This post about eco friendly cleaning tips has been sponsored. All opinions are my own.
Looking for eco friendly ways to clean your home? One of the challenges of creating a sustainable home to to retrain your brain and change your shopping habits. Cleaning the house is one area to focus on as we move into spring cleaning time.
Swap out your conventional cleaners with natural cleaning products. Make zero waste cleaning choices and ditch the disposables. Look for concentrated natural cleaners for reduced plastic waste. Here are a few more eco friendly house cleaning ideas that might help you reduce your carbon footprint as you scrub your way to a sparkling home.
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Find simple green cleaners in your pantry
Step one on your green cleaning journey can start right in your own kitchen. There are plenty of natural cleaning products to be found right in your pantry. What are some good natural home cleaning products? Here are a few of the basic natural cleaners that I keep stocked in my home:
Baking soda: Who knew baking soda had so many uses, right? Sprinkle it on the carpet, let sit, and then vacuum it up to remove odor. Dump some in the drain, chase it with lemon juice and hot water for an odor free sink. Or, add a bit of water and use it to scrub out your oven.
Lemons: Fresh lemons or lemon juice can be used for cleaning your home naturally. Use them to clean your cutting board or dip a half a lemon in salt to scrub a copper pot back to it’s former shiny self.
White vinegar: One of the best eco friendly cleaning products to keep on hand is plain old vinegar. You can use it to make my DIY pine vinegar or dilute it one to one with water to clean mirrors to a streak free shine.
Buy green cleaning products instead of conventional cleaners.
As you run out of your conventional cleaning products, make the switch to eco friendly cleaners instead. Purchasing premade natural cleaners is a great way to transition to a smore sustainable home.
Do eco friendly cleaners really work? I have had great luck making the switch to natural cleaners. There are many factors to consider when it comes to choosing which cleaners to buy. Ingredients, of course, is one factor. Non toxic cleaners are safer for you, your pets, your kids and the health of our planet. Make sure you read the labels on the products you are buying.
Check out Dazz cleaning tablets and read their ingredient list. I was impressed. Their eco friendly kitchen cleaner contains only: Sodium bicarbonate. Food Grade Citric Acid. Sodium Carbonate. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate derived from coconuts. Food grade fragrance. Colorant. Safe for you. Safe for our planet!
Skip the antibacterial cleaning products. They are unnecessary and just contribute to antibacterial resistance, making stronger bugs we really don’t need in this world.
More about Dazz cleaning products
If you are striving to reduce waste when it comes to cleaning or are looking for natural concentrated cleaners, I encourage you to check out DAZZ cleaning tablets. Their new tablet packets are made from PLA (corn-derived) film and are biodegradable/compostable.
In addition, their bottles and sprayers are made from recycled PET plastic and designed to be reused over and over again. It’s a great way to dive into the green cleaning movement!
Like these eco friendly cleaning tips? Read this posts, too!
- Zero Waste Living: One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure!
- How to Reduce Waste at Home With the growing amount of trash filling up our landfills, learning how to reduce waste at home should be a key factor in your quest for green living.
- Easy Ways to Reduce Your Garbage Output How do you cut back on the number of items that you are tossing in the bins at the end of the driveway? Here are a few tips that might help.
Reduce waste when cleaning
One of the most important eco friendly cleaning tips I can provide is to do what you can do stop throwing things away. That means skip the paper towels and use old rags instead. Choose a traditional mop rather than a disposable floor cleaning wipe system. Try a dish soap block instead of liquid dish soap in a plastic container.
Another way to reduce waste when cleaning is to look for concentrated cleaners. Cleaning tablets are easily shipped in minimal packaging and then reconstituted in water once you get them home. In addition to using less packaging, you can also store extra with minimal space which keeps that under sink clutter down to a minimum.
The Dazz cleaning system helps fight our planet’s incredible singe-use plastic problem by saving hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles every year.
Focus on improving indoor air quality.
The air you breath plays a huge roll in your health. The types of cleaners you use are one factor in improving air quality in your home. Make sure you use cleaners that are either unscented or use natural fragrances.
Other ways to improve the quality of air in your home include things like running air filters, growing plants indoors and cracking open a window occasionally. Even the types of candles you choose to burn affect the air in your home so choose wisely.
Too busy to clean? Find a green cleaning service.
Do you NEED a house cleaning service? Nope. But, but any people choose to hire out their home cleaning tasks. And if that is in your budget, great for you! Find a green cleaning service that will work with you on a clean and sustainable home. Interview people, ask questions, let them know what you want out of their service.
Many eco friendly cleaning services will allow you to provide your own cleaning products. Others might require that they bring their own but will use non toxic cleaning products that they have fully vetted.
Just because you are too busy to clean the house yourself, doesn’t mean you have no control over the types of cleaners being used by your cleaning service. Discuss a few green home cleaning tips with them and see how flexible they are about their current cleaning methods.
Design with clean in mind!
These eco friendly cleaning tips are easier to follow when the surfaces in your home are easy to clean. Basically, wood or tile floors are easier to clean sustainably than carpets. Reduce clutter in your home so that cleaning is easy to do on a regular basis.
As you make home improvements in the coming year, make sure to replace hard to clean surfaces with easy to clean ones. Build extra storage space to free up counter space. You will find that it is much easier to clean your home when you ditch the clutter.
Why bother with eco friendly cleaning?
I find that a lot of times, people don’t seem to understand why sustainable choices are important. Especially when it comes to green cleaning. Why does it matter? According to Cleanlink.com, green cleaning:
● Reduces pollution in our water
● Maintains better air quality
● Reduces exposure to allergy-causing substances
● Reduces exposure to pollutants that have been found to cause cancer, neurological disorders, learning disabilities, infertility, hormonal imbalances and more
According to Nielsen.com, twenty-six percent of respondents say organic/all-natural ingredients are very important. 24% say environmentally friendly/sustainable packaging is very important. Eco friendly cleaning is a trend that is gaining momentum for a reason.
Start reading labels, ditching disposables, and look for concentrated natural cleaners whenever possible. How are YOU trying to become more sustainable this year?
Diane is a professional blogger and nationally certified pharmacy technician at Good Pill Pharmacy. She earned her BS in Microbiology at the University of New Hampshire and has worked in cancer research, academics, and biotechnology. Concern over the growing incidence of human disease and the birth of her children led her to begin living a more natural life. She quickly realized that the information she was learning along the way could be beneficial to many others and started blogging and freelance writing to share this knowledge with others. Learn more about her HERE.
Thank you for all of these tips.