Home Made and or Green Cleaning Products

Anyone have any cool, cheap, green cleaning products substitutes.  I know the old vinegar and water trick for windows.  What about a bleach substitute, or green way of unclogging a sink?  What about other cleaning places - like the bathroom floor, or counter tops.  I like buying the green products, but 1) they're expensive and 2) I'm not convinced that they're not just "greenwashed" by some corporation.  Also you still end up buying the container and throwing it away or recycling it. 

Thoughts???

WVE has a great Green Cleaning campaign with many recipes at their site -
http://www.womenandenvironment.org/greenclean/downloads

[url=http://Care2.com]Care2.com is also good

We love the soft scrub recipe that WVE has.

Unclogging a sink is as easy as baking soda, vinegar and hot water.

Vinegar is just as effective as bleach for cleaning, not toxic and cheap!

Kristen

Awesome, thanks.

I have found that soaking stainedcoffee cups or even other stained items in baking soda water often works better than soaking in bleach & soda will cut grease better than bleach.

I also use a bit of liquid dish soap & salt & hot water to clean my wooden cutting boards just before I re-condition them.

When camping I take a hand full of horse tail stalks & hold them like a brush & scrub my pans with them. I can't remember where I learned this but I works pretty good.

Last year we had meal moths every where thanks to bulk rice.

I threw out all the infested food & cleaned the cabinets with soap & water & then wiped it out with essential peppermint oil.

This seemed to help but it made some things in my cupboard minty tasting.

Is there some other cleaning substance I can use to repel moths that will not repel me? 

Do homemade cleaners really work?

Yes! Let’s look at some of the properties of two
ingredients found in most of our recipes: vinegar
and baking soda.

Vinegar deodorizes; dissolves mineral deposits and grease; removes soap traces, mildew and wax build up; polishes brass, chrome, copper, pewter and stainless steel; cleans brick and stone; removes decals and stickers; and removes water spots on leather.

Baking soda neutralizes acid; scrubs shiny materials without scratching; deodorizes refrigerators, carpets, upholstery, vinyl and drains; extinguishes grease fires; and cleans and polishes aluminum, chrome, jewelry, plastic, porcelain, silver, stainless steel and tin.
http://www.womenandenvironment.org

Did you know that the lemon-fresh smell or pine forest scent in your favorite cleaner may be linked to serious health impacts?

How Can We Avoid
Harmful Fragrance Chemicals?
By reducing exposure to fragrance chemicals, we can
lessen health impacts and lower the levels of these
chemicals in our bodies. However, most information about
cleaning product ingredients, and fragrance ingredients
in particular, is kept secret from consumers, making it
difficult to tell which products are better than others.
There is currently no legal requirement for cleaning
product companies to disclose their ingredients. While
some manufacturers voluntarily disclose some cleaning
product ingredients, very few are listing fragrance
ingredients. This means that even if ingredients are
disclosed for a cleaning product, the word “fragrance” may
appear, but the individual chemicals which make up that
fragrance will not be listed.

Get The Full Documents on this subject HERE:
http://www.womenandenvironment.org/campaignsandprograms/SafeCleaning/whatsthatsmell

RUG CLEANING
I'm wondering if anyone knows of green cleaning solutions that can go in my rug shampooer/ steam cleaner.
I afraid to use oils as they might make the rug sticky, can I just use backing soda water? If so how much do I put in

Anonymous wrote:Last year we had meal moths every where thanks to bulk rice.

I threw out all the infested food & cleaned the cabinets with soap & water & then wiped it out with essential peppermint oil.

This seemed to help but it made some things in my cupboard minty tasting.

Is there some other cleaning substance I can use to repel moths that will not repel me? 

What works best for us against moths and also mice is to just store almost everything in glass jars.  We purchase those glass iced tea jars at thrift stores or after summer on clearance for around a dollar or two, and transfer things like rice, dried beans and GF flour mix into those.  We also pick up big jars from the recycling drop-off. I use quart mason jars for smaller quantities and snap-top plastic cereal containers for cereal.

The jars also help manage bulk items nicely.  We keep the large jars downstairs in the basement and then smaller amounts up in the kitchen.  The jars look nice on shelves too and you can see all of your inventory at a glance.  

Anonymous wrote:Last year we had meal moths every where thanks to bulk rice.

I threw out all the infested food & cleaned the cabinets with soap & water & then wiped it out with essential peppermint oil.

This seemed to help but it made some things in my cupboard minty tasting.

Is there some other cleaning substance I can use to repel moths that will not repel me;

I got some infested rice at Sam's Club.  I used salt to kill the bugs in the rice and then used a strainer to get the bugs out.  I just couldn't trow out 50 lbs of rice.

For meal moths I use vinegar.   I don't know if it will repel them.  It also kills ants.

I use baking soda like scouring powder.

Anonymous wrote:RUG CLEANING
I'm wondering if anyone knows of green cleaning solutions that can go in my rug shampooer/ steam cleaner.

Benefect makes a non-toxic shampoo that works well and AFM Safecoat does as well.