After the Swiffer Mop and Before the Vinegar

After the vinegar!

So I’m cleaning my apartment for the in-laws’ holiday visit and my kitchen’s tile grout looks filthy.  I use my Swiffer mop and then scrub with Clorox (the new Green Works version available in stores) to no avail.  In desperation, I seek google’s sound advice.  The solution (literally)?  One part vinegar one part water or a little baking soda paste.  It sounds homey and environmentally friendly and inexpensive, but does it really work?  Just look at the before and after pictures above!

When picking out cleaning products I try to moderate between price and environmental efficacy, so I have an assortment of ‘green’ cleaning products in my apartment.  Some work, some don’t.  But what seems to be most puzzling as peruse my way through all of the cleaning products I own is why have cleaning products in the first place?  Nearly everything I clean, as I think about it, could be easily cleaned with three fully biodegradable, non-toxic household items: lemon juice, vinegar, and baking soda.  The Do-it-yourself website, has a new Going Green topic on its side menu, has a great article called How to Clean Green which lists several recipes for green cleaners. Here are two easy and useful examples:

Carpet Spot Remover
•Cornstarch or baking soda
•Club soda
Blot the spot and apply baking soda or cornstarch immediately. When dry, blot with club soda and vacuum.

Glass Cleaner
•1 cup rubbing alcohol (optional)
•1 cup water
•1 tablespoon vinegar
Combine in a spray bottle and wipe clean with a newspaper. Alcohol hastens evaporation to prevent streaking.

And now, what about everything else.  Hand, dish and laundry soap, for example, isn’t as easy to make from scratch.  I personally suggest buying these products, unless you’re exceptionally handy, crafty an organized. Here are a few of my personal favorites and professional suggestions:

•Method brand soaps, as cliche as they sound, are easy to buy anywhere, use biodegradable ingredients, do not test on animals, use recycled and recyclable packaging materials and make use of government issued carbon-credits for their employee’s transportation and manufacturing process.  Plus, they’re smell great and come in cool-looking bottles!
•I use Green Works dishwashing liquid (water lily scent). It carries the Design for the Environment (DfE) certification, meaning the EPA screens all the ingredients put into the product and markets with the Sierra Club to endorse the ideas of preserving and protecting the planet. You want to hear the kicker? Green Works was created by Clorox! Proof that you don’t have to be anti-institution in order to be an environmentalist.
•For my wood flooring, I use Murphy’s soap; its biodegradable, kosher, cheap, and the bottles are recyclable.

•And finally, I suggested ECOS All Natural Laundry Detergent.  Its HE compatible, smells great, has a soy-based built-in fabric softener, and is grey-water safe (meaning you could use the left over water for your vegetable garden).  All this and it was on sale at Kroger’s!

As for my kitchen cleaning, my in-laws arrive tomorrow and I’m feeling pleased with my greening and cleaning! Word to the wise, you may want to use these cleaning solutions barefoot – its more comfortable and the grime from your shoes won’t be washed onto your newly cleaned tile!  Happy green cleaning!

In a recent study, scientist Jiango “Jack” Liu found a correlation between increased divorce rates and energy consumption.  As he was studying a panda population in a specific region in China, he noticed that while the region’s human population didn’t change, there was an increasein the number of households.  He found that divorced people are leading ‘resource inefficient lifestyles.’  The idea is that when a couple splits, they stop sharing their energy consumption.  Instead of heating one house, they heat two.  Instead of cooking a lot of pasta in one pot on one burner, they cook a small amount on two different stoves. 

Liu worked with Michigan State University and found the the folllowing findings:

“In the United States in 2005, 38.5 million rooms would have been unnecessary (along with heating and lighting costs) if divorced households combined to become the same size as married households.Also in the United States in 2005, divorced households used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water that could have been saved if the divorced households had remained the same size as married households. ”

So what should you do if you are divorced and want to have a smaller eco footprint? Consider moving in with a friend.  Actually, make that another divorced friend.  You could also consider living in a coop, getting remarried, or living in an apartment.  Apartments insulate one another and tend not to use up as much land. 

Listen to “Divorce, An Environmental Hazard?” at NPR.com.