What to Look for in Green Cleaning Products

You use them to keep your house clean and safe, but soap and other cleaning products can actually be one of the biggest sources of dangerous toxins and chemicals in your home. Most household cleaning products contain a variety of manufactured chemicals that are potentially hazardous to the health of your family and the environment. For example, most solvents contain toxic volatile organic compounds (VOC), and detergents are made from phosphates that damage the environment. Fortunately, there are a range of non-toxic, environmentally friendly cleaning products available to help with everything from cleaning your oven to soap scum removal to laundry.

General Cleaners

The most important thing to look for when choosing eco-friendly cleaning products is to ensure they are made from naturally occurring, non-toxic substances. Be sure to avoid cleaners containing phosphates, chlorine, and VOCs, all of which are toxic to humans or damaging to the environment. Instead, look for products that use plant-derived surfactants (the class of chemicals that act as cleansing agents). One of the most popular natural surfactant is d-limonene, which is derived from citrus. Others include lauramine oxide, TEA lauryl sulfate, and caprylyl/myristyl glucoside. These naturally occurring substances make excellent all-purpose cleaners for the kitchen and bathroom. A few suggestions include Tree Life home soap and Cloverdale all-purpose cleaner.

Soy-based cleaners also provide a safe alternative to toxic solvents. The active cleaning agent in soy-based products is methyl soyate, which is derived from soybean oil. Methyl soyate is most effective as a solvent, so it is an excellent, non-toxic option for removing grease and soap scum. It is sometime combined with the natural surfactants listed about to make an all-purpose soap. Soy cleansers can sometime warp plastics, so only use them on hard surfaces such as linoleum, porcelain, or granite.

Laundry

Eco-friendly laundry detergents are also available. Most will be made from coconut- and corn-based surfactants, and many will also contain natural water softeners. An added benefit of green laundry detergents is that they are free of the perfumes and other additives that can irritate your skin. Detergents are not required by law to list specific ingredients, so make sure the label specifies that the detergents is free of toxic chemicals (particularly phosphates) and other additives.

Also look for powdered oxygen cleaners to use as an alternative to bleach, which can be irritating to the skin, throat, and eyes and can permanently stain clothes. Oxygen bleaches use oxygen instead of chlorine to remove stains, and are made from either hydrogen peroxide, sodium percarbonate, or sodium porborate. They won’t permanently stain fabrics and don’t release the toxic fumes that make regular bleach dangerous.

Enzyme Cleaners

Another alternative to common toxic cleaning products is to use enzyme-based cleaners. Enzymes are proteins that are necessary for most cellular processes, including decomposition. Enzyme-based cleaners work because they include specific enzymes that help break down organic material such as grease, dirt, and oil. They are especially good at removing the stains and odors left behind by pets. Enzyme cleaners are completely non-toxic and biodegradable.

When shopping for any kind of cleaning product, look for the EPA’s Design for the Environment label. Products carrying this logo have had each ingredient screened by the EPA, which has determined that the chemicals are the most environment and health friendly available.

Another Holiday Cooking and Cleaning Checklist

Here are some holiday cooking and cleaning tips, because at this time of year more than any other, the kitchen is the focus of frenzied activity. Throughout the holidays, it's important to remember to take deep breaths, relax, and have fun.

• Before you cook even one holiday recipe, remove kitchen clutter, making as much room as you can for holiday preparations. Cast a cold, hard eye on those kitchen counters. Get out a large cardboard box and fill it with all the things you won't need, and stash the box in the attic or basement.
• Attack the refrigerator. Discard everything that's past its prime. Make space to chill bowls of cookie dough, batches of eggnog, and perishable food gifts you may receive.
• Read recipes carefully and think through every special meal you'll cook. Organize your work area. Pay special attention to pan sizes and the space you will need for such activities as rolling dough and combining several bowls of ingredients.
• Check to make sure you have plenty storage containers and materials, including of plastic wrap, waxed paper and aluminum foil. If you use glass or plastic containers with snap-on lids, organize them so they're easy to find—and that includes the lids that fit them.
• Clean as you go. Make a habit of washing, drying, and putting away equipment as soon as you can after using it.
• If you face a roasting pan with baked-on grease and gunk, fill the sink with hot water, add 2 tablespoons of dishwasher detergent, and soak the pan overnight. Then scrub it with steel wool.
• If you burn something and it sticks to the bottom of the pan, let the pan cool off. Scrape out as much of the burned food as you can. Then fill the pan with cold water and add 3 tablespoons of salt or baking soda. Let it sit overnight. In the morning, bring the water slowly to a boil and let it simmer for 20 minutes. The pan should just wipe clean.
• If your glassware looks cloudy, put 1 to 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in the offending vessel and fill it to the top with hot water. Let it sit for at least three hours. Then rinse it out and wash it in warm, soapy water.
• When cleaning heavily tarnished silver, rub it with a damp cloth sprinkled with salt; then wash off the salt and polish the silver. If you run out of silver polish, use toothpaste. It works just as well and smells a whole lot better.

