Even the baby wipes. Once I open them, I can smell them almost instantly throughout the whole house – it’s a nauseating smell. We bought the “sensitive skin” variety of dish soap and it nearly ate the skin off my hands after washing one sink full of dishes.

So now I go through vinegar like it’s water.  I use it for everything – windows, laundry softener, floors, gunk… you name it, vinegar is my go-to friend. It’s been a while since I had to clean with home-made recipes, but since I’m doing it daily I thought I’d share.

Vinegar: 50/50 mix with water is great for cleaning mirrors and glass. I use this for most purposes around the house – kitchen counters, door knobs, you get the idea. Add a generous splash of vinegar to your mop bucket, fill with water, and mop away.

Baking soda: use 2-3 TBS, and mix in enough water to make a paste. Use that to scour your tub, porcelain sinks stove top, or oven. It’s a gentle abrasive (emphasize gentle), so you’ll want to maintain the shiny clean look so as to avoid the need for hours upon hours of scrubbing.

Lemon juice: my favorite for dusting wood furniture! In a small bowl mix a 2 TBS of vinegar with 1 tsp olive oil.  Dip your dusting rag in it and give every wood surface a generous swIpe! The citrus scent of the lemon juice will give you some added energy, and you’ll have a dust-free house with nicely conditioned wood to boot!

I can clean just about anything with those few ingredients from my pantry. Sure, I’d prefer some Shaklee, but shipping to Eastern Europe would cost me more than a month’s worth of pirozhki! I’ll leave you with a few pics of Moldova.

Fields of canola flowers. Moldova doesn’t make canola oil for cooking – they sell this for diesel, only they sell it way below market value.

 No, this isn’t our mode of transport – we live in the city. But outside of the city this is a common sight.

See the castle on the hill? Sorry I didn’t get a better picture. I’ll do better next time. I’ll ask that crane politely to move out of the way…

If however you accidentally put raw meat of unknown quality in your mouth, you may avoid food poisoning by gurgling straight vinegar and chasing it with a shot or two of vodka. This is a rather unpleasant process, and the best medicine is prevention. Raw meat should not be consumed…  (in case you were wondering…)

Bread dough, cookie dough, pastry mess… When you have a sticky icky kitchen mess on your hands, what’s the quickest way to clean it up? Most of the stickies we’re talking about need an acidic cleaner to wipe them up. Flour, water, oil, shortening, or butter… It’s an alkaline mess and what better to clean an alkaline with than an acid? That means you need something like vinegar or lemon juice.

The easiest thing to do is to let it dry a bit, then use a plastic scraper to scrape up the dried mess. You’ll have some residue left on your counters (or your hands or floors), and that’s where you’ll spray your vinegar or lemon juice. They’ll cut the grease and help ease the gunk from your surfaces. Easy as pie!

So, for today let’s talk about what you already have at home that you can use to clean with. A bottle of Windex will cost you $3.99 or so, and if you want to go with the greener option of Seventh Generation or Ecover, that’ll run you about $4.99 a bottle. And then you’d need some all-purpose cleaner, degreaser for tough grease, toilet bowl cleaner, oven cleaner, carpet cleaner, tub & tile spray, hard surface cleaner and something special for your granite or marble, not to mention hardwood floor cleaner, tile floor cleaner… Or that’s what the efforts of the marketing gurus want you to believe.

In fact you can clean most surfaces in your home without any of those. Here’s a rundown of how to clean your home for cheap with what you’ve already got – and what doesn’t have harsh chemicals.

Dusting wood furniture: Mix together 1/2 c. lemon juice, 1 tsp olive oil (you don’t need the high quality EVOO for this). Dampen a cloth with it and refrigerate what’s leftover since lemon juice will go rancid at room temp.

Window, glass, & light duty cleaner:  1/4 cup vinegar with 2 cups water will do the trick. If you’ve been using commercial window cleaner for some time you’ll want to add 2-3 drops of detergent to the mix. Commercial window cleaners leave a fine, waxy residue and the vinegar alone won’t fully hack it.

Scouring cleanser:  Make a paste with baking soda and water, add a couple drops of lemon juice. Scrub away!

Whitening agent: Hydrogen peroxide.  You can use it on your white laminate countertops, tile grout, laundry.

Disinfectant: Arm yourself with 2 spray bottles. One with undiluted vinegar and the other with hydrogen peroxide. Spray one and then the other on any surface you consider contaminated, and that will take care of most germs and microbes.

Toilet bowl cleaner: You need something acidic, so vinegar, lemon juice or lime juice will do the trick. You do not need one of those funky-shaped bottles to get under the rim. A spray bottle and your toilet brush will work fine.

Fabric softener: Add some vinegar to your rinse and you don’t need fabric softener. And replace dryer sheets with a reusable cloth. Dab some fabric softener or vinegar on it and throw it in the dryer.

