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 Switching to Natural Cleaning Products
Excerpt from Clean & Green by Annie Berthold-Bond
1.) I suggest you make a pile of all the unacceptable cleaning agents in your home and garage. While you are at it, include cans of old pesticides and paints, too. For many products, I don't recommend "using everything up" instead of disposal, as many recycling centers often do, because there is increasing evidence that many commercial products carry health risks. Pesticides, herbicides, solvents, and oven cleaners are examples. Moreover, a person may have a can of something in their garage that, without their being aware, has long since been taken off the market for safety reasons. By using it up they may incur injury. However, I am not advocating people take items like laundry detergents to household hazardous waste centers.
2.) Call your county health department to find out how to store household hazardous waste temporarily and to find out when there will be hazardous waste pickups.
A Few Tips:
• Never mix different products together, as new and deadly chemicals can be made inadvertently.
• Store household hazardous waste away from animals, children, and heat. Antifreeze has a sweet taste, for example, and animals like to eat it.
• Don't pour any of this material down the drain or throw it into your regular trash. It not only maybe be hazardous waste but it may be very dangerous to your health.
• If you spill anything, try to absorb it with un-perfumed, pure clay kitty litter, or, yes, a disposable diaper, as these two items don't react with chemicals. Keep children and pets away from the area and try to ensure as much ventilation as possible. These directions apply only to household products. For a spill of industrial-strength chemicals, call the police.
3.) Be very cautious of containers, too, especially the ones that contained pesticides.
The Transition
In order to make the transition to nontoxic living, the first thing I would suggest you do is to take a deep breath and decide that your concern about your health and the environment is strong enough to change your habits. Once you have done that, cleaning in a different way won't be hard. I find nontoxic cleaning rewarding - and cleaning the house has never been high on my list of things I like to do. The idea of cleaning the bathroom with baking soda and freshly picked rose petals is so pleasing that as unbelievable as it sounds, sometimes I actually want to go and do it! The furniture polish I make evokes smells and images I have conjured up when reading 19th-century novels. The wood has a clean, rich, nutty smell. Sleeping on detergent-free sheets seems more restful. Not absorbing chemical residue through my skin when I wash the dishes is reassuring and it's good to know there are virtually no bottled poisons that children could drink and that the air isn't full of offensive chemicals. My home has virtually become a nontoxic sanctuary.
Minerals, Plants and Animal: Natural Ingredient Choices
In marked contrast to many commercial products, natural cleaning products will introduce you to an abundant array of the earth's resources. Ingredients used in this book's recipes are natural products of our planet: Renewable, nonpolluting, harmless to your groundwater, and safe for our health, our fellow creature's health, and future generations. The recommended commercial products, too, are natural, nontoxic, and environmentally safe.
An Introduction to Natural Ingredients
The key to successfully making your own cleaners is to understand the way the ingredients work. Equipped with this knowledge you can approach cleaning problems with the comforting feeling that you are using the right thing at the right time. The range and breadth of natural cleaning materials is impressive. For more specific cleaning information, consult the appropriate chapters in this book.
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