Plastic Free July Day 10

We ran out of vinegar for cleaning, so I picked some more up in glass bottles.  Check to see if you have bulk vinegar near you (we don't).

Things I use vinegar to clean:

• Kitchen and bathroom counters
• Floors
• Toilets
• Dishwasher rinse cycle
• Mirrors and windows 
• Pretty much everything

I use a 1:1 ratio of vinegar to water in a spray bottle, and usually add a couple of drops of tea tree and lavender essential oils.

What's awesome about cleaning with vinegar (and baking soda):

• Non-toxic
• Way cheaper than "conventional" cleaners and expensive greenwashed products
• They work!

This fall, when we are eating lots of apples again, I would like to try making apple scrap vinegar.  The Zero Waste Chef has a recipe here.

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If you aren't familiar with Plastic Free July, take a look at this post.  Basically, it's a month-long challenge to reduce the amount of disposable plastic you use.  It's a great starting point if you just want to give cutting out disposable plastic a try.
 
My first Plastic Free July was in 2013(!), and this month I'd like to highlight some of the things I do to reduce my plastic use, and some struggles.  Many things are part of my routine at this point (buying in bulk, refusing plastic silverware, etc.), but I am not perfect, and I always find this challenge to be a good time to refocus and look at what trash I am actually producing. 

Washing the dishes without plastic

Use a wooden dish brush with natural bristles that can be composted when it has reached the end of its life.
I use this one from Life Without Plastic.  It has replacement heads, which I compost when they are worn out.

Use dish cloths.
My sister knitted me some dish cloths from organic cotton yarn that I also use to wash dishes.

Use a copper scrubber to get off tough spots.
We use this one from Life Without Plastic.  They can be recycled after they are worn out.

Use bar soap instead of liquid dish detergent.
I buy bar soap made for cleaning dishes off of Etsy.  You do not need a plastic bottle of detergent to get your dishes clean!  It is a natural bar soap (no artificial ingredients, fragrances or dyes) that is not super moisturizing so it can cut through the grease.  Early on, we had been using Doctor Bronners, but this soap works much better, just as well as conventional liquid dish soap! (I also use this bar soap when I have clothes that need to be hand washed:)

Make your own dishwasher detergent.
I use this recipe, which requires baking soda, salt and citric acid.  The citric acid came in a large plastic bag, but we still have not finished it over a year later, so I consider it a success.  I might try this recipe when we run out, because it uses just lemons, salt and vinegar.

Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link to Life Without Plastic, a company whose mission and products I fully support. - See more at: http://www.cellistgoesgreen.com/2014/06/plastic-free-shaving-using-safety-razor.html#sthash.BUS6DeLY.dpuf

 Note: This post contains affiliate links to Life Without Plastic, a company whose mission and products I fully support.

Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link to Life Without Plastic, a company whose mission and products I fully support. - See more at: http://www.cellistgoesgreen.com/2014/06/plastic-free-shaving-using-safety-razor.html#sthash.BUS6DeLY.dpuf

Green your laundry routine

What is clean supposed to smell like?

For most of my life, clean meant synthetic fragrances like "Mountain Fresh" or "Spring Rain."  Fragrances that lasted a long, long time and were pretty strong.  I became sensitized to them.  Two dryer sheets must be better than one!

Now, clean just smells like clean.

Instead of dryer sheets...

The synthetic fragrances in dryer sheets are overwhelming.  And potentially toxic.  A University of Washington study found that a total of 25 volatile organic compounds, two of which are highly carcinogenic, were released from a dryer vent in which synthetic dryer sheets were used.  And what else are most dryer sheets coated in?  Tallow, or animal fat.  Why don't these ingredients have to be listed on the label? Because they are protected as "trade secrets" of the companies that make them.

...try dryer balls

So how can you make your clothes less static-y?  Personally, I use wool dryer balls, and they're great!  Not only do they cut down on static, they cut down on drying time.  Etsy has many good options, but my favorite are the ones from Bog Berry.  If you still miss the fragrance from the dryer sheets (but not the toxicity), then you can put a few drops of essential oil on your dryer balls before you thrown them in the dryer.

Another benefit to not using dryer sheets is less waste.  Most dryer sheets are not biodegradable, and contribute to landfill waste and pollution in our environment.

Instead of detergent in a plastic bottle...

Detergents also have a slew of synthetic fragrances, and even the "fragrance free" versions aren't innocent.  See articles here, here and here.   

(Personal sidenote about fragrances: While going through old clothes, I found some that I haven't worn in over a year, and I wanted to wash them before donating.  When they were in the wash, the whole laundry room stunk from the detergent I had washed them with MORE THAN A YEAR AND A HALF AGO).

...try soap nuts

My favorite detergent is not a detergent, it's a berry!  Soap nuts (which are berries, not nuts) contain natural saponin, which works to break the surface tension of water and clean your clothes. (Here's where I get mine) There is no plastic packaging, which is another benefit.

