Cleaning the home is a vital key to staying healthy. It helps eliminate unpleasant odor, disease-causing germs, mites, and buildup of dust that worsens allergies and triggers asthma.
However, most of the cleaning agents that are used in the process are not environmentally friendly. They sometimes contain chemicals that can prove to be very hazardous to both humans and the ecosystem in general.
Interestingly, you can keep your house clean by following a few natural house cleaning steps. Before we move over to the green cleaning tips, let us find out what green cleaning involves.
What Is Green Cleaning?
Green cleaning is a concept that revolves around making use of cleaning methods and solutions that are safe for humans and the environment. It involves using green cleaning solutions and reducing waste when cleaning.
Some common green ingredients used in cleaning include lemon, salt, baking soda, and vinegar. These are used to prepare natural green cleaning solutions.
On the other hand, some manufactured green cleaning products are used in the cleaning process. Although most of these products are not free of artificial additives and chemicals, they are being marketed as green cleaners either because some of the ingredients are grown organically, or the manufacturers donate a portion of the profits generated from their sales to support environmental causes.
Green cleaning can significantly minimize the waste of resources and prevent environmental pollution in general. It also reduces health problems like allergies, headaches, nausea, skin irritation, and respiratory issues.
Now that we have found out what green home cleaning involves, we will not look at some green cleaning tips to incorporate into your everyday cleaning. In the later part of the article, we’ll discuss the role of green cleaning services and the things to consider when choosing one.
10 Green Cleaning Tips For Your Home
Some simple green ingredients and natural house cleaning methods are smart ways to keep your home clean without using toxic cleaning solutions.
Take a look at these ten green home cleaning tips that you can use to alternate harsh chemicals used to clean your home.
1. Make your windows and mirrors shine with Vinegar/Lemon juice.
Most of the window cleaners available in the market are ammonia-based and can be harmful to your health. So, it is time to ditch those cleaners and embrace some green cleaning solutions to do the same job.
Mix one part of vinegar with three parts of water to make a solution. Alternatively, you can make use of lemon juice instead of the vinegar. Spray the solution on the window or mirror as you would a cleaning product and wipe it down with a microfiber cloth to avoid any streaks.
Sometimes, it is advised that old newspapers be used in cleaning windows. However, there are pros and cons attached to doing this, and you would like to be aware of that.
It might sound like a cool and green idea to use old newspapers in shining your window because you will be saving on paper towels and recycling the newspapers, and it has been proven to work.
However, cleaning your windows with old newspapers may become very messy more quickly than you expect. Most times, the inks on the newspaper bleed, leaving streaks on your window frames.
Using a solution of vinegar or lemon juice and water with a microfiber cloth will be low on your pockets and keep your windows and mirrors shiny.
2. Naturally clean and shine your bare floors
A warm water and vinegar solution will do the trick of cleaning the most bare floors in your home, ranging from ceramic tiles, vinyl, linoleum, and even wooden floors.
Just mix one cup of vinegar with one gallon of warm water and use the mixture to mop your floors. It serves as a cleanser, removing any buildup of dirt and grease on the floors, and has mild disinfectant properties. But, do not use this in excess.
Alternatively, if you have a wooden floor, you can use a combination of hot water, vinegar, and olive oil. Yes, salad dressing can be used to clean floors.
Just combine equal parts of vinegar and hot water with a little portion of olive oil to bring out the wooden floor’s shine. The quantity of oil to add depends on the quantity of your solution, which in turn depends on the expanse of the area you want to clean.
Using these natural house cleaning recipes will give you a clean and shiny looking floor without using the toxic cleaning products available in the market today.
3. Eliminate pests and rodents naturally.
Pests often cause a lot of disturbances, and in a bid to get rid of them, a lot of damage is caused. You can eliminate many pests ranging from household pests to outdoor pests, including bugs, spiders, and mice, without using chemicals.
The wide variety of insects and rodent killers available in the market do a lot of harm rather than good. These products contain certain chemicals that are very harmful to health and the environment. They may succeed in eliminating the pests, but the products’ aftermath proves to be far more dangerous than the pests themselves.
On the other hand, you can get rid of these pests using some simple green ingredients that are both inexpensive and readily available. These solutions will also prove to be very beneficial to you in the long run.
You can use some essential oils to eliminate pests from your home. If you want to get rid of spiders in hidden corners of your home, such as the attic, you can do so using citronella essential oil.
Spiders tend to avoid any area with this scent as it repels it. So, you can place a few drops of citronella in strategic locations where spiders can be found.
Mice can be eliminated using peppermint essential oil. It finds the scent extremely offensive. Just add a couple of drops of peppermint oil on cotton balls and place them around your home.
