Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to eradicate bleach from your kitchen.
Level of Commitment: Making Strides
For info on WHY you might want to avoid bleach, please read the Food for Thought.
There are some instances where bleach has a place. Feces all over your laundry room (where you stock food), for one. Putting a dark green tablecloth in with white socks and underwear, and nothing else works to get the socks back white, for two. At least, that’s when I’ve used bleach in the past year at my house! (The feces in the laundry room would have been a fabulous blog post if I had been blogging at the time. Seriously. Yuck.)
For many jobs, it’s just overkill. For others, there are simply other, less toxic ways to achieve the same end. For a curious child, bleach could spell the end. Wouldn’t you rather have food in the kitchen and be a little less prone to memorizing the poison control number? (1-800-222-1222, by the way. I memorized it anyway!)
Why take a risk with your health and that of the environment if you don’t have to?
Here are some of the most common places you’ll find bleach in the kitchen:
- To disinfect the counters/dishes after cutting raw meat
- In dishwasher detergent
- In dishsoap
- Some add bleach to their dishwater
How to Get Rid of Bleach?
So now you need to know what to do instead of bleach, right?
- To wash dishes: You simply don’t need bleach. Just use dishsoap. If you feel the need to disinfect your dishes, either use the sanitizing cycle on your dishwasher or pour boiling water on them.
- Dishwasher detergents: as you know, this is a sticking point for me. There are good natural commercial detergents out there that don’t use bleach. Because the dishwasher sends out steam that would otherwise be laden with bleach (and heating it makes it easier for your body to absorb, unfortunately), dishwasher detergents are a really important area to “go green”. I’ve had yet another homemade detergent failure and will be receiving another commercial detergent to test this week. Here is the scoop about that!
- Don’t buy products “with added bleach”. Yuck! Just wash stuff.
- To sanitize after cutting raw meat, especially chicken? Use two totally harmless products, one after the other. Find out which ones tomorrow. Here are my natural kitchen cleaners.
I challenge you to commit today to wean yourself from any bleach you might have in your kitchen. Move it up and out of the way, especially if you have little ones. They’re too precious to risk getting hurt by something that’s not even necessary. I’m happy to have one bottle of bleach in my house, on a high shelf in the laundry room. I will never let it be under my kitchen sink or stored in my bathroom again. Will you join me?
I’d love to see more of you! Sign up for an email subscription or grab my reader feed.
If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.
Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money. If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.
A Sampling of Monday Missions:
No bleach in my kitchen – honestly, the thought never occurred to me. I know that “experts” suggest using plastic cutting boards and cleaning them with bleach, but I use all wooden cutting boards. This choice has been backed up by this study: http://www.knife-expert.com/cut-bo93.txt. I use a natural dishwasher detergent with no bleach and a white vinegar rinse.
.-= Laurie N´s last blog ..Beanie Goodness – Wrapping up the Season =-.
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I’m working on it! I actually mopped the floors last night/this morning with vinegar instead of a commercial cleaner, and wouldn’t you know it that when I had my back turned the girls were using the water to ‘wash’ their toys! I thought it was a great time for me to try the change! I also find that using some kind of Oxyclean with boiling water will make your whites whiter than you can imagine (although I am curious about how toxic that can be too!). All of this antibacterial and bleach added is insane. My grandmother never had it and my parents and their siblings are still breathing
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I do have bleach in the house, but I only use it in the laundry. I just put in a bit with the whites to keep the dryer from smelling (that was an issue for a while). Keep up the good work- I’m a new reader and I’m loving your blog so far!
.-= Kristin´s last blog ..Happy Grandparents Day!!! =-.
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Katie Reply:
September 14th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Kristin,
Welcome! Great to have you on board.
Since the bleach is just for smell, I would recommend trying white vinegar, either right at the start or (if you can catch it at the right time) during the rinse cycle. That will work as a fabric softener, too. If that doesn’t work, try baking soda in the wash. Both should do what you want without any toxicity! You’re doing great if that’s the only place you use bleach, though.
Katie
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Hi there!
