Good old fashioned cleaning

You know, until my parents recently visited us we had not watched any tv for around a year. I have always said that television shows and movies are not nearly as offensive to me as the advertisements preying upon a weak minded consumer. It is fascinating to not watch tv for a long time and then suddenly see commercials again, especially when you live a lifestyle pretty far removed from mainstream culture. When you see that stuff all the time you are just desensitized to it and find it all pretty normal. Aside from the rampant pharmaceutical ads we were disturbed by this obsession with all things being clean and sterile. Cleaning commercials always feature laboratory white looking kitchens or stainless steel with women wearing crisp, usually white clothing and makeup. Combine this with ads on laser hair removal, weight loss, and other cosmetic enhancement commercials and everyone is just starting to look like aliens to me. Not only our sterile kitchens full of chemicals but people are also resembling some kind of laboratory created experiment which doesn't in any way resemble nature.

Sooo....as with most things, I am of the philosophy that God/nature has provided pretty much everything we need and that we need not look outside of that to fancy chemicals to make our houses and bodies look good. A friend of mine said something recently that sums it all up. She was visiting a friend's home where said friend proudly exclaimed that she had mopped the floors so it would be okay for the baby to crawl around. My friend told me she would have rather her baby crawl on an unmopped floor than one that was just freshly saturated with unknown chemicals.

Aside from philosophy sometimes frugality requires us to look at different cleaning options from what we see on the commercials. There is also the obvious concern of damage to the environment by washing toxic chemicals down the drain as well as the waste that is produced from all of the packaging.

You know, I've always been a proponent of ecofriendly cleaners and once upon a time you couldn't find them in most stores. You had to pay a fortune for them in health food stores or specialty boutiques. As a new housewife/mother using overpriced natural cleaners with concentrated essential oils made housework a little more luxurious back in the day.. You can even make your own cleaners this complex with natural ingredients. However, I am going to share my own very basic cleaning ingredients which are neither fancy or luxurious as I am on a budget and not interested in taking the time to create boutique inspired natural cleaners.

My list is quite short so read carefully or you might miss it, haha. Our staple cleaning ingredient around here is white vinegar. I can buy a big jug of it for around $3 and it lasts a lot longer than a tiny $3 bottle of commercial natural cleaner. We use it for nearly everything. I put it in a big spray bottle where it can be easily reached. We use it to clean bathroom/kitchen surfaces, countertops, and to mop floors. I add about a cup of vinegar to hot water in a bucket. You can add essential oils or dried herbs if that makes it more exciting for you. I'm pretty no nonsense these days.

I don't have a use for wood or furniture polish but when I did I would mix equal parts lemon or lime juice with olive oil and rub on with a cloth to make the tables shine.

As we have talked about many times before we often do laundry by hand and make our own laundry soap (which can also be used in the machine). We mix equal parts Arm and Hammer washing soda with borax and then grate a bar of castille soap. We use less than 1/4 cup of this mixture per load. We started using Fels Naptha which is an old detergent bar soap but it ended up being harsh so we now substitute a bar of Bronner's instead. I'm not going to tell you that old fashioned ingredients are always just as effective as their chemical counterparts. People in the old days were not used to their clothes or kitchens being as spotless or stark white as we are accustomed to in today's culture. I find that they are good enough for me because I'm not expecting perfection or for a dirty sock to come out of the laundry as white as it was brand new.

There are a couple of natural cleaning items I continue to buy because I haven't found a homemade counterpart that works...toilet bowl cleaner and dishsoap. If anyone has a basic recipe for either of these that doesn't require a lot of obscure or expensive ingredients I would love to hear about it!