That’ll take care of most of your product needs around the house.  Our next installment will tell you how to navigate the world of consumer cleaners.

There’s nothing better than creating a home cooked meal from scratch, using the season’s finest and freshest to bring the most flavor to the table. But unless you’re a vegetarian you probably also have raw meat you’ll be chopping now and then, and potentially leaving dangerous germs on your chopping block.   Here’s what we suggest:

1. Use different cutting boards for different purposes. One for non-meats and cooked items only, one for fish, and one for raw red and white meat. This will keep you from cross contaminating, and even if a germ or two is spread from one meat to the next, you’re going to thoroughly cook the meat and sterilize that stray germ.
2. As the CDC recommends, soap and water is sufficient for most purposes, including hand washing and cleaning dishes and cutting boards. Hot, soapy water will do the trick for most kitchens. Just make sure you’re actually scrubbing and not just giving a cursory swipe. Alternatively, use your dishwasher and eco-friendly dishwashing detergent. The level of sustained heat in the dishwasher will kill most everything.
3. A two-step process involving a spray of hydrogen peroxide followed by a spray of vinegar, with each left to sit for 10 minutes will properly disinfect. The key though is leaving it to sit. Even the best product is useless if not used correctly.
4. Essential oil of lavender – about 20 drops to 1 cup of water in a spray bottle will disinfect quite well and leave your home smelling like spring year round! This is safe enough to spray directly on your kids’ toys and other food-prep surfaces, which makes it one of our favorites. In fact, studies show that essential oils may disinfect more effectively than phenol, which is what most disinfectants use today. Additionally, they don’t seem to contribute to the development of drug resistant strains of bugs like regular antibacterials do.
5. Microwave it! I’m serious. If you’re concerned that your cutting board may be compromised and if it’s wood, put it in the microwave a zap it for 10 minutes. Your cutting board will be clean, but use caution getting it out – depending on the type of wood and level of moisture present it could be hot. This doesn’t work on plastic cutting boards though, so don’t waste your time.

Thanks to Mollie over at One/Change for a few of those tips.  If you’re in the market for a new cutting board, opt for wood. New studies show that wood cutting boards don’t harbor bacteria the way plastic boards do. Due to the capillary of dry wood, microbes disappear below the surface where they die within a few hours. Plastic on the other hand allow microbes to sit on the surface where they can contaminate the next item. And please, avoid those “antibacterial” cutting boards like the plague – they’re treated with a pesticide and do you really want to introduce pesticides into your kitchen? Add in the fact that FDA is attacking the claims of the effectiveness of those pesticides, and it’s really not worth it.

Second, use an ice tray and make some vinegar ice cubes. Feed those to your garbage disposal and listen to it sing your praises!

Take good care of your disposal by feeding it things it likes so it’ll last longer for you and it won’t stink up your kitchen!

• Rubbing the produce with a wet or dry paper towel for 30 seconds actually removed most contaminants – including salmonella. Pretty simple, huh? This didn’t work so well for things like broccoli though (for obvious reasons – paper towels don’t penetrate well between the florets!).
• Reduction of contaminants was even better when a 4-step process was used: Wet with water, rub for 5 seconds, rinse with water, and dry with a paper towel.
• Vinegar helps with fruits and veggies that aren’t easy to rub – like cauliflower,  broccoli, raspberries, you get it. The higher the concentration of vinegar to water the better, up to a 50/50 dilution – just be sure to rinse your fruits and veggies afterwards to get rid of the vinegar taste.
• Citric acid proved to be relatively effective as well, but I honestly don’t know anyone who keeps citric acid handy. Anybody?

Citric acid and vinegar were just as effective as store-bought veggie washes, but the rinsing/rubbing/rinsing process was more effective for most types of produce. So, spend the extra time to clean your lettuce leaves and apples, and buy organic when you can to reduce the added contaminants you’re bringing into your home.

Well, let’s not be drastic. For 6 weeks I won’t sweep anything off my own floor. But there’s nothing stopping my husband or live-in in-laws from doing it. Still though, I find myself looking for creative ways to contribute to the overall well-being of my household. So here are a few scrub-free cleaning tips that even I can do after my c-section.

