put some on I was begging for a tissue and some water since I had clearly put on lipstick that was so old it wasn't just rancid it was the most vile, putrid tasting evil and someone was actually trying to kill me with this horrible taste. I do not recommend this method for finding out you own lipstick that is older than your children. Honestly? If any of your makeup is older than a year it's likely you should throw it out. Some powdered makeups will be OK, but keep them out of your bathroom. If it goes in your eye, like mascara or eyeliner - 6 months is the longest you should ever keep it. Yes really.
So, there you have it, one spring cleaning post done. I do like to add images to my posts but all the cleaning images I found on the interwebs were of a) people wearing rubber gloves which you don't have to do with these natural cleaning ideas, unless you have a fancy manicure to protect b) people who were all happy and smiley and sh**, and I really never wanted anyone imagining me happy cleaning anything.... so I got you this picture.
