Do you use natural cleaners?

I use Arm and Hammer for laundry; it does only pretty good job but I hate the commercial brands.

Dish soap is mild stuff from the health food store.

I use vinegar and water for windows and general stuff, like glass table tops, enamel appliances.

Lemon oil for furniture.

Hand soap is also from the health food store…lavender-scented French milled that lasts forever.

A few, such as vinegar and baking soda and natural glycerin soap, but I do use bleach to disinfect all my animal things like the litter boxes and feed pans, but now that it is warming up I can simply wash them with mild soap and let them dry in the sun which is disinfecting. I am much more concerned about not using any pesticides or herbicides around my home/property. Good old fashioned mowing and weed eating and hand pulling weeds and a fly swatter for me. I DID have to resort to the big guns for a major ant infestation a couple of years ago, little black ants, but, I also have a hollow Oak tree in my yard where a huge colony of medium size half black, half red ants live and I actually feed & water them. lol

I mist their tree on warm days and sprinkle bread crumbs and drizzle honey on the tree. haha
I also have a hive of wild honey bees in another tree and tons of birds and wildlife around so keeping nature natural over here is important to me. I also do not use any fertilizers on my grass because my geese graze on the lawn constantly.

found new recipe for cleaner.
white vinegar, citrus peel. age 2 weeks.
dilute with water, half and half.
I try to buy healthier options.
I use arm and hammer laundry soap, or purex.

I am sensitive to chemical perfumes such as you find in various soaps, detergent, lotions, and all perfumes such as you find in department stores.

I have a high effeciency washer so I can’t use many detergents at the health food store, so I can’t comment on that, but I always buy unscented, and try to buy “green” when possible.

I have noticed that the hand dishwashing soap gets used up faster because it takes more of the stuff to wash the dishes. I do like my automatic dishwashing detergent from the health food store because it doesn’t have the toxic and environmentally destructive chemicals that Cascade does. It’s much more healthy and pleasant to smell when the dishwasher is running too.

I use vinegar for windows and other cleaning tasks. I often use bicarbonate of soda too for cleaning things like sinks and a range of other tasks and yes, they do work.

We use vinegar as surface cleaner, occasionally buy the natural laundry soap. I don’t know what’s in the laundry or dish soap, and while it claims to be natural I have my doubts. We have Seventh Generation hand soap (lavender right now) and also some Dr. Bronner’s for showering. I also occasionally wash my hands with a bit of wood ash, which gets the job done but is hell on the skin.

Washed windows with vinegar and water recently (every two years whether they need it or not! ...they needed it). That works better than I expected.

We’ve got Seventh Generation laundry detergent and dishwasher soap, That works pretty well on mundane laundry challenges, I don’t know if it tackles industrial strength soiling like car grease etc. We have some Dr Bronner’s liquid and hand soap, although we don’t use those exclusively. I like the Dr. Bronner Peppermint and TeaTree soaps, nice and tingley!

Baking soda works great as a scouring powder, and it never scratches anything, even plastic. I also use it on a wet toothbrush to detail anything with hard to reach areas. Rinse with water, and presto, it’s clean like new.

I hate to admit it, but none of the so called natural products I have tried seem to do the job properly. So I stick with things like Ajax scouring powder and Windex and ordinary laundry detergent from the grocery. I used bleach on the shower to kill mold when we lived in the tropics, that is not necessary where I live now. I try to avoid products that claim to be antibacterial, although that is becoming increasingly difficult. I do try to be extra green in other areas to make up for it though!!! @snowberry I will try baking soda and see how that goes for me, although I find it hard to believe it could compete with Ajax.

I love baking soda @Rooeytoo. Great on sinks. On your stainless steel kettle. All sorts of things. Pans with burnt on food. Put it on and leave it for a few hours then clean the pan.

Okay I will try it! Cleaning stainless is such a pain, I’ll try anything.

Here’s what you can do with burnt on food on a metal pan. Put a teaspoon of automatic dishwashing detergent in the pan, fill with water to above the burned part, and set the heat to simmer. After a half hour or more, the burned part will begin to dissolve. You might see a scum start at the top of the water, or little flakes floating around in there. When you think it’s done, take the pan off the heat, dump out the water, and go at it with an SOS pad, or maybe just a scratch pad. I find it works best if you can do this while the pan’s still hot, but the burned part is still wet (I use a fork to hold the scratch pad in place while I scrub). It sometimes requires a little bit of rubbing, but it’s not too bad, usually.

Do NOT use this method on non-stick pans!

Regarding baking soda, I often stick my wet finger in the baking soda, and rub at the spot that way. I can often get it cleaner because I can feel if it’s clean, and I don’t miss spots I’d miss if I was just looking at it. If you want to clean a bathtub, try it right after your bath. Dump some on a wet washrag, and rub the inside of the tub after you let the water out. Soap scum comes up quickly, and you don’t have to stand on your head to scrub it out! Rinse with clean water. Nevermind if you don’t rinse it all out, because it will just dissolve the next time you take a bath, and you won’t ever have that gritty feel that Ajax leaves behind.