Monday Mission: Get a Frugal, Natural Clean

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to keep the green in spring cleaning.

Sometimes it seems like the natural life can be a real drain on the finances. Organic food costs two to four times as much as conventional, natural health endeavors are never covered by insurance, and wooden toys are pricier than the cheap plastic stuff. The list goes on and on…which is why I distilled the Kitchen Stewardship missions down into 10 priority baby steps, those new habits that will support all the pillars of stewardship at once: health, environment, budget, and time.

If you followed the Back to Basics Baby Steps Challenge , I know you enjoyed Tiffany’s guest posts detailing how SHE followed the KS top 10. Her experiences as a rookie real foodie add invaluable depth to what I’m trying to share with you each week – read them all HERE.

You may notice that the series only lasted 8 weeks instead of 10, partly because we smashed some of the topics together, partly because we took a break for Natural Health Month and are now coming back to finish up, and maybe even because we can’t count very well. Any which way, the last major point of the ten, and one of my favorites for its simplicity and frugality, is to make non-toxic homemade cleaners. Here’s why:

• Not only are most commercial cleaners full of toxins that can harm your family, but they’re far more expensive than simple, homemade cleaners using only a few ingredients.
• You can put perfectly nourishing food IN your bodies, but if your indoor air quality is making your family sick, it won’t matter. Don’t use bleach. Avoid triclosan (now banned by the FDA for products like antibacterial soap).
• As I mentioned, you’ll be spending plenty in your quest for natural living – cleaning is one place where you can be super cheap and it’s just as effective as the expensive stuff. *sigh of relief*

The Bare Essentials

If I learned one thing while living at my in-laws’, it’s how to live with less and what’s really important to have along for the ride. I told you about my favorite kitchen items, but I really pared down the cleaning supplies.

I’ve learned what really matters. Being here with only about 5% of my own stuff, yet still needing to live our lives and be normal (i.e. we’re not “on vacation”), I’ve realized that I don’t need very many fancy cleaners. I always knew that, but it’s like packing your carry-on for an airline flight: you can’t get everything you might want to have in there, but suddenly it’s clear which toiletries you’d actually need if you had to spend the night in a hotel.

Here are the top cleaning products every house should have, probably in triplicate if you have that many floors/bathrooms. I’m definitely plotting already to strategically place multiple bottles in various rooms in our new house:

• baking soda (what I’ve cleaned with it: my hair with the “no ‘poo” system, grimy bathtub, kitchen sink, baby toys (awesome for grubby-ness on hard surfaces like baby toys) carpet spill…)
• plain vinegar (what I’ve cleaned with it: my hair, carpet mud stains, stinky laundry…would have done the toilet but didn’t have it in a spray bottle undiluted)
• Biokleen Bac-Out – I realized just tonight that if I could only bring one cleaner, it would be this one. I use it to pretreat laundry stains (and it is FABULOUS), clean the counters/faucets, carpet stains, laminate floors, and even toilets, outside and in. Kills germs, fights stains, gentle on surfaces – what more do you need?
• for laundry: soap nuts, oxygen bleach
• for baby wipes and hand soap: castille soap (photo at right)

Here are lots of ideas for how to use these simple homemade cleaners. For the few places these basic cleaning supplies don’t cut it, here’s a short list of some other options:

• For laundry: soap nuts
  • pretreat: Biokleen Bac-Out mixed 1/3 strength with water and/or a soak in oxygen bleach
• For the dishwasher: Tropical Traditions house brand (free shipping through tonight, 4/8!) or Ecover’s tablets
• Natural carpet cleaner for steam vacuums
• Gotta have some microfiber cloths for glass (and other things)
• See how Branch Basics (new formula, even better!) (product being reformulated, check back later!) cleans up stains on the carpet – I won’t use anything else!

To see what I use in the whole house, floor to ceiling, you’ll really want to check out the green cleaners round up post.

Again, there’s no need to spend big bucks buying fancy, name brand “all natural” cleaners. Many of them are probably green-washing you anyway and really aren’t as “green” as they seem.

If you can eat it AND clean with it, that has to be a good sign, right?

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post from which I will earn some commission if you make a purchase. See my full disclosure statement here.

Need More Baby Steps?

Here at Kitchen Stewardship, we’ve always been all about the baby steps. But if you’re just starting your real food and natural living journey, sifting through all that we’ve shared here over the years can be totally overwhelming.

That’s why we took the best 10 rookie “Monday Missions” that used to post once a week and got them all spruced up to send to your inbox – once a week on Mondays, so you can learn to be a kitchen steward one baby step at a time, in a doable sequence.

Yes! ONE Change a Week, Please!

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