For household cleaning, things used to be quite simple. Jif. Vinegar. Maybe bleach. Dust cloths. Since I started living with SK though, things on the cleaning front are not so simple. See photo of current cleaning products.
Men it seems are a fan of the “spray and wipe” mode of cleaning. So our cleaning products started to build up faster than we could use them. This current batch of products is radically reduced. I mentioned to SK a few months ago that our cleaning products were multiplying like rabbits. That it would be a REALLY bad idea to buy any more cleaning products until the current batch were gone. He agreed. The result is that most of the containers are nearly empty. Except for the large nasty orange spray bottle. Acquired from Lidl. W5 may be cheap, but it is Nasty. With a capital N. I find W5 really noxious. The orange bottle is full because I refuse to use it in the kitchen. Once, in the shower I nearly passed out from the fumes of the yellow one. The orange one is worse. Passing out moments never happen with Jif. Or Cif. But the cif has a limited life span too. I’m going to stop purchasing it. The W5 lists of indredients are also suspiciously short. I perservered with using the Lidl W5 products (which I did not buy it should be noted), cos there is no point throwing out full containers of cleaner. Except, now I have decided that they are going. Do I really need to clean the shower with products that make me sneeze, make my chest feel tight when I breathe and are just generally nasty? No. I don’t. Are these products good just because they are cheap? Definitely not. The bottles may be useful, but the current products are not.
Some people think the stronger the product the better. I don’t agree with that assertion. If you clean regularly, you are never going to be surrounded by so much filth that you have to take some radical cleaner to it. Cleaning products for removing things like mildew and limescale and build up are for people who never clean. Bathrooms and mildew. The mildew thing I don’t understand. We have a small interior en-suite. A perfect breeding ground for mildew you would think. But our grout is as white as it was the day we moved in. Reason? It’s AMAZING what a spray of cold water can do after a shower to rinse off soap scum and cool down the grout so that mildew doesn’t have a nice warm steamy atmosphere. None of our bathrooms have shown any desire to be homes to mildew. Course, they are cleaned at least once a week including the shower (most common home to mildew) so that probably helps.
As for degreasers, don’t get me started. If you wipe a ceramic hob after each stint cooking at it, how is it going to get greasy? If you want a non-greasy kitchen then do not put up tiles as a splash back. Use glass or stainless steel or the same material as your cupboards if they have a high gloss finish. If you do find grease, wipe it down with a tiny bit of washing up liquid and a normal sponge.
Looking at all those nasty nasty chemicals makes me judder. I resolve to switch to ecover cleaning products. They may be ever so slightly more expensive, but I am not sure that you can but a price on a toxic chemical free house. Beyond the ecover range, I would also like to revert to old fashioned cleansers. I already use olive oil for our oak furniture instead of polish and I find it really good. I’m going to go a step further.
Window cleaner: lemon juice and water in a spray bottle.
Furniture Polish: Olive oil sprayed on and wiped.
Floor cleaner: bicarb and water and a little lemon juice or vinegar.
Loo cleaner: bicarb, lemon zest and vinegar or borax and lemon juice mixed to a paste.
Washing up: Use environmentally friendly washing up liquid.
Dishwasher Tablets: use environmentally friendly tablets.
Washing Clothes: eco washing powder or washing soda. 30 degrees. I have never washed clothes at a higher temperature anyway. High temperatures encourage dyes to run and wreck your clothes. My mother has been washing our clothes since she first got a washing machine at 30 degrees too. When I was shown how to use the washing machine as a child, I was instructed to use the “delicates” wash cycle. i.e. 30 degrees. Smug that the power of one and ariel advertising campaigns are telling me to do something I’ve been doing for two thirds of my life. My mother has probably been doing laundry that way for forty years. But I’d have to ask her when she got her first washing machine.
Of all the cleaning products, I like the idea of bicarb the best. Bicarb amazes me. I have seen the gunk it can take out of a coffee machine. It is unbelievable stuff. With bicarb, vinegar, lemon juice, oilve oil and borax or ethanol to kill very nasty germs, why do you need so many chemicals? At least we have never been an air freshener household. If you want freshness, boil some cloves, cinammon, lemon and freshly grated ginger. Open your windows a bit more often. Open enough windows to get a draft through your house for at least ten minutes each day.
I give myself a month to attain the eco cleaning nirvana. Any product not from Ecover or is not something made from bicarb, borax, lemon juice, vinegar or liquid vegetable soap will promptly find the bin. A chemical free household is the new black green.
