home
Feb 15, 2010
Julie
4 Comments

Green cleaning

my_cleaninggearSo my New Year’s theme this year is “Reduce”. One of the things I’ve been doing to help this along is to declutter my house. I feel like getting rid of stuff, preferably to charity or to be recycled instead of creating landfill, will help me keep focused on my journey to live more simply and sustainably.

Yesterday I tackled my laundry. I can’t believe how much junk was in there! Plus cardboard boxes (recycled), 3 more laundry baskets than I need (I’m giving those away), and more cleaning products than you’d need to keep the Opera House shiny.

Which is silly, because for a couple of years now I’ve had a very pared-back cleaning system. Here’s the list of cleaning equipment I actually use each week:

  • microfibre cloths, and a microfibre broom with extra mop attachment
  • low-phosphate toilet cleaner, dishwashing liquid and washing powder
  • bicarb soda
  • vinegar

That’s it! That’s all I use, and it’s all kept in a couple of easily accessible boxes in the laundry and kitchen. I have no idea why I was hanging on to all that other stuff.

So I ditched all the extra bits and pieces of fabric softener, glass cleaner, and so on. I kept one bottle of washing liquid specifically for woollens, because I knit and it comes in handy once in a while, but everything else was disposed of and the bottles went into the recycling.

I could probably reduce the amount of chemicals in my cleaning even further, if I looked into making my own dishwashing liquid and so on. But the ones I’ve chosen are reliable and safe, I’ve kept them to a minimum, and I don’t want to have to find storage room for the ingredients needed to make them myself.

The microfibre cloths aren‘t 100% necessary either – you could easily replace them with clean cloths of any sort. But I find them easier to use and clean than random cloths, so as long as they last (they’ve got a 3 year guarantee) I’ll hang onto them.

After I cleared out the laundry, it was pretty dusty and sticky. I scrubbed the sink with bicarb and vinegar, wiped down the washer and dryer, and gave it a sweep and a mop. No fancy chemicals needed, and it looks pretty damn good. All I’ve got to do now is figure out how I ended up with 4 washing baskets in the first place!

4 Comments

  • Sonia February 15, 2010 at 1:36 pm

    Maybe you could add a pretty bowl of lemons to the laundry if you have a tree out back somewhere or have easy access to lemons. Lemon juice is a natural bleach. I soak sweat stains of white shirts and t-shirts in water and lemon juice. It works wonders.

    p.s. I’m inspired by your laundry cleanup. I feel a spree coming on…

  • Julie February 15, 2010 at 4:13 pm

    Well, we keep *trying* to grow lemons ourselves, but haven’t had much success so far! But that’s a great idea.

    My mum also got inspired, she’s cleaning out her cupboards now too!

  • Sonia February 16, 2010 at 4:17 pm

    Citrus are slow-growing. You need a lot of patience. Our tree is still young. We had to get rid of the previous tree when gall wasp attacked it. Young trees are vulnerable to gall wasp. grrr.

  • Julie February 17, 2010 at 8:20 am

    It’s funny you should mention that – we’ve had ours for 4 years now, it’s attempted to set fruit but they never survive – and last night we found that we had curl grubs in the soil. I wish we had chickens, they’d have had a feast on those grubs.