greening your home one room at a time

Greening Your Home One Room At A Time:

Part 1

Certainly not the most glamourous place to start but a place that every one of us uses and cleans: the bathroom.  When finding cleaning agents to use in the bathroom, we need strong, fierce products that are going to cut through gnarly toilet muck and goopy toothpaste stains and be environmentally friendly at the same time.  

Introducing: my favorite cleaning products!  A multi-purpose cleaner from Trader Joe’s, a glass cleaner from Simple Green, and a toilet cleanser by J.R. Watkins.  First off, our multi-purpose cleaner, which has the pleasant scent of cedar wood and sage.  My favorite part about switching to environmentally friendly products a few years back is that they always smell good.  They come from nature and what do you know in nature that smells bad?  Trader Joe’s makes a wonderful multi-purpose cleanser that I use to clean my bathroom sink and countertop.  It also happens to be the product I use to clean my shower tiles and tub...and it smells fantastic.

Moving on to the mirrors and sliding shower doors.  Glass is not always the easiest surface to clean.  Many of the products I have used in the past leave streaks.  And when I try to get rid of the streaks, I leave more streaks.  Simple Green has a new line of products termed “Naturals.”  Their natural glass cleaner smells like a forrest and leaves a streak free surface.

Moving on to the throne.  I choose J.R. Watkins Toilet Bowl Cleanser.  Yet another product that can be used on your shower tile, however, I would rather be thinking of my toilet while showering despite its pleasant lemony scent.  It gets the job done and that’s all that we ask for, right?

Not only do all of these products work well on the surfaces that they clean, their bottles are also recyclable.  Now that is what I call green!

The general rule I use when finding products to clean with is to read the ingredients.  If there is one or more ingredients that I cannot pronounce, it is not an environmentally friendly product.

Feel free to send me your favorite cleansing product!  Perhaps it will make my top 10 list!  

  

Comments

[steve]

It isn't the bathroom, but for cleaning dishes try a tawashi brush. They are natural scrubbers made from palm fibers bound to a metal wire. They get into odd shapes, are biodegradable and you can use them for scrubbing carrots and potatoes without damaging the skins too.

Come to think of it they would probably work well for scrubbing shower and sink fixtures and maybe even sinks and tubs.

[ed]

well this has nothing to do with cleaning, but it will help you grow some of you favoraite plants.

http://www.plowhearth.com/category.asp?section_id=2008&cur_index=2&search_type=featured&search_value=3185&department=

i suggest the

Five-Tier Mini Greenhouse

if you get permission from the guard at the parking garage across from your apartment, then this might be the best for you.

if you only have your patio, then might i suggest the

Jump Start Light System

more expensive , but you get the light you need.

you might need to judge for your self.

[Jheri]

I use baking soda for keeping the sink and shower drains clear. About a handful just before I am using hot water once every two weeks seems to work.

I tried to make a glass cleaner with vinegar and water and a little detergent, but it streaked too much .