Natural Laundry Cleaning Solutions

A lot of consumers use off-the-shelf commercial products to clean their laundry. Sometimes the choice is made based on the least expensive laundry product, or the product offering a coupon for the week.

Laundry is listed as one of the least favorite chores, and the fact is that no one really likes to do laundry, but everyone loves to have clean, fresh smelling clothes. But by using laundry solutions that contain synthetic ingredients, you’re cleaning your clothes in harmful chemicals.

These chemicals don’t always come out in the rinse cycle. Then if you toss the clothes into the dryer and add a chemically treated dryer sheet or you use a liquid fabric softener, you’re adding even more chemicals! Laundry cleaning solutions are one of the top causes of skin allergies and eye irritants.

Clean laundry drying in the sun. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But by choosing to go the more natural way and use organic or natural products, you won’t miss out on that freshly laundered smell and appearance. You’re still going to have clothes that look their best and smell great, too. What you will miss out on are the things that aren’t healthy for your body or the environment.

You can use laundry cleaning solutions you make at home, but this is time consuming and if you’re just getting started with using natural cleaners, it’ll take some time before you get the hang of making the mixture.

An easy way to go natural and save time is to use a ready-made natural or organic laundry cleaner. Not all laundry cleaners that claim to be natural really are, so you’ll have to check the ingredients carefully. The natural or organic cleaners that are best for both you and your clothes will say that they’re without any synthetic dyes, and they won’t contain any phosphates.

Look for laundry detergents that say that they’re free from chlorine chemicals. Also look for labels that say the product is hypoallergenic, and the ingredients are based on plants and not on synthetics. You can buy concentrated natural laundry detergents in larger containers to save money. Many have great, natural scents. (My favorite is Earth Friendly Products Ecos Lemongrass - I've been using it for years and it works wonderfully and smells great!)

To whiten clothes, especially clothes that have stains, you can use Borax to treat them. If you have sweat stains on shirts, put some vinegar in a spray bottle and cover the stain with the vinegar. Let sit a few minutes, then launder.

For clothing that needs to be pretreated for stains like an ink stain, you can put the clothing in vinegar. The smell isn’t all that great while it’s soaking, but it does come out in the wash and the vinegar will remove the ink stain. Vinegar is also an excellent stain remover to rid clothes of tomato-based stains.

Once you’ve pretreated any stains, just wash the clothes in a natural or organic detergent for a healthier way to clean your laundry that’s better for your health and safer for the environment!

Natural Laundry Detergents:

   

Safe & Natural Oven Cleaning Methods

Cleaning the oven isn’t high on anyone’s joy list, but it’s a task that has to be done in order to have a clean oven, and get rid of any spillage so you don’t run the risk of starting an oven fire.

There are many oven cleaners on the market that advertise how quickly they cut through grease and clean your oven. While they do clean the appliance, it’s what these cleaners don’t tell you that matters.

You won’t hear that the fumes from these cleaners can permeate your entire home and can cause coughing and watery eyes - and even more serious side effects for some people. You also won’t hear that the ingredients are caustic. Caustic means that the ingredients can cause painful skin burns.

Dirty oven. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Natural oven cleaning methods are safer to use in your home and you won’t have to worry about damaging your skin or breathing in a caustic substance. If you need to clean your oven and want to use what you have around the house to do it, then you can use citrus fruits like lemons.

But this is more of a time consuming task because even using lemons, you’ll still have to scrub - and if you have a stuck on mess, you may end up needing something to scrape off burned on food spills.

You can also use white vinegar to clean an oven, but for the scrubbing action, you’ll need to use it in conjunction with baking soda. Even then, depending on the shape your oven is in, you’ll still have to put some effort into scrubbing it clean.

Both of these methods will work to get your oven clean, but they do take up a lot of time and since time is a precious commodity to most of us, you may prefer to look for faster, just as effective methods.

To do that, you can use a natural oven cleaner that’s designed to break apart food spills and cut through grease. You can find these natural oven cleaners in handy spray bottles available through online suppliers such as Amazon.com and many others.

Because they’re natural or organic, they’re safe to use in all types of ovens, including countertop versions. By using only the natural ingredients in these formulas to clean your oven, you won’t be dealing with any of the dangerous fumes, either.