How do you use them?

1. Throw 4-5 soap nuts in the little cloth bag that comes with your box of soap nuts.

2. Put it in with your laundry.

3. When you take your laundry out of the wash, take out the little bag (don't worry if you accidentally throw it in the dryer, it won't hurt anything!), and reuse the soap nuts up to 10 times.  It's pretty easy to tell when the soap nuts are used up, they are dry looking, and shriveled, and no longer have the faint "fruity" smell that they do in the beginning.

4. When the soap nuts are used up, throw them in the compost.

Instead of chlorine bleach...

This is more about the plastic for me.  At household concentrations, bleach is generally considered safe. (Though you should make sure never to mix it with ammonia or vinegar!)  But in an effort to create less waste, I have found another solution to keeping our whites white.

...try lemons

I squeeze one lemon into a load of whites, and let it soak in the washing machine on hot or warm water for 30 minutes to an hour.  Afterwards, I wash normally.  This has worked well for us, and keeps all of our whites looking how they should.

greening your clean, part 2: recipes

So, in my last post, I talked about some reasons to green your cleaning routine.  Maybe you've wanted to make some changes, but found the "green cleaners" at the grocery store to be too expensive.  Maybe you've just been stuck in a routine, using the same products for for years because they seem to work.

But it really doesn't have to be expensive, or take more time, to clean without toxic chemicals.  I use three things (besides water) to clean our house.

Vinegar, castile soap and baking soda.

That's it.  Really.

Are you ready for some cleaning recipes? (I'm almost hesitant to say recipes, when you really only need one to two ingredients!)

All purpose spray: One part vinegar to one part water.   Optional: 5-10 drops tea tree and lavender essential oil.  Tea tree is supposed to have some mild disinfectant properties, so I like to use it in the kitchen and bathroom.

Toilet bowl cleaner: Baking soda with a squirt of liquid castile soap.  This seriously works better than any commercial toilet cleaner I have ever purchased.

Soft scrub: Baking soda.

Mopping solution: One part vinegar to one part water.  I have really horrible porous ceramic tile in my kitchen that attracts a lot of dirt, but if you have hardwood or bamboo floors, you may  want to use less vinegar and more water. With a cloth mop pad, this cleans a thousand times better than those disposable Swiffer pads.

Shower doors: Vinegar.  And lemons.

Glass cleaner: One part vinegar to one part water.

One tip: Don't mix castile soap and vinegar, they will react, cancelling each other out, and give you a goopy mess. 

These things will really clean anything.  And they won't give you a headache from toxic fumes.  Or deplete your bank account.

Ok, so now for the spray bottle: you can use the glass bottle your vinegar comes in, and just put an old sprayer on top.  It will fit perfectly!

Do you have any homemade cleaning tips?  Anything I missed?  Please share!

green your clean

I wish I had a picture of what the cabinet under our kitchen sink looked like before we started making different choices.  It was overflowing with dozens of different cleaners, each for a very specific task.  We need those, right?  Because what works on the kitchen counters can't possibly work on the kitchen floors, or the shower.  Off the top of my head, we had:

disinfecting wipes * counter spray * fluid for our swiffer * carpet cleaner * bleach * soft scrub * magic erasers * bathroom tile spray * foam cleaner for the bottom of the shower * wood polish * disposable pads for swiffer mop * disposable dusting cloths * glass cleaner * toilet bowl cleaner

I never really took time to think why we needed all of these different cleaners.  We just did.  I had them growing up.  The commercials on TV promised quick, easy and painless cleaning (which was never true!).  I was too busy to try anything different.  They disinfected, they worked, so who cared?

But when I moved in with my husband, space became very tight.  Our house is small, and was set up for one person.  As I scoured the internet for organizing help, I stumbled on many bloggers who used "greener cleaners" available at the grocery store.  After some research, I decided to start using different products.  But they were expensive.  (And we had already been spending plenty of money on those conventional cleaners, trust me).

So we moved on to vinegar, baking soda, water and castille soap.   And you know what?  They worked better than the conventional cleaners.  And the expensive "green" cleaners.  I repurposed old spray bottles, filled them with vinegar and water, and a few drops of essential oils, and that was it.  The vinegar cut through grease on the kitchen counters and the stove.  It did an equally good job in the bathroom.  Using a reusable microfiber mop with the vinegar cleaned our floors so, so much better than what we had been using before.  I thought some of those stains were permanently etched on our ugly white kitchen tile.  Nope!

Some common concerns about eco-friendly cleaning (that we had too!):

1. What if they don't work as well as the cleaners I'm used to?  I am going to share a before and after picture of our stove top.  It was obviously horribly dirty.  And all I used to clean it was baking soda, vinegar and water.  That's it.  I use baking soda and castille soap to clean our toilet, and it has never been so clean.  If you don't believe me, grab some vinegar and baking soda you have around the house (which is part of the beauty of the whole thing--you don't really have to go out and buy much!) and try using them for a cleaning task you would usually use the disposable cleaning wipes for.  I promise you will be pleasantly surprised!

