Sunday, May 1, 2011

Clean cleaning.....what?

I got started on this organic eco-friendly kick slowly over a few years, but I started first off by experimenting with eco-friendly organic house cleaners. We have tried multiple products, styles, scents, etc. in our house to keep it clean and not upset our sensitive skin and lungs.

Here's the good news, what works best is quick, easy and cheap!

My floor cleaner:
3 litres of water, 3 litres of vinegar and 3-5 drops of Sunlight dish detergent.

This is a mix of many different recipes for homemade cleaners that I have come across after realizing that all the eco-friendly cleaners I was buying were still very expensive and not realistic for living under our means and living environmentally responsibly.

Over the past few months I have been working on getting a good system for keeping our kitchen, dining and living room floors clean. In our house we have a loop between these three rooms and it is definitely the most highly traveled pathway in our house! Sometimes it's clean feet, but often it is dirty little toes or just as dirty kitty paws. To add to it, our patio has french doors that open onto this area as well so in the summer we tend to toss our shoes up on the patio and enter the house. So there is no filter for keeping all the dust and dirt off of this area. Then of course there is all the food stuff from the kitchen and the bits and pieces dropped from the kitchen table.

I came to the realization that it doesn't matter what I do, I have to sweep this floor every day and wash it every 2-3 days. My problem with washing the floor that often is that my mop broke several months ago and I have been too cheap to buy another thing that might just break, so i have been hand washing the floor! It looks beautiful, but takes a very long time to do; something, many moms don't have. I do have a couple of mops that you can clip disposable cloths onto, but that seemed to be a very unsatisfactory option because it is expensive and wasteful. (Sorry to all those who love their swiffers :) )

So, after surfing the internet for ideas and solutions, I had to finally open my Christmas present and learn how to crochet. I found a pattern for a rectangular mop cover and I gave it a try. After about 10 attempts I got the stitches down and got the project done. I was so excited to try it on my mop. The only downfall with it was that it was only half the length it needed to be! So I doubled the pattern and it worked.

I tried it out this week and it works great! And the crochet stitches are thick enough to get good scrubbing action. It was pretty dirty after doing the kitchen floor so I flipped it over and finished up the living room and dining room. Time to whip up a few more of them and then I'll be set for all my cleaning needs.

Happy cleaning,
Nadine

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