LILL's LIST

White vinegar

If I had to choose one green item to take with me to a desert island, I’d choose white vinegar. My kids joke that our house runs on vinegar, because we use it for cleaning, as a fabric softener, to unclog drains (with my second favorite green item, baking soda), as a mild disinfectant and probably several other things that escape me at the moment.

It’s wonderful for removing that overpowering smell you get from new clothes. It cuts down on static cling and wrinkles if you put it in the final rinse in your washer. It removes the smell of smoke from clothes, curtains and even hair, although we use apple cider vinegar as a hair rinse and detangler.

There’s nothing better than vinegar for washing windows and getting greasy counters clean. Put a handful of baking soda in your drain, add a cup or two of vinegar all at once, and you get a mini-Vesuvius that powers away clogs and soap scum.

Next to vinegar, I’d have to opt for baking soda as a favorite green find. It’s as good as scouring powder for getting soap scum off the tub without scratching. Put it in your water-pic and/or brush your teeth with it. (I add a drop or two of peppermint oil for flavoring.) Put it in the tub to soften the water. Use it as a poultice for insect bites and stings. You can even throw it on a grease fire to smother the flames.

Third on my list of green essentials is Sal Suds. I use Dr. Bronner’s brand and I use it for everything. My son even used it to remove permanent ink from a rug. It’s dandy for deodorizing and cleaning stinky things like diaper pails and cat boxes (after you tip out the litter and any resident cats, of course) and great for toilet bowls. We leave some in overnight, brush and flush the next morning, and avoid the buildup that our hard water causes.

Because we don’t use bleach, we pour a capful of Sal Suds into the whites every so often and it works just as well at getting the gray out. It cleans our wood floors, painted walls, and everything else that’s washable. It is strong, though, so it might be a good idea to wear rubber gloves. I don’t, but I do rinse my hands well afterwards.

So those are my three green stalwarts. There are other things like liquid castile soap and essential oils that are part of my green toolkit, but they’re minor players. The big three take care of 90% of the household cleaning and maintenance chez Hawkins. Best of all, they’re really inexpensive, which is part of being green to me. If it doesn’t save money as well as save the earth, it’s not really green.

Even though there’s still over a foot of snow outside, my spring cleaning alarm went off. I spent most of yesterday doing tasks that I’ve neglected during my winter slump. Floors, bathrooms, dust bunny wrangling, cobweb removal and cleaning handprints from just about every vertical or horizontal surface in the house – I was a human dynamo. What’s really amazing is that I accomplished it all with a broom, a dustpan, cleaning cloths, a basin and two cleaners: Dr. Bronner’s Hemp-Citrus Liquid Glycerine Soap and Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds.

Unlike the toilet cleaners that are advertised on tv, Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds won’t make you dizzy if you use it without ventilation. Well, I should qualify that by saying you might get a little swoony if you read the stuff he says on the label, but you can skip that. The stuff does have spruce and pine oil in it, so you won’t want to drink it or take a bath in it, but it smells really nice and does a very good job of cleaning, and it wouldn’t kill you if you did drink it.

For the hard water stains in the toilet bowls, I resorted to elbow grease with a pumice stone on a stick, something that I found at a local hardware store. Not only does it do a great job of removing stains, but I get some much-needed exercise too. It also sparked a conversation between my daughter and I about volcanic rock and minerals in water so it was an educational exercise too.

The Sal Suds is good for floors -  wooden, vinyl or any other non-porous surface -  and you can also use it for laundry, surface cleaning, washing your car or anywhere you’d use a general purpose cleaner. I use it like a laundry pre-treater to remove stains.

The Citrus Liquid Glycerine Soap smells like you just cut into an orange and it’s very good for cleaning greasy dishes, but you can use it the same way you’d use any liquid soap. I keep it next to the sink and use it for handwashing, dishwashing, for washing delicate fabrics and even for counters and floors, when I’m in too much of a hurry to go get the Sal Suds that I left down in the laundry room.

Other than baking soda and white vinegar, that’s the extent of my cleaning supplies. When I happen to catch a glimpse of what other people keep under their sinks, I’m amazed that they feel that they need so many cans and bottles, most of which have warning labels on them. And most of them also contain petroleum, something we’re running out of and need to get away from.

If you believe the ads on tv and in magazines, your house isn’t clean until it’s been Swiffered, sprayed, waxed, disinfected, air freshened and slathered with enough petroleum products to equal a quart of motor oil. Why, according to the companies that make all of this, a person would have to be pretty simple to believe that a handful of non-toxic cleaners could do everything those specialized products can do.

Well, simple I may be, but I’m not stupid. All of this stuff is promoted as something that will make housework easier and faster, when in fact it makes it more complicated and time-consuming. My house is clean enough for us, not for a magazine ad. It smells clean, thanks to the Sal Suds, the Citrus Glycerine Soap and the fresh air that we let in through the open windows for a few minutes a day even in winter.

Of course, the worst part about all this is the damage all of these products are doing to us and to our environment. I feel strongly that we all need to take a good hard look at what we have under our sinks and in our bathrooms and think about whether cleaning our homes with toxic  chemicals is worth our health and our planet.

Get Your Toilet Bowl Clean With This Kids’ Favorite
What flavor kool-aid should I put in the toilet this week? What? You don’t put kool-aid in your toilet? You should. Why? Well, for one thing, it’s non-toxic. It cleans the bowl because it has citric acid in it. If your dog drinks out of the toilet bowl… Well, you get the picture. I put it in after the kids have gone to bed, swish with the brush to mix it into the water, then brush again in the morning and flush. We’ve found that lemon works best for removing stains.

Soften Your Clothes With This Shiny Wrap
Whether you call it aluminum foil, tinfoil or just foil, it’s a great way to soften your clothes and prevent static cling. Just tear off two squares, about six inches by six inches. Place them on top of the wet clothes in your dryer and dry as usual. They crumple themselves into little balls that last through two or three dryer loads. When they start to shred, throw them away and replace them with new foil.

Make Your Dishes Gleam With This Non-Toxic Alternative to Rinse Additives
White vinegar rinses detergent off glasses and dishes and really makes them shine. Then it rinses off completely, itself. Just pour it into the dispenser in your dishwasher instead of your usual rinse aid. It’s cheaper, non-toxic and works as well or better. It also cleans your dishwasher, unlike the commercial rinse aids.

Keep Food Fresh Without Spending a Fortune on Chip Clips
Just use wooden or plastic clothespins. They come in pretty colors and different sizes and are much cheaper than chip clips.

Better and Cheaper and Your Dog Will Love It
Does your dog look a little round lately? We have a Black Lab who is always begging for food, but she puts on weight if we give her any more than her two servings of dry dog food daily. We felt really bad for her, because we had to stop giving her the “dog cookies” she loved. Then our vet suggested that we give her raw carrots instead. She loves them! They’re crunchy, so they clean her teeth and take a while to chew. She holds them in her paws and chews on them as if they were a bone.

Steal These From Your Teenager and Clean Your Keyboard
Does your teenager use those pads for acne or oily skin? If so, grab one and wipe your keyboard keys with it. The textured pad is saturated with a solution that removes skin oil and the oily film that forms on the keys. Just make sure that your computer is off and don’t squeeze the pad so hard that it drips into the space between the keys.