If you're trying to reduce chemicals in your home, natural cleaning products and home cleaning strategies may appeal to you. You can buy natural cleaners for your home or you can make your own cleaning products using basic natural ingredients. Natural cleaning products can tackle most home messes, ranging from normal kitchen cleaning to soap scum, mold and mildew.
Function
Natural home cleaning allows you to clean away grease and grime without potentially toxic chemicals. Natural or naturally derived cleaning products include things already in your pantry like vinegar, but also cleaning agents derived from non-petroleum sources like coconut oil. Natural cleaners can be made or purchased to clean nearly anything, from your toilet to your fine wood furniture.
Significance
Traditional cleaning products rely upon a number of ingredients that are potentially toxic to people or the environment like phthalates, phosphates, volatile organic compounds and artificial colors and fragrances, reports LiveScience. Green cleaning products avoid these toxic ingredients, choosing gentler alternatives or the least toxic choices in each product class, like solvents. This will make for a safer home, but EarthEasy.com suggests this may be especially important if allergies or respiratory conditions like asthma are present.
Identification
One way you can identify safer home cleaning products is by looking for the Environmental Protection Agency's Design for the Environment seal. This seal identifies a product as free of toxic ingredients and appears on some products in your grocery store, like those from the Clorox Greenworks and SC Johnson's Nature's Source, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Higher end brands carrying the Design for the Environment seal include Method and Martha Stewart Clean. Similar stamps of approval are available from the Sierra Club.
Considerations
It's surprisingly easy to make your own homemade cleaners at a fraction of the cost of commercial green cleaning products. Combine equal parts vinegar and water in a spray bottle, perhaps with a squirt of liquid castile soap for an effective all purpose cleaner for your kitchen and bathroom. Dilute 1 cup of white vinegar in a gallon of water to mop tile floors. Clean tough messes with a paste of baking soda and water. Mix one part lemon juice and two parts olive oil to care for your fine wood furniture, suggests OrganizedHome.com. You can even add a few drops of essential oil, like lavender, to your homemade cleaning products for a boost of fragrance and antibacterial power.
Misconceptions
Homemade or green cleaning products can cut through grease and dirt as well as comparable chemically based cleaning choices, according to LiveScience.com. While natural cleaning products are not antibacterial, the average kitchen or bathroom does not need an antibacterial cleaning product. Simple elbow grease will remove the bacteria from the surfaces in your home, suggests Tom Natan with the National Environmental Trust.
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