How to Approach Household Cleaning in an Eco-Friendly Way
Household cleaning is one area for becoming more eco-friendly that many of us overlook. You can, however, make a major impact by simply changing how you clean your home both in terms of what you do to alleviate the clutter and how you give it a good sanitary cleaning. The following are some helpful suggestions that you may want to consider to help you reduce any harm you may be doing to the environment.
Carefully Dispose of Any Harmful Cleaners
One critical step is to get new, environmentally-friendly cleaners for keeping your home looking and smelling its best. Before this, however, you need to dispose of the cleaners you've been using. If you look at the labels on average household cleaners, you'll see they are replete with words like “toxic,” “warning” and “danger.” You may want to contact a recycling center in your area for advice on how to dispose of any harsh, toxic chemical cleaners you already have so you don't contaminate the groundwater or do any other damage. You definitely do not want to simply dump them in the back yard especially if you have small children or pets.
Find Eco-Friendly Cleaners
When it comes to finding eco-friendly cleaners, you'll find no shortage of articles online about repurposing items you probably already have in your home that also happen to make good cleaners. Lemon juice and vinegar are just a couple of these things, among others, that most households already have in the cabinet or refrigerator. You may also find that you'll be using fewer items to accomplish different cleaning tasks since some of these natural products are good at more than one cleaning task whereas most store-bought cleaners are at least marketed for specific tasks.
Another option is to consider buying ready-made eco-friendly cleaners from suppliers that care about the environment and how the ingredients in their products might impact it. CleanPacs is one such company. In addition to offering green cleaners for your kitchen, bathroom and windows, they add a level of convenience by offering subscription plans by which they automatically ship their cleaners right to your door at your desired frequency. Additionally, they do all of this while saving you up to 70 percent off the cost of many leading brands.
Give Your Home a Breath of Fresh Air
Perhaps nothing freshens the air in a home better than opening the windows, but in most parts of the country, this is not an option in the winter months. Plants are an excellent way to purify the air in your home that's superior to scented candles or aerosol sprays. There are types of plants that are fairly resilient as far as surviving owners who don't exactly have a green thumb. As another option, you can combine fruits and spices in a saucepan to create a pleasant aroma that permeates your home. Slices of lemon along with thyme are a popular combination.
Reuse Existing Items Around the House
When it comes to decluttering your home, how you handle this can impact the environment as well. In order to do your part in not adding to landfills, try re-purposing old items lying around the house. That raggedy old hand towel or t-shirt might make a good cleaning rag now. For things that are still in decent shape but that you just don't wear or use anymore, you might consider donating them to charity, so another person will give them a new lease on life. If you have a garden, you can use your food waste for compost, which saves you money in having to buy some as well as getting rid of your food in an environmentally friendly way.
Eco-Friendly Garden Tending and Cleaning
Speaking of gardening, this is another area where you can practice being environmentally conscious. If you have a vegetable garden, then you're already taking a step in this direction just by having a garden since you reduce your dependence on buying produce at the store which has to be stored in warehouses using electricity and transported by trucks burning gas. Regardless of whether you grow food or flowers, however, there are still steps you can take to be more responsible.
When you use up any drink that came in a plastic bottle, repurpose that bottle as a watering can for your garden. Instead of chemical weed killers, you can use a mix of vinegar, salt and water to keep these unwanted growths at bay in your garden. When you clean up any biodegradable waste from your garden, such as leaf clippings, you can put them in a compost bin that you can use later as a natural fertilizer.
We All Have to Do Our Part
The above tips are only a few suggestions for how you can lower your impact on the environment just by making small changes in your life. They are inexpensive ideas, and some of them may even save you money over how you currently handle some of the above-mentioned tasks. Following these suggestions should give you and your family a healthier household in addition to helping the environment.