• Drop a vitamin C tablet in the toilet at bedtime. In the morning give the toilet a meager swish-swish and flush. You’d be amazed how well it works.
• This is another bedtime one. Plug your shower drain and fill to about 1/2 inch deep with hot water. Sprinkle a few teaspoons of Shaklee’s Nature Bright into the standing water and leave overnight. Rinse well in the morning, and see your shower floor sparkle. This works wonders on sinks too – fill with hot water, add a few teaspoons of the Nature Bright, let it sit, then rinse!
• Put your fine silver in a pot or pan and cover with water. Add a tablespoon each of salt and baking soda. Submerse a couple sheets of aluminum foil and wait an hour. Rinse your silver and voila! It’s polished!
• No iron handy? Toss dryer-safe wrinkled clothes into the dryer for 5 minutes and remove promptly. Wrinkles be gone!
• Dishes a problem? Fill your sink with warm dish-soapy water and sprinkle in some Bon Ami. Soak your dishes until the water becomes tepid, and the grease and petrified food should slide right off. (Of course, if you’ve had a c-section you’ll need to let someone else take over the dishwashing at this point…)
• Grab a pretty spray bottle and fill it nearly to the top with water. Add 4-5 drops tea tree oil, oregano oil, lavender oil, and a cinnamon stick. Spray it anywhere that needs disinfecting (door handles, light switches, refrigerator handle, bathroom surfaces, etc.).
• Have a new baby? Then you have tons of laundry! And new baby stains can be tough, especially considering that you want to stay away from harsh detergents and chemicals. Keep a bucket in your laundry room filled with water and a few teaspoons of Shaklee’s Nature Bright. Throw any soiled clothes, burp cloths, cloth diapers, etc. in there and let them soak a bit before going into the wash. No need to scrub, blot, or dab those stains – just let the soak take care of it for you. And that will take care of other stains too – not just the baby-oriented ones.
• Change your door mats. The welcome mats outside can be a haven for dirt to be tracked into the house. If you haven’t changed them in the last year (unless you use the iron ones), it’s time for a new mat. The cleaner your outdoor mat, the less dirt to be tracked in!
• Fill a ziplock bag with vinegar, and rubber band it around shower heads and faucets. Let it sit for an hour or so, then discard. While you do that, you can plug the bathroom sink drain and put an inch of vinegar in the bottom. It’ll disinfect an often-forgotten harbinger of germs. Did you know that bathroom sink drains tend to harbor more bacteria than your toilet? Not pleasant.
• Cut a lemon in half, submerse half of it in a microwave-safe bowl of water. Put it in the microwave for 3 minutes on high. Remove the bowl, and wipe down the inside of the microwave.

One option is a plunger. For a slow drain, a plunger can often dislodge whatever is causing the blockage. If that doesn’t work, of if you’re looking for an alternative to the traditional pour-it-down-the-drain type cleaners, try the following recipes:

For light drain cleaning, mix 1/2 cup of salt into 4 liters of water and heat, but not to boiling. Pour the mixture down the drain.
For heavier drain cleaning, pour 1/2 cup baking soda down the drain (you may need to use your fingers to push it down a bit); chase that with 1 cup white vinegar. Give it a few minutes to fizz. Then follow with 1 gallon of boiling water – careful not to scald yourself as you pour!

This only works if your pipes are metal – do not use the boiling water if you have plastic pipes! Also, don’t do this if you’ve just used a commercial drain cleaner. The vinegar could cause a chemical reaction and release dangerous fumes.

That’s what works for me. Head over to Shannon’s place for more helpful tips.

Antiseptic or germicide: Inhibits growth of micro-organisms. These can usually be used on living organisms, and are therefore regulated by the FDA.

Natural Antiseptic or germicide: St. Johns Wort, lime oil, bergamot, clove, eucalyptus, and many others.

Sanitizers: Used to reduce, but not necessarily eliminate micro-organisms. Some sanitizers can be used in food-contact situations (dish washing, counter top sprays, vegetable washes, etc.)

Natural Sanitizer: Borax, grapefruit oil, pine oil, lavender.

Disinfectants: Will destroy or irreversibly inactivate fungi and bacteria, but not necessarily their spores. They can be divided into 2 categories – hospital grade and general use. General use is typically plenty for even the ‘dirtier’ parts of your home, like toilets and floors.

 Natural Disinfectant: Tea Tree Oil, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide (especially when used together, one after the other), Baking soda, lemon juice, Oregano oil, thyme, and cinnamon.

Sterilizers: Used to eliminate all forms of microbial life including fungi, bacteria, viruses, and their spores.  Most situations don’t require something this strong, but if you’re getting rid of toxic mold, tuberculosis, or something equally stubborn, you may want to look into it.

 Natural Sterilizer: Sunlight, Heat and steam, garlic, oregano oil.

The next question is what cleaners actually do, if they don’t have antiseptic, sanitizing, or disinfectant properties. Most – if not labeled as disinfectant or otherwise – are general surfectants.  That means they make water wetter – they make microbes, particles, germs, etc., slide off the surface but they don’t necessarily kill anything. We don’t recommend mixing these commercial cleaners with the natural cleaners mentioned above. If you’re not a chemist you could end up producing an unintentional and potentially harmful reaction. However, you can mix some of the natural cleaners with each other. Examples would be adding essential oils to vinegar, lemon juice, borax, or baking soda. Note that we don’t recommend mixing hydrogen peroxide (it’s highly acidic and can be reactive).