I am excited about Borax!

It's a little known fact that you can clean pretty much anything (non-porous) with borax, a naturally occurring and environmentally-friendly substance that your grandmother has been using for years. It's also a little known, but vitally important, fact that most common household cleaners are bad for the world and bad for your health. The vapors burn your lungs and age your skin, and the chemicals, specifically chlorine and phosphates, pollute the water supply among other things. In fact, you are actually supposed to dispose of chemical cleaners by taking them to your community's hazardous waste drop-off site rather than by throwing them in dumpsters or dumping them down the drain. And yet, we use these cleaners all over our homes, get them on our hands, breathe them, and rinse them down our drains all the time...

So, today, I resolved to make my own environmentally-friendly, household cleaning products. Here are some recipes.

I bought a box of borax, a box of baking soda, and a bottle of vinegar. To be honest, I was convinced it wouldn't work. I really thought that the chemicals would be necessary to get a clean home, especially because our water is hard and creates some pretty ugly stains in our shower. I have never been more wrong.

Not only did the various combinations of vinegar, baking soda, borax, and water clean well, they cleaned better than windex, clorox bleach, and the host of other chemical products I usually use. Furthermore, the idea, which has been instilled in us by clever advertising, that we need a different product for every cleaning job is completely false. I found that even the link I provided above makes cleaning more complicated than it needs to be. For glass and glass-like surfaces, I used vinegar and water in a spray bottle and wiped it up with newspaper to prevent streaking. For all other non-porous surfaces, I had a bowl of dry borax and baking soda, which I scrubbed over everything with a damp sponge. The hardest thing was wiping up the granules. So, I waited for everything to dry, brushed them on the floor, and then swept. Easy. And yet, my sink has never been so shiny!

I can't tell you how excited I am about how easy, chemical-free, and effective this cleaning method was. Plus, it was cheap. I spent less on today's supplies then I usually do on only a bottle of Windex and a bottle of Clorox Spray, and the borax, etc... will last forever. AND, simplifying my cleaning supplies stash creates more space in my apartment and less trash for a landfill (or recycling center). Huzzah!