The Organically Clean Home: 150 Everyday Organic Cleaning Products You Can Make Yourself--The Natural, Chemical-Free Way
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About this ebook
Cleaning products that save money--and the planet!
Forget about chemical cleaners and pricey "green" products--all you need are a few simple kitchen staples to make your whole house sparkle! The Organically Clean Home features 150 easy-to-make recipes for cleaning products filled with all-natural ingredients you can trust (and actually pronounce!). From dishwasher detergent to antibacterial wipes, America's favorite cleaning blogger Becky Rapinchuk guides you through the steps needed to make these everyday necessities--without spending a fortune.
Complete with simple instructions for packaging and storing your homemade cleaners, you'll enjoy turning each room into a beautiful and toxic-free space with fresh-scented products like:
- Lemon and clove hardwood floor cleaner
- No-bleach laundry whitener and brightener
- Peppermint glass and mirror wipes
- Lavender and lemon bathroom disinfecting spray
- Citrus foaming hand soap
Becky Rapinchuk
BECKY RAPINCHUK is the founder of Clean Mama, the most popular cleaning website in with world. The Clean Mama empire spans several highly successful businesses, including a membership-only monthly subscription, an organic cleaning line, a paper goods company, and an online community. Rapinchuk is the homecare expert for Scotch-Brite and has also worked with a variety of brands as an ambassador or brand affiliate, including Dyson, Home Depot, SC Johnson, Martha Stewart, Bissell, Casabella, Murchison-Hume, The Laundress, Aprilaire, and Neato Robotics. Rapinchuk is an online columnist for Better Homes & Gardens, the housekeeping expert on Answers.com, and a regular home expert for Real Simple, the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Better Homes & Gardens, HGTV Magazine, InStyle, Shape, Oprah.com, Houzz, Refinery29, and others.
Read more from Becky Rapinchuk
Clean Mama's Guide to a Peaceful Home: Effortless Systems and Joyful Rituals for a Calm, Cozy Home Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClean Mama's Guide to a Healthy Home: The Simple, Room-by-Room Plan for a Natural Home Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for The Organically Clean Home
15 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very thorough book
I am reading this under Kindle Prime, but plans on buying it. She gas a recipe for most any item to clean that you can think of. She also provides her cleaning routine and tips.
I already have everything I need except for the essential oils. I like that she states when the essential oils are optional. Some recipes they are included for their disinfecting properties.
I haven't tried the dishwashing or laundry cleaners. I'm concerned that they'll clean as well as the chemical store bought ones but I definitely want to try.
I'm giving a four star only because I need to test these recipes in my own home. I think thiis is definitely a great one to keep in the library for those who are attempting to be more self sufficient and prepared for who knows what.1 person found this helpful
Book preview
The Organically Clean Home - Becky Rapinchuk
INTRODUCTION
Looking for cheaper and much safer alternatives to the store-bought cleaning products you have under your sink? Look no further! In this book, you’ll find 150 recipes for practically any cleaning dilemma, from natural disinfection to safe and effective stain removal. With just a few simple (and pronounceable) ingredients, you will be a cleaning scientist on your way to an organically clean home.
Why should you clean organically? You’ll be able to clean your entire home, inside and out, with homemade products that are safe to use while your kids and pets are in the same room, and are inexpensive to boot! You’ll learn how to make everyday products like an all-purpose cleaner and laundry detergent, but you’ll also learn the best and safest way to clean things you don’t clean every day, like your carpet and your garage floor. Even better, you can scent your products to your liking with a variety of all-natural essential oils.
Think that natural cleaners won’t do as good a job as the commercial versions? Wrong! You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how effective natural cleaners are. Homemade cleaners are also easily customizable—I’ll show you how to adjust formulas to create the perfect cleaning products for your home and cleaning preferences. Every home is different, but this guide gives a variety of solutions for a variety of conditions, so you’re sure to find something that works for your home. Now there’s no need to stash and store dozens of bottles of different cleaning products just in case
—you have the ultimate guide to making any product yourself when you need it!
Are you ready to start making your own cleaning products? Grab this book, gather a few of the recommended all-natural ingredients and cleaning tools, and get started. You won’t believe how simple it is to formulate your own cleaning products … and better yet, you won’t believe the amazing results. As a matter of fact, you might even start looking forward to cleaning your house!
CHAPTER 1
ORGANIC CLEANING 101
It doesn’t matter if you’re attempting to clean out an entire room or a single drawer, you need time and a plan. Yet for most people, finding the time and an effective cleaning strategy is difficult. Throw in the toxins from store-bought cleaning products, and the whole situation is downright scary. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, check out the cleaning strategies in this chapter. You’ll find easy-to-implement routines, timesaving ideas, and basic information on natural cleaners. Instead of being a tedious chore, housecleaning will be a breeze!
CAUTION: These recipes and formulations are organic in nature and nontoxic, but as with any cleaner in your home, keep them out of reach of children and pets. As long as around 1 percent of the cleaner is made up of essential oils (as is true for the recipes in this book), it is generally considered safe for pets, but check with your veterinarian first if you’re concerned. Please use care in mixing and follow the intended uses and directions.
Why Use Organic Cleaning Products?