Bugs can also affect the growth of the plants you have in your garden. Rather than trying to kill them with pesticides that are very harmful to the environment and health, you can use neem essential oil.
Mix two teaspoons of neem oil and two cups of water in a spray bottle. Shake the mixture vigorously to combine and then spray it on the plants to eliminate bugs without endangering them.
4. Clean your oven with baking soda
Baking soda is a natural house cleaning abrasive and can help you get rid of stains in your oven. Not everyone can afford to buy a self-cleaning oven, and even if you have one, there are just a few commercial green oven cleaners.
Many of these oven cleaners are made with caustic soda, which is very harmful to health. You can clean your oven with just a simple green cleaner that you can easily make at home.
Prepare a thick paste using baking soda and water. Apply this paste to the portion of the oven that you want to clean and leave it to settle for a couple of hours, or perhaps overnight. Then, use a brush and scrub the stains away, wiping it after with a soft cloth.
Alternatively, you can search for a green oven cleaner to get the work done for you. The best option, though, is to prevent food spills from burning in the oven by using oven liners to make the task of cleaning your oven a lot easier for you when cleaning up your house.
5. Shine Your Metals
Among the must-have home cleaning products with a high concentration of harsh chemicals are metal polishes. These polishes for brass, copper, steel, and several other kinds of metals contain chemicals like ammonia and some corrosive acids, which can be damaging to the internal organs when perceived on a regular basis.
To avoid the health hazards associated with these harsh chemicals, it will be wise to check out some green cleaning tips to remove any tarnish from your metals and prolong their life.
You can shine your copperware or antiques with a paste made with baking soda and lemon juice. Cover the entire surface with the paste and leave it to dry. Once it is dried up, you can then wipe it off with a clean microfiber cloth.
You can also use half a lemon sprinkled with some sea salt to rub on the metal item. Use a clean cloth to remove every residue of salt and lemon juice from the item’s surface.
6. Polish Your Furniture
Furniture polishes are among the list of home cleaning products that you need to ditch for green cleaning solutions. The polish is most often manufactured using petroleum distillates and solvents.
These two products found in your furniture polish are poisonous, smelly, and pose a great risk of inflammation. What are you still doing with something that can potentially burn down your house if care is not taken?
Several simple green ingredients can make your furniture shine effortlessly. And of course, our all-time favorite, lemon, is included in this list.
Make a solution of one part lemon juice and two parts olive oil and apply it to your furniture with a soft cloth. Yes, we are back again with the salad dressing.
This fantastic combination of olive oil and lemon juice will not only bring shine to your wooden furniture but will also give it a pleasant smell.
7. Eliminate Stains and germs in the kitchen
The kitchen is one of the most common places for disease-causing germs to breed. In fact, it has been shown that the kitchen contains more germs than the bathroom.
Many activities go on in the kitchen, from handling raw meat fish to cutting up vegetables, and all these introduce several harmful bacteria into the kitchen.
Although most cleaning products used in getting rid of the germs and stains are effective, they contain chemicals that can be fatal to the health, and you would not want that in your kitchen.
You can use a few simple natural house cleaning solutions to get rid of stains, germs, and odor in the kitchen. You can clean the dishwasher using a mixture of vinegar and water, allowing it to run one cycle to eliminate bacteria and odors.
You can clean countertops, cutting boards, and other kitchen surfaces with a solution of vinegar or lemon juice. These green ingredients will get rid of stains and food smudges in the kitchen and leave it with a delightful scent.
8. Use a natural cleaner for the bathroom.
Bathroom cleaners contain one of the harshest chemicals used to dissolve tough stains on the toilet bowl and soap scum and grease. These chemicals can pose a serious threat to health and should not be used in the home.
Granted, cleaning the bathroom is not one of the most exciting parts of house cleaning. However, you can still get a clean bathroom by simply replacing these harsh chemicals with natural house cleaning solutions.
To remove soap scums and grease from the bathroom, you can use lactic acid, which does the same thing as the cleaning products’ chemicals. What is more? They are naturally derived!
To clean the toilet bowl, you will need one part of vinegar, one part of water, and one baking soda. Mix everything and put it into the toilet bowl, and brush it vigorously with a toilet brush.
Allow it to sit for a couple of hours or overnight, then scrub it once again before flushing it all out. You can add a few drops of lemon essential oil to the mixture to get a pleasant odor.
Alternatively, you can buy very green cleaning products, paying particular attention to the ingredients used in manufacturing them.
9. Eliminate Clutter
The entire cleaning process can result in massive decluttering of your home, which can be caused by the use of paper towels.
These paper towels can cause a lot of mess in the home as they can not be recycled. Not to mention the large number of trees that are destroyed to produce them, in addition to the water pollution they cause.