I saw that you entered to win the Soap Nuts giveaway at “Passionate Homemaking” blog. Wanted to let you know that I am currently holding a giveaway at my blog (Happily Domestic) for a 80 load size bag of NaturOli soap nuts! Ends 9/28 and there are MANY ways to enter.
I do hope you will stop by and enter. And hope you enjoy reading my blog as well.
Here is the direct link for the giveaway:
http://happilydomestic.blogspot.com/2009/09/naturoli-soap-nuts-review-and-giveaway.html
Have a great day!
~Beth
http://www.HappilyDomestic.blogspot.com
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with you already! When I have bleach in the house, which I don’t at the moment, it is only for the toilets occasionally or a load of laundry here and there.
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Kissy,
Phew! Aren’t you glad your girls could eat what was in that bucket and be okay?
Oxyclean’s active ingredient is oxygen bleach, which I understand is a great safe alternative to bleach. I love its soaking laundry-cleaning properties, too!!
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I just stocked up on a 50 lb. box of dishwasher powder (BioKleen) from our co-op Azure Standard. It was on sale and I like that it didn’t have phosphates in it. I didn’t know about the bleach, but it doesn’t have that either. Now I won’t have to buy dish powder for about 3 years!
.-= christina´s last blog ..Good Intentions Gone Awry =-.
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Katie Reply:
September 15th, 2009 at 2:14 am
Christina,
I’m waiting on a sample of Biokleen and praying that it works. It’s easier to find in town than Mrs. Meyer’s… Katie
Wow! Did you know if it worked for you before you took that plunge?
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christina Reply:
September 15th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Yes, I had been buying the small box for a few months and knew that it worked great! You use so little (1 Tbsp.) per load. I was able to have a smaller co-op order one month so I took the plunge and stocked up.
.-= christina´s last blog ..Good Intentions Gone Awry =-.
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If you want to get rid of all your cleaning products (except toilet bowl cleaner) and just use water. You should check out theses Antibacterial Microfiber cleaning clothes made by Norwex (they have hair thin strains of silver weaved in to them which kill the bacteria). I have been using them for about 2 years and I love them. I love cleaning my shower with them because you can feel the soap scum coming off. You can check out there website to read more about them:
http://www.norwex.com
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Do you know of any safe alternatives to Clorox when it comes to sanitizing water in an emergency situation?
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Katie Reply:
June 9th, 2011 at 10:34 pm
That post just went up last week! Here is is: http://wp.me/pvvfx-2Us
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paws Reply:
June 10th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Woohoo! I’ll check it out. Thanks!
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Another thought: Have you anywhere addressed the issue of how important it is (or is not) to disinfect your home in the first place? There are people who believe it is actually a mistake to try to make your house 100% germ-free, as it affects your body’s ability to develop a strong immune system and can create Super Bugs, just as antibiotics can when used too frequently.
I need to do further research on this before I know how much of that I agree with, but I wondered if you’d come across this argument, what you’d found out, etc.
Thanks!
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Katie Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
paws,
I write about antibiotic resistance and such in my antibacterial soap posts – I’d link to them here for you but I’m not on my own computer. You should be able to search KS (in the sidebar) for “antibacterial soap” and find a few posts to satiate your curiosity. 
Katie
I am a total believer in a few germs!
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I think you answered my question: I was looking to see if there was a natural alternative to bleach for getting stubborn stains out of (white) clothes. Sounds like I still need to keep some bleach in my laundry room? Something else I use it for is to get the pink and black moldish stuff out of my cloth shower curtain. There’s nothing natural that will take care of that, is there? I’m taking baby steps to being natural, and I’m excited!
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Katie Reply:
January 19th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Merry Jo,
Katie
Some say baking soda and peroxide, and there are essential oils that kill mold (tea tree, grapefruit seed, etc) but I still have research to do on them…
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Click up at the top above the Title on the link “Food for Thought: Why is Bleach Bad for Me.”
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Merry Jo Reply:
January 16th, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Thanks! Looks like it’s working today ~ I promise you it wasn’t before!
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Katie Reply:
January 19th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Yes, I broke my site…but I figured out my error! TU!
Katie
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