Unlike the other chemical based cleaners that require you to saturate the oven and then wait half an hour before cleaning, with a natural cleaner, you can spray the oven - and because the cleaner works fast, you can wipe it down in minutes without having to wait as long. These natural oven cleaners are also great for cleaning barbecue grills, too!

Natural Oven Cleaning Products:
   

Environmentally Friendly Floor Cleaning Solutions

The floors in your home handle a lot of foot traffic, and if you have pets, you can also add paw traffic. It’s no wonder that floors can be tough to keep clean.

Besides foot traffic, there’s human hair, pet hair, dust and anything tracked in from the outside that can build up. Plus, you also have to take care of any accidental spills, and make sure you get up liquids that stain the floor. Some stains get ground in and can be tougher to get out if you didn’t know they had occurred.

Bamboo flooring.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s easy to buy into the belief that using a steam cleaner is the only way to truly clean carpets. And you might also think that chemical cleaners are the best product to use on wood or tile flooring, but you would be wrong.

Many commercial floor cleaners have too many dangerous chemicals to use in your home, and the water used after a chemical steam cleaning ends up in the sewer system, while the non-biodegradable containers end up in the landfill. Not only are these chemicals bad for you and the earth, they don’t do the best job at cleaning, either.

You want floors that are safe and clean enough to walk on barefoot, and you also want floors clean enough for your children to be able to sit on or crawl on - especially if you have little infants learning how to navigate the world.

Luckily, there are a number of natural floor cleaning products available that are much safer for you and your family.

Starting with carpets, you’ll first want to use a natural stain remover. You can find organic stain removers that don’t have any fumes, so there’s no chemical odors, and they don’t contain toxins so they’re great for the environment, too.

Once you’ve gone over any stains on the carpet, you can apply the carpet cleaner. Most organic cleaners are concentrated so a little bit can keep your carpets looking new all year long.

Even if you use a carpet-cleaning machine that doesn’t use heat, organic carpet cleaners will still work for you. Some of the carpet cleaners can be specially mixed in a small dish and used as a stain remover, so you can even skip the pretreatment of stains depending on the brand you get. Look for cleaners that have soap bark and great smelling natural scents like sage.

For tile floors, get a cleaner that’s multi-purpose and contains linseed oil. This is safe to use on marble flooring as well. If you have hardwood flooring, make sure the organic cleaner you buy specifically lists hardwood flooring, because not all organic ingredients are suitable for hardwood.

Some organic cleaners will contain vinegar and an essential oil, which are good for cleaning and shining wood floors. For any floor polishes that you use, make sure they’re vegetable based. 

Some Healthy & Safe Natural Floor Cleaners:
   

Could Chelation Help Reduce Your Toxic Load?

As we discussed last week, at this moment, you’re carrying far more toxins within your body than you’re aware of. These toxins have the potential to negatively impact your health - and some can even build up to the point where they can shorten your life!*

Many people assume that they have a few toxins, but they don’t realize that just by living in your home and going about your daily life, you ingest thousands of different toxins.

Chemical cleaning products can contain toxins. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Toxins can be a number of things - but especially chemicals. These chemicals come from your mattress, cleaning products, your floors, the foods that you eat and the things you drink - and even the air you breathe.

When you ingest toxins in some way, your body has natural processes in place to remove these toxins as a way of protecting itself. For example, your body may get rid of toxins by secreting them through your kidneys.

As the build up continues, it tries to rid these toxins by expelling them as waste material and pushing them to leach out through the skin. Unfortunately, in today's chemical-filled world, it often happens that these toxins are so numerous, and the build up can be so great, that the body can’t eliminate them all without some help.

That’s why detoxing can help. By detoxing, you can eliminate a build up, boost your health and improve your immune system. One of the ways that you can do this is by using a chelation detoxing process.

Doctors use chelation therapy to rid a patient’s body of heavy metal toxins in particular. The patient receives EDTA or Ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetic acid through an IV and has to return for numerous visits.

Fortunately, there’s a more natural way that you can use chelation to detoxify your body. This natural chelation process is a combination of cilantro and chlorella.

Fresh Cilantro (Coriander). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cilantro, also called coriander, is an herb from the parsley family and has been used for medicinal purposes, as well as in cooking. It has antioxidant properties as well as essential oil, and is rich in fiber.