Remember, green home cleaning also involves using cleaning methods that do not endanger the environment. Therefore, you can either reduce or eliminate the use of paper towels in cleaning your home.
As an alternative, you can use reusable towels that can be washed and dried when they become dirty. That way, you can reduce or eliminate the litter caused by paper towels.
You can even use this medium to utilize old cloth napkins and fabric scraps that you wish to throw out, using them to clean extremely grimy things and promptly discarding them.
Place the clean towels in strategic places where they can be easily grabbed just like the paper towels.
10. Ditch Artificial Fragrances for Natural Ones
What would you risk to get a sweet-smelling house? Your health and that of those living with you? Air fresheners are very useful to get that blast of sweet scent in your home.
However, it might interest you to know that most air fresheners contain a number of harmful chemicals, including the wide range of hormone-disrupting chemicals called Phthalates.
Yes, your house has a pleasant smell, but at the same time, you are also taking in a huge amount of harmful chemicals each time you spray the air freshener.
The most effective way to eliminate any odors from your house is to keep it clean generally. All through the tips we listed above, we mentioned the natural odor-eaters you can find in your home, vinegar and baking soda.
However, you can make your own air freshener at home using only natural house cleaning ingredients. To make this air freshener, you will need a cup of water, three tablespoons of vodka or pure vanilla extract, 10-15 drops of lavender oil, and 5-8 drops of chamomile essential oil.
Get all these ingredients together in a spray bottle and shake it up to thoroughly mix them together. And bam! Your green air freshener is ready for use.
Do not kill yourself and your family in order to get that pleasant fragrance you want in your home. You can make do with the most natural air fresheners, vinegar, and baking soda.
We have now seen the few green cleaning tips that you can employ to change your home cleaning routine from artificial products to natural alternatives. Let’s review the benefits associated with adopting a natural house cleaning method.
Benefits of Green Home Cleaning
There are a lot of benefits you can derive from switching over to green cleaning. Some of them include:
- Improved Air Quality
These green cleaners contain essential oils that create natural fragrances in the home. That, in itself, is a form of aromatherapy.
- Cleaner Environment
Using green cleaners can help to reduce a lot of environmental pollution that is rampant today. It reduces water and air pollution and goes a long way to minimize the depletion of the ozone layer.
- Improved Health
Making use of green cleaners will improve the quality of your health. There will no longer be any danger of inhaling dangerous chemicals that can cause a wide range of health issues. These home cleaning products can worsen asthma and allergies.
- Cost-efficient
Applying green cleaning tips and cleaning the home using natural ingredients is cheap in comparison with the cost of buying artificial cleaners. It will also eliminate any money that would otherwise be spent on treating health conditions caused by harmful chemicals.
Additionally, green cleaning is also cost-effective for companies that manufacture green products. There will be a huge reduction in the number of fire outbreaks that occur as a result of using inflammable chemicals.
Green Cleaning Services
Some households have aged ones or those who simply can not find time to clean their homes. Soji Cleaners offers professional green cleaning services that strictly follow industry standards and give clients the best results.
It is easy to forget that anytime you need to hire professional home cleaners to green clean your office or home, you need to find one that is reputable and can give you value for your money.
One advantage of hiring a home cleaning service is that it employs skilled professionals in their work. While you would usually scramble the internet to find efficient green cleaning tips, they know exactly what to do, what products to use, and what cleaning methods to use as well.
Most of these home cleaning companies also provide you with green home cleaning. When choosing a green cleaning company to hire, it is essential to know what exact products it will be using.
Green cleaning services refer to home cleaning companies that make use of natural, non-toxic products when cleaning your home. Now, it might be a little bit difficult to identify which company acîtually provides green cleaning services.
The main reason for this is because some of these companies merely claim to provide these services while they do not. They fail to disclose the ingredients present in the cleaning products that they will be using, and that is not what you need.
Therefore, you need to ensure that the company you choose stays true to its words of being a green home cleaner. Selecting a good green cleaning service like Soji Cleaners will help you to derive the full benefits of green cleaning without having to do anything.
You can simply schedule for a day to have your home cleaned while attending to other important duties.
Last Words
Green cleaning is a fantastic way that everyone can contribute to making the environment safer. Using the green cleaning tips provided above will guarantee a reduction in waste and improve health.
The ingredients in green cleaning solutions that you prepare at home are readily found in the house, which makes it very convenient to use.
However, if you can not always prepare those DIY green cleaning solutions, you can buy green cleaning products from the stores. But it is imperative that you pay close attention to the content so that you can guarantee that you are using a completely green product.
By switching to green home cleaning, you will be contributing your own quota to maintaining our beautiful home, Earth.