Eco friendly ways to clean your home

Have we been ‘brainwashed’ into believing we need harsh chemicals to clean our homes?

Bicarbonate of soda was a popular cleaning product in the 1970s, but with so many synthetic products on the market, many stopped using it, thinking it would do an inferior job. But what about the damage to the environment? 

Well, the major concern with today’s synthetic products is the chemicals they contain. They may pollute streams and rivers and may take a long time to degrade into harmless products. There are, of course, many eco-friendly options to choose from when it comes to cleaning your home. 

Here’s ten (10) practical tips to help you change up your approach:

Bulk-buy ingredients

Buy your most-used ingredients in bulk – an initial outlay, but money-saving in the long run. Popular eco-friendly ingredients include:

• bicarbonate of soda
• citric acid
• surgical spirit
• sodium carbonate (known as washing soda)
• sodium percarbonate (known as “oxygen” or “green” bleach)
• essential oils - to add a particular scent to your cleaning products 

Make an all-purpose cleaner

There’s lots of recipes you can find online, but for a guide, 150ml water, 60ml white vinegar and 40ml surgical spirit, with essential oil for fragrance should do the trick! You can use this for pretty much anything. It’s non-streaky and quick-drying and is great for cleaning kitchen worktops, the hob, cupboards, cutting through greasy marks on shelves, cleaning the bathroom and polishing mirrors, glass or tiles.

Decrease dry cleaning

The chemicals used at the dry cleaner are notoriously toxic. Dirty work shirt? All you need is a pad dipped in surgical spirit; it will clean it up without having to use the dry cleaners.

Blitz the oven without harsh chemicals

Start by softening all the burnt-on bits with steam. Put a large roasting tin in the bottom of the warm oven and fill it with boiling water, close the door and leave it for 20 minutes. A paste made from bicarbonate of soda and water (add some xanthan gum if you want to make it a bit stickier) can then be painted all around with a pastry brush. Leave for 30 minutes, then remove with a scraper and fine wire wool.

Clean up your casserole dishes

Take a tablespoon of sodium percarbonate and a kettle of boiling water. Let it soak and hey presto! 

Brighten those whites

Yellowing fabrics, such as pillow cases, can be transformed. Simply put them in a lemon juice or citric acid solution [3 tbsp added to 600 ml hot water], with salt, and leave to soak. Peg them outside on a sunny day – don’t rinse or wring them – and the sun will bleach them.

Clean your screen

A fine mist made with white vinegar and surgical spirit, diluted with water, makes a good screen cleaner and can remove dirty fingerprints and bacteria from keyboards. The vinegar reduces the static cling, and can even stop your TV collecting dust.

Deep-clean the toilet

Citric acid will dissolve limescale and kill germs. When you move away from bleach, you find all these stains appearing, because all you’ve been doing is bleaching them out, but the limescale is still there. Use citric acid to get rid of that! 

Restore shower doors

Marks on glass come from a combination of soap and limescale. Make a spray of citric acid and water and it comes off in a jiffy! 

Remove scuff marks

Dab some bicarbonate of soda on the mark with a damp cloth and it’ll be like the scuff never happened! It works great on walls, baseboards and appliances.

And if all of this has got your head in a spin - use Chappy to search for an eco-friendly cleaning provider in your area! We’ll play phone tag with the professionals and come back to you with a competitive bid, customized to your needs and budget. 

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