A Green Clean

I'm pretty good at talking myself out of things and making up excuses.  One of the recent things I've neglected to do was clean the floors. I know.. gross, huh?  I've been vacuuming and sweeping but not a real good scrubbing.

Aside from not being in the mood to mop the whole house on my hands and knees again, I had run out of swiffer wet jet cloths. When I had some, I didn't want to waste a whole cleaning pad unless I was going to mop the whole house. Then, if you mop the whole house, they get pretty gross and you really need to use about 2 or more to really clean that much space. To sum it up, it felt wasteful and expensive. So I made my own.

There's tons of tutorials out there so I won't reinvent the wheel. I just modified some because my Siffer has 2 spray nozzles (instead of 1 in the center) and I used some scraps of fabric to make them pretty.  An old nasty towel was cut up and re-purposed as an absorbent layer sandwiched in the middle.  I bought these microfiber cleaning towels at Target. A pack of 3 was on clearance for $3 something and it made 9 cleaning pads.  There was still a good bit left over that I'll use to clean the counters and such.   Now I can use 1-2, mop, throw them in the wash, and re-use. 

You germaphobes out there will be happy to know, I just mopped my whole house. Yay for clean floors!

I also hate to clean the counter tops and bathrooms.  I promise our house isn't disgusting but I'm sure that's what you're thinking. It's just that I can literally feel my throat and lungs burning when I spray the 409.  I just kept thinking, 'if it feels this bad, I wonder what it's really doing to my body.' 

Now the inner hippie in me is really coming out.  I've warped into this eco-conscious, green loving, tree hugger and I feel like I could probably take over the world with baking soda and vinegar.  Seriously, it's uses are endless.  I refilled my swiffer solution bottle with vinegar and water. I also made my own all purpose cleaner using vinegar, baking soda, water, and soap.  The best part, I just cleaned my house without burning my lungs!!

Pinterest is flooded with links to all these green cleaning, non-toxic, homemade solutions and DIY ideas. But for those of you who a missing out on the greatness of Pinterest, I'll include a list of some links here.

All Natural Homemade Cleaners
25 DIY Green Cleaning Recipes for the Whole House
Non-toxic Home Cleaning
1001 Uses for Vinegar
Make Your Own Swiffer Refills
DIY Swiffer Solution Refill
DIY Reusable Swiffer Wet Jet Pad


Now go trash all those toxic cleaners (and by "trash", I really mean recycle the bottle), buy some vinegar and baking soda (sooo cheap), and get to cleaning!  

On a somewhat related note, I now have the Captain Planet song stuck in my head. :)