Get Organized for Guests

Are you expecting guests this holiday season? One idea to help you always be prepared is to create a basket full of fresh linens and other items guests can use that you can grab at moment’s notice. You can also reduce the stress of unexpected guests by making up some appetizers, cookies or meals ahead of time and storing them in the freezer. For more ideas on how to prepare for guests read these blogs.

• Getting Your House Ready for Holiday Guests You’ll want to clear out the coat closet so that your guests have a place to hang their coats.
• 5 Ways to Get Your Home Ready for Holiday Visitors Organize your pantry so that guests can find things if they need a snack, and provide them with a hamper for dirty laundry.
• How to Clean a Very Messy House… and Get It Ready for Guests! (with a Printable Checklist) Go through these step-by-step directions to create a plan for getting your home ready for holiday guests.
• 10 Things You Should Do before Holiday House Guests Arrive Cook ahead so you don’t have to spend valuable visiting time stuck in the kitchen.
• Get Organized for House Guests Make sure that you have a supply of breakfast foods and that you set the table the night before.
• Organizing for Guests: How to Roll Out the Welcome Mat Start by cleaning up the yard so that your home makes a good first impression.
• Getting Ready for House Guests: Guest Room and Guest Bath Tour Watch this video to get some tips on how to make your guest room and guest bathroom welcoming.
• Get Your Guest Room Ready Read through this list of questions to see how your guest room stacks up and get some ideas of ways you can make your guests more comfortable.
• Christmas Organizing: 10 Ways to Get Organized before Your Guests Arrive Try to give your guests a private place to sleep if possible.
• Get Organized to Welcome Unexpected Guests Keep a few basics on hand for unexpected guests, like fresh linens and spare toothbrushes.

Organize Your DIY Projects

Do enjoy the occasional DIY project? The holidays tend to bring out the crafty, creative side of people, whether it’s baking a batch of cookies or fixing the broken latch in the bathroom. If you are expecting guests this holiday season, you may want to do a few tasks around the house that you have been putting off, like touching up the paint or fixing a squeaky door. Start a list of the things you need to do and organize a repair kit for touch-ups around the house. You can also organize your decorations to make them simpler to find when it’s time to decorate. For tips on organizing your projects, take a look at these 10 blog posts.

• Top 5 Holiday Home Organization Tips Make sure you have one main list where you put down things like mail holiday cards, attend school activities and parties, put out decorations, etc.
• Holiday Organizing Go through your Christmas decorations and clear out anything that’s broken.
• The Holidays are Just Around the Corner: Dazzle Your Guests– and Showcase Your DIY Talents—With these Clever Home Updates Add hardware to your cabinets or change out the faucets in your home to give your home an update.
• 10 DIY Home Repair Projects for the Holidays Fix those little scratches on the table or marks on the wall before your guests arrive.
• Tips for Organizing Holiday Decorations There are tips for sorting and organizing all of your holiday decorations on this post.
• 31 Days of Falling for Fall Try some of these projects to get ready for Thanksgiving.
• Get Festive Holiday DIY Ideas Organize your ideas now to save some stress later on.
• Easy DIY Décor to Take Your from Thanksgiving to Christmas Take a look at these projects to see if you’d like to incorporate any of them into your holiday To Do List
• Holiday DIY Quick Tips: Creative Cards Learn how to make your own cards to send at Christmastime.
• Organize and Decorate Everything Create these glittered bottles and use them to organize with during the holidays.

Getting Junk Mail and Paperwork under Control

What do you see when you look at the surfaces in your home? If the answer is stacks of paper, you’re not alone. You are in luck though, because eliminating paper clutter is relatively simple to do. Start by going through each stack of paper in your home and sort it into piles. If it’s junk mail, throw it out. Now, decide which school papers you want to save and which need to go. Store the ones that you are saving in a designated box for each child. Once you do that you should be seeing a light at the end of the paper clutter tunnel. Go on to file the rest into appropriate files. These 10 blogs will help you determine how to file, what you need to hang on to and what needs to be shredded.

