If you’ve been disappointed by the effectiveness of the green cleaning products you’ve tried in the past, but would still like to find a way to use cleaners that are better for the environment and safer for your family, here are a few of my favorites!
It’s getting to be that time of year where a lot of us get a sense of renewed motivation and excitement about giving our homes a good deep cleaning. Some of us like to “spring clean” our whole house, while others (like myself) just like to use this time to renew our focus on our regular cleaning routines. Either way, there’s going to be a whole lot of cleaning going on and that can mean a whole lot of harsh chemicals added into the air in your home if you use traditional harsh cleaning products from the grocery store.
If you’ve tried green cleaning products in the past, but have been disappointed by the fact that they weren’t as effective as the harsh chemical cleaners that you’ve been used to using, you’re not alone! I hear from people all the time who want to reduce the number of harsh chemicals that they’re bringing into their homes but can’t quite seem to find a green cleaning product that really works for them! I’ve always been a little freaked out by harsh chemicals like bleach so I’ve been using safer, greener products exclusively in my home for 10 years now and it makes me feel so much better not to have to be nervous about what I’m breathing in when I’m cleaning around the house.
I thought I’d share a few of my favorites today to point you in the right direction if you haven’t found green cleaning products that really work for you yet!
Green Cleaning Products From Your Kitchen
The first place to look if you want to start using green cleaning products is right in your kitchen cupboard! Baking soda is one of my very favourite cleaners and I find it to be even more effective than a lot of store bought cleaners, and of course, it’s totally natural! I use baking soda to clean my white ceramic farmhouse sink all the time and it works better than anything I’ve ever tried for that!
You may have also heard that vinegar is a great cleaner as well. I usually use it as kind of an all-purpose cleaner and it’s especially great for when you need to clean something really well before painting. Vinegar also has all kinds of uses around the home that you might find really surprising like unclogging your shower head, softening fabrics in your laundry, and even killing weeds.
So definitely try those two natural cleaners out first if you’ve never cleaned with them before!
You can also make your own scented cleaning vinegar if you don’t like the smell of regular vinegar!
E-Cloths
I started using e-cloths about a year ago when I did a sponsored post for e-cloth and I was instantly hooked! I actually use e-cloths almost exclusively now because they take so much of the frustration out of some of the more tedious cleaning jobs around the house.
The way they work is that they have a specifically-designed cloth or tool for each specific job that you need to tackle in your cleaning routine. E-cloths have millions of teeny microfibres in every square inch and they work shockingly (yes, shockingly) well for the job that they’re intended to do. They have cloths for cleaning stainless steel, dusting, glass cleaning, polishing, cleaning appliances, and on, and on, and on. AND they clean with just water! They’re also proven to kill 99% of germs and bacteria, which is pretty amazing.
With just water!
One of the things I love about e-cloths is that even though they work with just water, they can be used with cleaners if you have a cleaning product that you really love and they don’t lose their effectiveness at all if you want to switch back and forth between using cleaners and using just water, which is what I do and realistically what a lot of other people probably do too.
EcoSense Cleaning Products
When it comes to safe, eco-friendly cleaning products, I have a favourite brand that I been using for about 10 years now with great success. I do love to play around with making my own cleaning products as you know, but as a busy mom it’s obviously also practical and necessary to have some ready-made cleaning products around too. And I have to admit that I love the smell of a freshly-cleaned room when I use these cleaning products! A clean smelling home is important to me!
The EcoSense line has cleaning products that I use in place of a lot of traditional grocery store cleaning products like a fresh-smelling all purpose cleaner, a bathroom cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, laundry detergent, dishwasher tabs, and all the usual stuff that you need to run a house. They also have some more innovative cleaners that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else like the their Rustic Touch wax-based furniture polish that you’ve probably seen me use before and something called Sol-u-mel which basically will remove any stain from any surface using the power of tea tree oil.
The Tub and Tile bathroom cleaner is really neat because it’s completely free of bleach and harsh chemicals of course and it’s made out of lemons, but it’s actually even more effective than regular bathroom cleaners! My tub was covered in all of these crazy purple stains the other day from a bath bomb so I sprayed it down with the Tub and Tile then decided to let it sit for a few minutes before coming back to scrub. Well, when I came back to scrub, the stains were all gone so I just sprayed the tub down with water and called it a day! All that cleaning power and my lungs didn’t even hurt from breathing the fumes in afterward! 🙂
It’s great to be able to remove toxic chemicals from your home just by switching out the types of cleaning products that you use and I love that EcoSense makes it really easy for people by making safe, healthy products to replace exactly the products that they’re already using in their homes. You do need to order EcoSense products directly from the company, so leave me a comment or send me an email if you’re interested in knowing how you can order from them. 🙂
So those are my very favourite green cleaning products that actually work! Hopefully this has given you an idea of how you can make the switch to using safer, more eco-friendly products in your home and love the results!
Do you have some green cleaning products that you’ve come across that you absolutely love?
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.