This herb is believed to improve health and fight disease. It’s an anti-inflammatory and is helpful in helping the body get rid of mercury toxins.

Chlorella is fresh water alga. It contains antioxidants, vitamin C, iron and B vitamins.

It works to remove toxins from the body because it contains chlorophyll. This is what you see when you look at green plants. Chlorophyll is the pigment. What it does for humans when used as part of a detox plan is eliminate metals from the body and from the bloodstream through a binding process.

You can find chlorella at health food stores in various forms. It’s used in a combination chelation process with cilantro. Both of these are natural living substances that can help cleanse and detoxify your body naturally, without the harmful side effects of many harsher cleanses.



* Please note that this blog is provided for informational purposes only. It should not be considered as medical advice, and you should always consult a qualified medical practitioner before beginning any cleanse or detoxification program.

Healthier Ways to Clean Your Dishes

Food is the center of many of life’s celebrations, but at the end of the celebrating, when all the guests are heading home, the clean up has to begin. Doing the dishes, whether you put them in a dishwasher or wash them by hand, takes up a lot of time. And depending on what you use to aid in the cleaning up process, the products you use may be environmentally unfriendly and unsafe for your skin.

Seventh Generation Dishwasher Pods

Organic cleaners are safer for every cleaning task you need to do - so that means you don’t have to skip using organic products to clean your dishes, regardless of whether you choose to wash them by hand or load them in a dishwasher.

There are a lot of organic cleaners that can give your dishes sparkle and get them shiny clean. If you choose a dishwasher, you can buy organic cleaning pods that come with delightful fragrances like thyme. This scent can give your entire kitchen a fresh smell - without all the harmful chemicals.

Look for organic dishwashing detergents that don’t have any chlorine or phosphate in them. These are also a much better option if you have a septic system, as these chemicals can disrupt the delicate microbial balance of your system and cause problems in the future.

Organic cleaners can make a greasy clean up job a lot easier by cutting through the grease. And if you get the pre-measured dishwasher pods, this even cuts back on time spent in the kitchen, too. All you have to do is stick one into the dishwasher - no time needed to measure and no chance of accidentally overfilling the soap dish.

Earth-Friendly Products Dishmate

If you want to hand wash the dishes, then using organic soap won’t only clean your dishes without unsightly spots, but the soap is also better for your hands, too, without drying alcohols or harsh sudsing agents. Find one that contains aloe vera or chamomile to soothe your skin.

Instead of using dishwasher detergent that has synthetic scents and colors, use ones that have citrus extracts like lemon so that your kitchen is instantly refreshed after you cook a meal with strong odors.

You can make a nice cleaner yourself very cheaply just by using a mix of borax and baking soda with an essential oil of your choice. This may not have the beautiful color and suds that you had when you used store-bought dishwasher detergent, but you also won’t be putting anything harmful down your drain.

Make sure you play around with the do-it-yourself recipes for organic and natural cleaners, because results can vary depending on the hardness of your water. And watch how your skin reacts to the ingredients, too. You might need to wear gloves while cleaning, as even some natural ingredients are abrasive and can irritate your skin.

Video: Safe, Natural Household Cleaners You Can Make At Home

This short video details lots of ways you can use common, cheap, and safe household items to clean all sorts of things around your home, without all of the harmful chemicals. From baking soda, to vinegar, to even vodka, there are numerous items you probably already have in your pantry that can clean everything from fabrics, to countertops, silver, and more - all safely and at a fraction of the cost of expensive chemical-based cleaners.

Check out the video to learn all you need to clean your home safely and naturally!

Natural, Healthy Cleaning Products
So many of the products used today as household cleaners have adverse health effects. Learn about some healthy, natural alternatives.

A Quick Look At Natural & Organic Cleaning Ingredients

You can scrub your home in every room, but that doesn’t mean your home is clean in a way that’s good for your health. If you’ve used chemical cleaners, these chemicals do get absorbed into your body through your skin.

That’s why you want to use only organic and natural cleaning supplies. Products that contain only organic ingredients are not just part of helping the world be a safer place to live environmentally - they’re better for you, too.