There are many great reasons to switch to organic or natural cleaning products. Maybe you want to …
■ Keep toxins out of your home. (Most homemade products are toxin-free!) According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accidental household poisonings affect more than 300 children in the United States every day. If you keep the medicine cabinet locked and use cleaning products that are safe, you’re reducing your risk of an accident.
■ Save some money. (You certainly will!)
■ Cut down on what you’re sending to the landfill. (You can cut back dramatically on plastics by simply using reusable spray bottles and cleaning containers.)
■ Use natural products because someone in your home has asthma or allergies. (Organic cleaners are much better to use around those with sensitivities.) Interestingly enough, the stuff that you clean with can actually make you sick, essentially negating the benefits of cleaning itself. According to the Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org), conventional cleaning products and artificial fragrances can trigger asthma, can include low levels of 1,4-dioxane (a carcinogen), and can even include low levels of formaldehyde (another carcinogen) without disclosure. These ingredients can also lead to birth defects in pregnant women using the cleaners. Although many people don’t have any reactions to the toxins, why take a chance?
No matter why you’ve decided to use organic cleaning products, you can rest assured that you are cleaning with the safest products and getting the best results at the same time.
The Safety Factor
Perhaps the most common reason people choose organic cleaners is that they’re safer to have around the house than the store-bought versions. Sadly, safe cleaning products are not the norm. You’d think that cleaning products would have to be safe to be sold for home use, but that isn’t the always the case. I experienced this firsthand when my oldest child was a toddler and grabbed a safe
cleaning product (sold to be used on highchairs and baby products) and sprayed it in her face and consequently her mouth. I grabbed the bottle from her hands and washed her off. After a quick glance of the bottle, I realized that a call to poison control was necessary. This incident ended safely with her drinking a cup or two of milk and taking a long bath, but my journey to finding safe cleaning products was just beginning.
Take a look at your cleaning product labels and read the warnings and lists of ingredients. You might see warnings like hazardous to humans and animals
and causes substantial but temporary eye injury,
and unpronounceable ingredients like "ethanolamine or
hexoxyethanol. Even the ingredient
fragrance" is a concern because it can cause skin irritation, and can trigger asthma and allergies. Scary stuff, right?
CHECK PRODUCT RATINGS
A fantastic resource for determining the safety of products in your home is Environmental Working Group, online at www.ewg.org. They rate the safety of just about every over-the-counter brand and product. You’ll see that with the exception of borax, most ingredients in this book are an A on an A to F scale. I love a clean house, and I hold high standards for products that I create and endorse. It has to be safe and it has to work. This might seem like an easy accomplishment, but it’s not.
Commercial cleaners are composed primarily of water, chemicals, and fragrance. Some of these chemicals can aggravate allergies and skin sensitivities as well as pose poisoning risks to children and pets that may get their hands and paws on them when you aren’t looking. Besides the obvious poison risks, breathing in the fumes of some cleaners can also be a health risk. For example, some cleaners say to use a mask or to ventilate a room while using, but most users probably don’t follow that safety rule. Even if you do, is that really a product you want to be using in your home?
As someone who is nervous about germs and getting sick (and then having a whole house of sick family members!), I understand the appeal of store-bought products that say they kill 99.9 percent of all bacteria. Killing germs is actually difficult to do, but in a normal household, making sure the surfaces are wiped down daily does get rid of the majority of germs and bacteria. If you want to kill them altogether, there are natural ways to do that with 99.9 percent accuracy, too—you’ll find a variety of disinfecting recipes in this book. When I realized that keeping counters clean and wiped down regularly will accomplish the same goal, I began making my own safe and natural cleaning products.
The Cost-Savings Factor
If making your own cleaning products isn’t appealing enough for safety reasons, you’ll actually be able to save money, too! Did you know you can make a bottle of all-purpose cleaner for pennies and you can make a batch of powdered laundry detergent for less than $5? A 16-ounce bottle of homemade granite cleaner costs less than 25 cents, whereas a 16-ounce bottle of granite cleaner at the store is at least $5. That 68-load box of detergent you just heaved into your trunk and paid over $15 for? You can make it for under $5. Actually, with my recipe you’ll get a few more loads out of it so it’ll be an even better savings. If you purchase your ingredients in larger quantities, you’ll be making just about every cleaning product from this book to clean your entire home for mere pennies per use!
The Benefits of a Cleaning Routine
Even with organic cleaners, fitting cleaning into a busy schedule isn’t easy. Maybe that’s because most of us would rather be doing anything besides cleaning. Cleaning is what you put off and get to when you can or when you have absolutely nothing else to do. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Finding time each day to squeeze a little cleaning into your schedule is difficult, but for most of us, the benefits far outweigh the alternative—spending an entire day or more cleaning.
The first step to embracing a cleaning routine is to understand what a clean house
really is. Spotless isn’t the goal, but clean is. People you love live in your home and you want them to fully enjoy life in that place. Clean bathrooms rank pretty high on my priority list, but toys strewn from one end of the living room to the next shows that kids are enjoying themselves. Again: Clean is the goal, not spotless.
It doesn’t matter if you are out of the house for 50 hours a week, or home all day, you can accomplish a successful cleaning routine that works for you and your schedule. The important thing is to start somewhere. If you think you’re too busy to start a cleaning routine, I’d argue that you’re too busy not to start a cleaning routine. You probably spend more time complaining about cleaning or dealing with ongoing messes than you would actually cleaning!
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