It's Time to Clean Green

Are you tired of inhaling toxic chemical every time you decide to clean? Do you go through paper towels or Lysol wet wipes like they were going out of style? Try cleaning green, it’s not only healthier for you, it’s good for the environment.

Why Go Green When You Clean?

• Avoid Unhealthy Air: If the area you are cleaning is in a spot that lacks good ventilation, the chemicals in traditional off-the-shelf cleaning products stay in the air. For those of us with lung problems and allergies this can make cleaning painful.

• Stop Helping the Germs: Antibacterial soaps and cleansers have become extremely popular in the last decade. People even carry around antibacterial gels in their bags during flu and cold season, hoping they’ll avoid the seasonal ailments. Guess what, they clean no better than regular soap, and they could cause harmful bacteria to become resistant while killing helpful organisms (that’s right, some of those little organisms are the exact thing that keeps us healthy).

• Don’t Waste: Most people have moved away from using cloth rags to clean surfaces in their home, opting for the disposable wet wipes and paper towels that pile up in the trash can and our landfills. As long as you wash your rags between uses you’ll be as sanitary as you need to be. Or, if you just can’t stand the idea of using a rag, opt for environmentally-friendly paper towels and products.

Do It Yourself Green Cleaning Products – They were good enough for Granny, and they’re the base of most off-the-shelf cleaning products available today.

Borax
A miracle mineral, Borax is composed of sodium, boron, oxygen and water. You can use it for laundry, scrubbing the bathroom, kitchen and it even works to dry flowers!

Vinegar
Okay, so it may smell bad, but vinegar is a great surface cleaner. You can use it on your floors, on hard water spots, and more. Just mix with water and clean away!

Lemon Juice
If you abhor the idea of using vinegar, don’t worry, lemon juice can be used instead. Great as a natural antibacterial solution, wipe down your counters with a lemon juice water solution.

Baking Soda
No more Comet, baking soda is all you need. If you’ve got crusty substances glued to your cooking pans or counter tops, make a baking soda and water paste and get rid of those stains. And, for a bonus, you can store it in your refrigerator to eliminate odors.

Murphy’s Oil Soap
A tried and true soap that’s been around for decades, Murphy’s Oil Soap is natural biodegradable cleaning product that's free of bleach, ammonia, or other harsh detergents. It’s great on wood floors, furniture, no-wax floors, tile, paint and laminate. It’s also good for cleaning shoes!

Help, My Bedroom is Out of Control!

Has your bedroom become a dumping ground for shoes, clothing and random knick knacks? Do you have to strategically move piles in order to get into bed or move around the room? Are you terrified to even look under the bed?

For many of us, our bedroom isn’t just a place where we sleep, we actually live there! It’s not just a room with a bed, it’s the exercise room, the TV room, and the dining room in one. Or, maybe your just so busy most of the time that you don’t have time to pick up after yourself as you run out the door. Depending on the amount of activities you do in your bedroom it can become an extremely cluttered place.

Regardless of how badly cluttered you may or may not be, the following 2 steps will help you get it under control:

Step 1: Scan and the bedroom and start removing anything that doesn’t belong there. This step alone is the majority of what needs to be done to get to a more organized room. If you’ve got more stuff to take out than you know what to do with, grab an empty clothes hamper and load it up. Once it’s full empty it and load it up again until you’ve removed everything you need to.

Step 2: Do you have too much stuff? Start going through your closet and drawers and see what you can get rid of. Unless you’re a neat freak, you’ll more than likely have shoes, clothes and knick knacks that can be gotten rid of.