• 10 Tips for Getting on Top of Your Paperwork Implement these steps to clean up your paperwork and stay ahead of junk mail.
• 9 Decluttering Secrets from Professional Organizers Create a paperwork filing system that you store on a wheeled cart so that you can move it around wherever you need it.
• Declutter Your Mail & Paperwork in 30 Minutes a Week Read more about how to handle mail as it comes into the house to make sure it doesn’t become clutter.
• A Fast and Easy Guide to Organizing Paperwork Learn how to break down the organizing process into manageable chunks.
• Declutter Your Life—Organizing Paperwork Follow these daily steps to get your office and paperwork organized in less than a week.
• What Papers Can You Get Rid Of? With the tips in this blog post you can learn how to limit the useless paper that comes into your home and organize the paper you need.
• 8 Easy Steps to Organize Your Financial Paperwork and Declutter Your Life Learn which papers you need to keep and which ones you can shred.
• How to Organize All Your Paperwork Create a system to file your paperwork and then get into a routine of filing your paperwork every week or month.
• Declutter Your Paperwork—How to Get and Stay Organized Make sure you have the proper tools to organize the papers you need to keep, then go through the stacks to get rid of what you don’t need.
• 7 Simple Ways to Organize Paperwork at Home… Don’t wait to get rid of the paper that comes into your house; instead, decide what to do with the mail the minute you bring it home.

Cleaning Checklist for Parties

Cleaning for parties is a little different than typical daily surface cleaning. To get your home squeaky clean and festive, you’ll need to start cleaning about a week before the party. Try to do a little deep cleaning every day to avoid getting overwhelmed. You’ll also want to use checklists to keep track of what you’ve done and what you still need to do. Check out these 10 blogs to get some cleaning ideas and downloadable checklists.

• Easy Cleaning and Home Organizing Tips Organizing and updating your laundry room can turn a once-boring chore into a much more pleasant task.
• How to Speed Clean Your Home for the Holidays Follow this checklist for cleaning and organizing your home for the holidays to make this season a little less stressful.
• Cleaning for the Holidays Start cleaning and organizing several days before your party.
• To Do: Your Holiday Organizing Checklist Get the fireplace cleaned and the chimney swept before you invite people over.
• Countdown to Clean Series: Annual Routines {With Free Printable Checklist} You’ll find cleaning tips and checklists on this post.
• Holiday Cleaning and Organizing Plans There are different cleaning and organizational lists you can pick from on this blog.
• 7 Days of Holiday Cleaning Follow these tips to break your house cleaning into manageable, bite-size pieces so that you aren’t exhausted by the time the holiday arrives.
• Christmas Checklist: Clean House for the Holidays Follow this list to clean your house one room at a time to stay methodical throughout the process.
• How to Clean Your Home for Holiday Guests This checklist will help you manage your time by listing out the things you should in the days leading up to your party.
• Christmas Countdown: Six Weeks to an Organized Christmas! You can sign up for this free organizing plan to learn what you need to do as the holidays approach to get ready and stay sane.

Tips for Post Holiday Cleaning

Get Helpers

You already volunteered to be host, don’t let everyone else flake out on helping with clean up. Assign a few jobs at the beginning of the festivities so that folks know they have a job to do before they can leave or take a nap. Good jobs to assign to others would be trash duty, and dish collection. Dishes seem to creep all over the entire house during the holidays.

Tackle the Monster

The kitchen usually gets the brunt of the holiday festivities. Everyone is cooking, everyone is eating, but no one wants to help with the dishes. Cleaning as you go while preparing your holiday meals will go a long way toward alleviating some of the post-holiday kitchen trauma. However, once the guests have gone home tackle the kitchen first. This will help you get a sense of accomplishment that will power you on through the rest of the house.

Clean Bathrooms

If you have had a house full of guests for several hours, then you bathroom has seen an above average amount of activity. Chances are you scrubbed and sanitized your bathroom right before your guests arrived, but it will need it again as soon as they leave. Scrub down toilets with germ killing cleaners, refill the toilet tissue, sweep up the floor again and light a holiday candle to remind yourself that even though it’s hard work, you love the holidays.