Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Minimizing

There's been a lot about no shampoo on blogs like I mentioned earlier. Many are using baking soda instead. Then there's been some posts about Dr Bronner's soap and the many uses. So now I'm thinking about the millions of bottles of chemicals we have in our house (from before we started using baking soda and vinegar) and I want to get rid of everything. It is just a waste of space, the cupboard that holds all the cleaning stuff. I want to use just a few things. Here's what I do so far...

vinegar and water spray bottle- used to clean counters, stains, just kind of an every day cleaner type thing.

vinegar- almost everything, cleaner, laundry, etc etc

baking soda- also used as a cleaner, deodorizer, laundry, and just recently for shampoo

I have some bleach too. We do EC and we've had some poo misses...and I just feel the need to use it sometimes. But I just read lemon can be used for that?

Now I see that I can use Dr Bronners soap for so many different uses. So, now do I really need anything else? Wouldn't it be nice to have just a few things laying around, instead of the whole cupboard full? I know there are many moms out there that have already done this. What are the few things you use?
How do you do things like... clean toilet? clean up something that needs to be sanitized (raw chicken, poop, etc)? windows with out windex?


1 comment:

Lisa C said...

I'm a fan of Borax for the diaper pail (soaking the diapers in water with dissolved Borax fixes the odor problem), and I used it on the shower tub and the toilets. It's supposed to whiten, but it also deodorizes and scrubs the gunk off.

Vinegar and water for basic cleaning. My mom never used disinfectants in the kitchen (expect Comet in the kitchen sink), just soap and water on the counter, and nobody ever got sick, so I just use my vinegar solution. However, you can use tea tree oil in your cleaner for disinfectant (I use it when I wash diapers or soak them, sometimes).

I am curious about that Dr Bronner's soap for cleaning, too. Cutting back on all the bottles of cleaner is a big motivation for me, as well as getting poisons out of our house and away from our baby. I still use Oxyclean, though, and I'm not ready to give it up, yet, because it works like magic on stains. But maybe that soap will work for the stains?