Using vinegar for a natural clean (Photo credit: elycefeliz)

When you’re looking for cleaning products, you need to know what the contents should be in order to be considered natural - because some products say that they’re natural, even when they’re not. Avoid products that contain preservatives or synthetic materials.

Organic and natural cleaning supplies will often have plant extracts and natural minerals on the ingredient lists. Some will have flower essences (such as lavender) to give your home a soothing scent.

Look for products that contain essential oils, which are oils from natural items such as lemon or pine. Cleaning ingredients that are natural in nature will also often have the word 'biodegradable' on the label.

Baking soda is a natural cleaner and is often used to scrub and whiten stains. White vinegar can be used to clean through grease, to get rid of stains and even as pest control. Ants will avoid white vinegar, so if you clean around your window frames and any crevices with white vinegar, this will take care of any ant problems.

Vinegar can also be used to kill mold, clean a garbage disposal and even to take out stains left by tea and coffee in your cups. It’s also great for getting rid of lime deposits.

Salt. (Photo credit: SoraZG)

Some other natural and organic cleaning ingredients found in green cleaners are coconut, minerals and salt. You might not think of salt as a natural cleaner, but it is. Salt can be used as an abrasive and it can also be used to dry up liquids spilled on carpets - and like vinegar, it's much cheaper than most commercial cleaning products on the market!

Look for cleaners that contain castile soap. This soap is made of natural olive oil and can be used for cleaning counter tops. It can also be used to clean clothes and it’s great on the hands. People with allergies often find it easier to use castile soap than any other type of soap.

When you’re buying organic or natural cleaners, just remember that the labels should have ingredients that you would recognize from nature. Also look for keywords like non-abrasive and non-flammable, because this is sometimes indicative of it being chemical-free.

Choosing Safer Cleaning Methods for Your Home

If you check out the cleaning supplies aisle in any grocery store, you’ll see that the shelves are filled with products designed for every cleaning purpose under the sun. From cleaning the floor to polishing the furniture to doing the laundry, you can find something intended for every job.

House Of Horrors (Photo credit: BrittneyBush)

But the chemicals in these products carry labels warning of everything from harmful vapors, to skin irritants and more. It’s a fact that cleaners with chemicals in them are dangerous to you and your family’s well being, by releasing their fumes and toxins into your home.

You can smell the scent of these chemicals in the air immediately upon entering the cleaning aisle - even though they are all still in sealed containers - and after you’ve used them in your home. When you clean your baby or toddler’s high chair tray or his toys with a chemical cleaner, those toxins are there where he eats and on the toys he sticks in his mouth.

However, there are effective, safer alternatives to dangerous chemical-laced products. You can use organic, natural products and have a home that smells great, shines with cleanliness and is toxin-free.

Look for organic cleaners that are all-purpose cleaners so that you can use them in the kitchen and in the bathroom, too. If you have a baby or toddler at home and need to clean the toys or baby’s highchair, there are organic cleaners that are non-toxic, don’t have an odor and will get your child’s playthings clean.

Cleaning (Photo credit: go_greener_oz)

You can get concentrated, organic cleaning products that can clean your home from top to bottom. These cleaners aren’t toxic, so they’re safer to use and they are also biodegradable. Plus, these organic cleaners aren’t tested on lab animals, either. Cleaners using Birch bark extract and relaxing scents not only clean your home but give it a fresh, natural clean smell, too.

You can even make some of these safer cleaning solutions for your home yourself, but if you’re like most of us, time isn’t something you have a lot of and you need the convenience of purchasing organic cleaners. For example, it’s easier and less expensive to buy organic toothpaste to clean any tarnished silver than it is to make your own silver cleaner.

The same goes for dish cleaning soap, you can buy an organic, non-toxic foaming dish soap that’s concentrated so it lasts and it’s safe to use on any dish as well as baby items. To wipe down kitchen counters, you can use a glass and surface cleaner that’s biodegradable.

There’s no end to the amount of safe and eco-friendly products you can use to get your home clean. You won’t have to sacrifice quality or appeal in the form of scents, either. Organic cleaners are no longer a rarity. They’re now mainstream because more people have learned about the dangers of chemicals in cleaning products, and are taking steps to protect their family and environment from pollutants.

You can find lots of suggestions for natural and safe household cleaning products on our website at: http://www.newholisticliving.com/recommended-products-for-detox--green-living.html