2. What if they cost more?  If you go out and buy all the bottles labeled "eco-friendly" at the store, then you will spend more money.  But if you simplify, which is what this is really about, and use things you already have around the house, you will end up spending a fraction of what you used to.  I will do a separate post on cost comparison.  Vinegar and baking soda are both incredibly cheap.  And while a bottle of castille soap is initially a little expensive, you will use so little, that it lasts forever.  I'm still working on a 64 oz. bottle from January, and I've barely made a dent.  When I have to repurchase, I will buy the gallon jug to save on plastic packaging.

3. But the don't disinfect!  We have been conditioned to think that EVERYTHING in our homes needs to be disinfected.  But, we are now producing stronger, antibiotic resistant bacteria due to our obsession with cleanliness.  Here is a link to information about a study done by researchers at the University of Michigan that concluded antibacterial soaps containing triclosan (at concentrations used in common household soaps) are no more effective than plain soap and water at disinfecting.  Use hot soap and water!!

Now, if you're going to use these healthier cleaning methods, you should also think about ditching the paper towels.  Once they are used, paper towels are not recyclable.  And they come in plastic wrapping, which also ends up in the landfill.  These problems still exist even if you buy recycled paper towels.  (Some paper towel facts)

I must admit, I still have a roll around in case the cat throws up.  However, for 99% of the cleaning tasks around the house, reusable cloth works great.  I replace the one in the kitchen daily, unless there was a particularly gross mess, and throw them in with the towels in the wash.  I don't find myself really doing any additional laundry.

Click here for part two!

the beginning

Eco-conscious living has not always been a priority for me.  

As a college student, I was focused on my cello and my classes, and didn't give much thought to the effect my everyday lifestyle was having on myself or the planet.  Convenience at any cost.  Was it fast?  Was it easy?  Then who cared how much waste it produced!

Then I graduated.  And got a job (and a cat!).  And got married.  The dorm room changed to a (small) house--a house that my husband had bought before we had even been dating.  As we both worked to find ways re-organize and re-purpose the house to make it work for the both of us (i.e.: de-batchelorify it), I scoured the internet for organizing and space-saving help.  On my quest, I found several blogs that talked about using less-toxic household cleaners.

I had never really paid much attention to what was in the things that I used to clean our house.  But it made sense.  Why did I have to hold my breath, keep the window open and the fan on just to clean the shower?  Initially, I went out and bought the "green" cleaners that were sold in the grocery store, but eventually moved to using just vinegar, water, baking soda and castile soap.

After I had taken that step, it kind of snowballed.  We stopped eating the overly-processed food we had been relying on for "convenience" and started shopping the perimeter of the grocery store and the farmers market.  (Michael Moss' book, Salt, Sugar, Fat was a huge wake-up call for me, I would highly recommend it!)

The last piece of the puzzle for me was plastic.  I stumbled onto Beth Terry's blog My Plastic Free Life, and was amazed at the devastating impact our dependence on disposable plastic has on the oceans.  In the back of my mind, I was always somewhat aware of the fact we were overburdening our landfills, but I really had no idea what we were doing to the oceans and their ecosystems.  (Turtles, birds, and other marine life end up eating our discarded plastic that washes into our waterways.  Google Pacific garbage patch).  So I committed to Plastic Free July, and found I was able to GREATLY reduce our plastic consumption.  We weren't perfect--I wasn't able to find a good dish soap alternative, among a few other things--but we found a new way of functioning, which somehow felt so much more satisfying than how we had been doing it before.

I feel like I have learned so much over the beginning of our journey, and I would love to share it with anyone who wants to know more.  And I have so much more to learn from you!  We have taken small steps, and made mistakes along the way.  But that's ok.  And you don't have to be a crunchy hippie to be concerned about these issues.  I'm not.  And my (very patient) husband definitely isn't.

 So, why did I decide to make these choices?

1. Healthier for us: the highly processed foods we were eating and unnecessarily strong chemicals we were cleaning with were not good for us.

2. Healthier for the planet: the disposable lifestyle that I had mindlessly participated in for years is not sustainable for our climate, our wildlife, or the planet.  I started thinking about what our future children would inherit.

3. Healthier for our wallet: not spending $$$ on a cleaner for every different surface in the house, a thousand different personal care products, and every new "convenient" packaged food has saved us money, even as we invested in purchasing more organic food and higher quality things.

4. Simplicity: less disposable items means less trash and less clutter.  It feels liberating to not have my bathroom counter cluttered with a plethora of different products.  It's easier to keep everything clean when I don't come back from the store with a bunch of plastic bags and throw away packaging.

I can't wait to share more of the things I have learned, and some more of the steps we have begun to take.  Thank you so much for listening!  What steps have you taken towards a greener lifestyle?  What have you struggled with?  I'd love to hear!