I've been cleaning
my house using natural products for at least the past 20 years.
Back when I started, I had to make up my own products and relied
mainly on baking soda and vinegar, a citrus orange cleaner, and
Murphy's Oil Soap. Then I found Sal's
Suds at Nature's
Pantry in Independence MO and life got SO much easier! (It was especially
helpful when one of my dogs got skunked ... we combined it with
our regular shampoo and the cedar and pine resins did a fantastic
job of cutting that oil that is left behind on whatever the skunk
sprays. Which made living with our dog easier while the remnants
of the experience faded.)
Now you can hardly turn around without someone
touting their cleaning products are 'Green'. Are they? Some are,
some are just 'green-washing'. So be careful and check them out.
I trust products from Seventh
Generation primarily,
but there other great green cleaning products that work just
as well as the branded products most of us are already familiar
with.
Ok, need to come clean here (ha ha, pun intended)...
I am not much of a house cleaner. Which is to say, I don't enjoy
it so I don't do it very often. Now, in the old house (900 sq
ft) that wasn't such a big deal because it didn't take long to
clean when I did it. But over the years I developed allergies
to old dust and so waiting made cleaning even more onerous to
me because I had to wear gloves, a face mask, protective glasses
and cover my hair. Then I had to throw all my clothes into the
washer and take a shower right away.
What is OLD dust? Well, it surprised me to find
out that dust becomes toxic if it is left to its own devices
for more than a couple weeks. I learned
this at the 2004 Greening the Heartland Conference when I sat
in on a session that had information about mold and was in the
room where I wanted to make sure I got a seat for the next session.
It blew my mind away! No wonder cleaning made me sick! I've looked
up a few web sites so you can read more about the toxicity of
dust for yourself:
Well, when we moved to this 2,100 sq ft house,
you can imagine my concern about keeping it clean! Luckily, my
dear hubbie had long ago told me he would be A-OK with hiring
someone to help keep the house clean. When in the old house,
I just couldn't bring myself to admit that I couldn't clean that
little house on my own... but this BIG (to us anyway) house was
another matter! So I started asking friends about how to hire
someone and what I should expect from them and how much should
I pay... then I started interviewing prospective cleaners.
One day, on the way to a meeting, not too far from
home, I saw a car in the lane next to mine that had written on
the window: Green House Cleaning and a phone number. Well, I
can tell you that I whipped out my cell phone, put in the number
and called that car (so to speak)! I left a message and told
them how I found them and how I excited I was to see green cleaning
advertised! A woman called me back and we set up a time for her
to come out for an interview and give me a price on cleaning
our house.
And that is how Tabitha saved my life and continues
to make it comfortable at my house. Tabitha uses products
that she makes herself (so she definitely knows what is in them!)
and she uses good old fashioned elbow-grease and
very good equipment.
Since its just the two of us (plus the dogs, of
course), we get by with having Tabitha come out every 4 weeks
for 4 hours. She is able to clean the entire house (not including
the basement or the floors) in that time! She amazes me and she
is my hero. For my part, I handle the floors (vacuuming, etc.)
and the shelves full of my rock collections and such (asking
her to clean those would be cruel and unusual punishment, hee
hee).
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