Welcome to the March 2013 Natural Living Blog Carnival: Naturally Spring Cleaning.
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Natural Living Blog Carnival hosted by Happy Mothering and The Pistachio Project through the Green Moms Network. This month our carnival participants have written posts about how they keep their homes clean – naturally.
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Spring cleaning is upon us. We are coming out of the coma of winter, looking forward to spending more time outside and we are thinking about getting the house cleaned up. I admit I used to use the toxic cleaners, in fact I have a few unfinished bottles in my basement. In my mind they are for emergencies of things I just cannot clean up naturally.
The fact is I have never used the stash of emergency cleaners because I have something that every single person has in their house baking soda. If you are a single man you even have it in your house in your fridge with that shriveled up lime from the night you bought Corona’s for your Mexican food take out.
My first experience using baking soda was with my stove. My stove is always dirty, it is only clean for the short time between the time I clean it and the next meal. I confess I have used Greased Lighting before to clean my stove, it worked but it is very toxic, I could practically wheeze with the first spray.
My stove was pretty dirty the other day and I used only baking soda, a little bit of white vinegar, and hot water. I sprinkled baking soda around the stove top and poured a small amount of white vinegar. I let it sit for a few minutes and bubble. Then I took a wash cloth with hot water and used elbow grease. That is it, it really worked as you can see.
I use it in the sink to get all the food grime off from a day of cooking and preparing food. I use it in the bathroom to clean the bathtub grime from my kids natural soap out. I keep recycled spray bottle of water and vinegar in the bathroom and box of baking soda I can do a quick clean up before guests come or clean up any sort of spill or mess my kids may create.
There are tons of recipes and other tips out there on how to clean naturally, read some of my fellow environmentalist posts for more tips… this is just a super simple way to clean with something we ALL have in our house.
PS It was very hard for me to share a picture of my dirty stove.
What is you tip for natural cleaning?
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Visit Happy Mothering and The Pistachio Project to learn more about participating in next month’s Natural Living Blog Carnival!
Please take some time to enjoy the posts our other carnival participants have contributed:
That picture is a sign that food is LIVED on your stove: Good4U!
I have a long-standing question: baking soda is scouring, so don’t you build up scratching on all the surfaces you do with it after a while? And don’t those scratches collect dirt and grime even more easily than the original smooth surface?
Yes, you are right there is an abrasive part of using baking soda to clean grime. I have made the decision to deal with the tiny scraps they may cause to eliminate the use of toxic chemicals. I will say I know there are some essential oils you can use to reduce the need for the scouring power of baking soda but I am not well versed enough to write about it here… yet! See what some of the other posters wrote I am sure there are great tips there too.
Yes!!! Every Saturday morning I do a deep clean in our kitchen and I swear our stove looks the same. How I don’t notice all week, I will never understand but baking soda takes care of every grease-filled nook and cranny!!!
Baking soda is definitely one of my favorite cleaning tools! You know if you want a scrub that doesn’t have the abrasiveness (like one of the commentors above was curious about) you should try this sponge that I bought on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GLPPLW/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Apparently, the Queen of england’s old school china is cleaned with this sponge and not a scratch…I have two of them in my house and I LOVE them. I use them on my cast iron too!
Baking soda is the BEST for cleaning stoves! I usually spray it with vinegar and wipe it down, then scrub with baking soda since I don’t clean my stove daily.
Baking soda really is amazing! It’s better than all of the chemical scrubs – and so inexpensive!
Your stove looks great!
I too love using baking soda & vinegar to clean my stove…and can rest assured that it is non-toxic and won’t give off nasty fumes while cooking/baking.