Natural homemade cleaners get your home clean as a whistle while protecting your loved one from the dangerous chemicals found in many commercial products. Learn the reasons why I started making my own green cleaners.
I’m a clean freak.
I love a tidy, shiny house that smells clean!
The Smell of Clean
What does a clean home smell like to you? I used to love my house to smell like mountain streams, fields of flowers, or whatever season scent was being sold in the household cleaners aisle of my big box store.
Nowadays it smells like nothing.
Even after a complete cleaning my house doesn’t smell like much… maybe a little vinegary or a faint hint of essential oils but those odors generally go away in a few minutes.
Dangerous Scents
Why do I care so much about scent and my home? For many years I thought the scent of commercial household cleaners meant that I had a clean, healthy house.
But this could not be farther from the truth. In fact, the artificial perfumes and scents used to make our homes smell like mountain streams or fields of flowers contain toxic substances which can be harmful to our health.
The chemicals commonly used in household cleaners can:
- Act as endocrine disrupters (mimicking or interfering with the function of hormones)
- Act as neurotoxin (adversely affecting the nervous system)
- Be respiratory toxicants (adversely affecting the respiratory system)
- Be reproductive toxicants (adversely affecting the reproductive system), and/or
- Be carcinogens (agents that are directly involved in causing cancer).
Ingredients NOT Listed
Here’s the really scary part, while the U.S. requires manufactures to label hazardous household cleaners (general warning labels that say things like Danger, Poison, Warning, Do Not Drink, Avoid Eye Contact, etc.) the specific ingredients do not have to be listed because they are considered trade secrets.
Let me say that again, the ingredients do not have to be listed.
The bottom line is this –> you have absolutely no idea what you are inhaling or exposing your loved ones to when you use many commercial cleaning products.
No More Artificial Scents
When did I stop associating a clean home with artificial fragrance?
When I was a new mother I realized that I was hearing MANY, MANY tragic stories of young people with terrible diseases: babies and young kids of friends with rare medical conditions, horrible breast and reproductive cancers in friends and coworkers under the age of 40, tumors in people I had known in college.
I started looking for answers and was disgusted at what I found…
- The air inside our homes is at least 2 to 5 times more polluted than the air outside, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
- One major cause of this pollution is the cleaners we use? YIKES!
I decided to eliminate as many toxins, additives and artificial ingredients from our home as possible.
(Of course avoiding toxic commercial cleaners is not the only answer to these problems.But I feel better knowing that I am limiting my family’s exposure.)
Learning to Green Clean
Learning to clean more naturally is a process. Just a few small steps each month add up to huge health benefits for our families.
I encourage you to do a little research, take a look around your home and decide what you can eliminate for the benefit of your loved ones.
Easy Beginner Tip
Start a no-replace rule to green your household . When you run out of a commercial product do not replace it, but try to buy or make a non-toxic alternative. Check out these natural cleaning ideas.
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Kathi
Thank you for this website. My son has a six-month-old daughter and they live in a very small apartment and there’s not much storage space to store the cleaning supplies. I worry about her getting into them and I’m always looking for natural ingredient cleaning recipes that wouldn’t harm her if she were to make her way to them. This is exactly what I have been looking for.
Bren
Thanks, Kathi!
Christine
Hi Bren….
As you stated a few comments above, you said its cost-saving to make your own products. MANY people say that. I am a bit weary about getting started with making my own products because I am just not sure if the money-saving aspect is truly there. Is it just that it will cost you more money up-front to buy all the ingredients you’ll need, but the ingredients will make MORE products…equaling to being cheaper than having bought already-made products? Lots of recipes are this way… for example, I was reading a recipe earlier about making your own laundry detergent. Buying all the ingredients needed to make the detergent added up (according to the blogger’s calculations) to something like $22 USD. That seems like quite a bit for detergent… considering buying pre-made stuff is much cheaper. I am trying to understand…. is it just that that $22 worth of ingredients will give you MORE detergent than the store-bought kind, and that’s how it’s rationalized that it’s cheaper? Sorry if this isn’t worded well. I keep typing and deleting because I’m not sure how to ask exactly what I am wanting to…
Bren
Christine, yes it can cost more up front to make natural cleaners but I can make multiple batches with the ingredients which makes the per bottle cost less than the per bottle cost of premade cleaners. For example, my homemade laundry detergent cost $20.75 to make but it makes 320 loads. https://brendid.com/grade-a-laundry-detergent/ This equals $0.06 a load. My old premade detergent cost $0.10 a load and was not natural. I try to compare the costs in my posts containing natural cleaner recipes. You can read the details about the laundry detergent costs in the link above. Hope this answers your questions!
Brittany
I have noticed this too! We were doing a clean-up at church a few weeks ago and everyone else was saying “Mmmm… smells clean!” while I was saying… “Ew. This cleaner stinks!” When I smell cleaner, I think “chemicals” not “clean.”
I really like your “no replace” policy. Sometimes I feel like it is easier to just buy a green cleaner at the store, but I know it really is not that hard to go look on Pinterest (or here!!) for a glass cleaner that uses all the ingredients I know I already have on hand.
Bren
I agree, Brittany. Is is easier to buy greener products at the store. Unfortunately (since they don’t have to list ingredients) I’ve found that some are not all that green and contain some of the same harmful chemicals! I also like the cost savings from making my own products.
Dawn @ Reveal Natural Health
Great post! I love what you say about adopting a “no-replace” policy. I have started doing this with skin care products. I continue to use the products I bought until they are gone. As I use up something (i.e. moisturize, cleanser, eye cream, etc.) that contains harmful chemicals and replace it with an alternative that is better for my family’s bodies and health.
Bren
That’s a great idea Dawn! I’ve also tried the no-replace policy in the kitchen. For example, I learned to make yogurt when I ran out, etc.