Clean Your Countertops With Natural & Organic Cleaners

Your countertops handle a lot of different activity. In the kitchen, your countertops hold appliances, cutting boards for food preparation, dishware in preparation for serving food, and in many cases, it’s where we put the groceries we bring in from the car until we put the food away.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bacteria from food preparation lands on your countertops. Food from meals ends up on your countertops, and dirt from the groceries also sticks to the countertop. Kids put all kinds of things on them - from a flower plucked out of the yard, to rocks, to sticky, dirty hands - and your countertops begin to collect dirt and start to look grimy.

Bacteria and grime in the kitchen is the number one cause of the spread of germs that can make your family sick. You want to keep your countertops free from anything that can harm your family - but that also includes cleaning supplies.

When you wipe the counters and surrounding areas with a cleaning solution or a cleaning wipe that’s soaked in solution, whatever chemicals are in that product are now on your countertops mixing with your food, and also getting onto your kids’ hands and maybe in their mouths!

This is why it's a good idea to use an organic and natural countertop cleaning solution. You can easily find these products in a variety of sizes and natural ingredients designed to clean your countertops, deodorize them and give your kitchen a pleasant scent, too - without harmful perfumes and chemicals.

Ava Anderson Non-Toxic Countertop Spray 
Party Code: 42532

You also want a cleaner that’s gentle on your surfaces. Natural all-purpose countertop sprays often come in a variety of scents such as basil, lavender, and more. The vegetable protein in these cleaners helps keep kitchen odors down, too.

Of course, you don’t want to have to buy one cleaner for your kitchen countertops and a separate kind for your bathroom counters - you want one that can do both jobs. An organic all-purpose cleaner is intended for both bathroom and kitchen counters.

Sometimes there are quick spills that you want to wipe up, or you might have dropped a piece of uncooked meat onto the counter and you quickly want to clean and disinfect that area without bringing out the spray. You’ll want something handy nearby. For that purpose, you can use disinfecting wipes that contain natural and organic ingredients.

When you have tougher dirt or stains such as a scuffmark from a can or other kitchen gadget, you can clean this by using an organic cleaner that has cornstarch in the ingredients. These types of cleaners can also take ink stains off counters; so if you were writing out a grocery list and accidentally marked on the counter, an organic cleaner with coconut oil plus cornstarch can take that right out.

Try Amazon.com to find some natural and organic countertop cleaners, or you can also shop at natural online retailers such as Ava Anderson Non-Toxic, who has a full line of all-natural cleaning products, beauty products, and more. (Use Party Code 42532 when checking out.)

 

7 Green Ways to Unclog Your Toilet

Plugged toilets are disgusting, messy and a real pain in the neck - and something that we have to deal with more often around the holidays, often with extra family in town.  It’s so very tempting to grab a bottle of liquid drain cleaner and pour it down, hoping the clear the mess without getting your hands, or anything else, dirty. Yet that liquid drain unclogger is incredibly harmful to the environment.  The chemicals leach into our soil and taint our water supply.  Not to fret, there are easy and green ways to unclog your toilet.  Next time it becomes plugged, try one of these eight greener tricks.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

#1. If you’ve only flushed once and it’s apparent the toilet is plugged, turn the water off at the source so no more water can fill the tank or bowl and flush again.  Nine times out of ten this easy little trick will take care of basic toilet clogs.  Another option, if this doesn’t work, is to tap the backside of the bowl to jostle the clog. 

#2.  If step one doesn’t work then you can resort to the plunger.  Plungers release suction and like a tap to the backside of the bowl it’ll help jostle the clog.

#3.  A good old-fashioned plumber snake will also help drive a hole through the clog.  This may be especially useful with children around, as they have the uncanny ability to throw the strangest things into the toilet. A plumber snake can be purchased for about $15 to $20 dollars at the hardware store.  It’s an easy device to use - simply unwind the device using the reel type handle and let the snake work its way gradually through the clog.

#4.  Hot water.  Provided you have room in the toilet bowl, fill a bucket with very hot tap water and pour it quickly into the bowl.  This works in a number of ways.  The hot water sometimes dissolves enough of the clog to loosen it.  The change in water pressure in the tank may force the clog through, and the motion of pouring the water into the bowl may jostle the clog enough to force it through.

Non-Toxic Drain Cleaning (Photo credit: Chiot's Run)

#5.  Baking Soda.  Again, assuming the toilet bowl isn’t ready to overflow, pour one cup of baking soda and one cup of vinegar into the bowl.  This can also be followed by a gallon of hot or boiling water.  The vinegar and baking soda cause a reaction, remember volcanoes in grade school?  The reaction may work to loosen the clog.

#6. Dish soap.  Another green toilet-unclogging remedy is to pour in a gallon of boiling water and a quarter to one-third cup of dish detergent.  You’ll want to make sure it’s environmentally safe and biodegradable dish detergent for this practice to be environmentally sound.  Dish detergent works to break down the clog, just like it breaks down the dirt on your dishes. You’ll probably need to let it set for a while before the clog breaks free.

#7.  When all else fails it may be time to put on a pair of very long rubber gloves.  Ick, right?  Well it’s better than pouring caustic drain cleaner into our water supply, not to mention the dangerous fumes drain cleaners give off that can pollute the air in your home. 

Unclogging a toilet is no fun and there’s really no way to make it enjoyable, unless you’re a plumber and charging $100/hour - and even then it's probably no picnic.  Fortunately, there are a number of tried and true green ways to unclog a toilet that shouldn't make a mess, for you or the environment.