Creating a life you love is more than a clean home. But it is an integral part of everyday life. In this article we will discuss how to clean your house, that it would be not only clean, but healthy to live as well. We will advise how to choose safe, natural products for cleaning.
Bible says “If someone does not know how to manage his household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:5). Finally 1 Corinthians 14:40 says “but all things should be done decently and in order”. This is true. Let’s look together how to get your house “in order”.
Many of the commercial cleaning supplies contain chemicals.
When it comes to the time to clean the house, there is no shortage in the choice of cleaning supplies that we can use to help us with the process. Most of them are very helpful and will end up giving us very clean houses. However, most of them also contain very harsh chemicals that, while getting the house clean, are not very good for the environment and our health. If you plan on applying them to surfaces that you will have your family around, you should know about the dangers of the chemicals contained in them.
Unfortunately, many of the commercial cleaning supplies contain chemicals that are extreme health hazards to us and our families. If you breath them in, even accidentally, they could do severe damage to your lungs and possibly even poison your pets or other members of your family if accidentally ingested.
Medical research show that some children and adults have cancer as a result of overuse of toxic chemical products. Many people do not notice that these problems are coming from their surroundings with the chemicals they use in their homes and gardens.
How to know if something contains a chemical cleaner or not, and what type of natural cleaners are good and will effectively clean your house? Please read the active ingredients on the back of your cleaning supplies. If you cannot read any of the words, or if you do not know exactly what the substance does or haven’t heard of it before, you probably are holding a harsh commercial cleaner in your hands.
What are the main problems of using non-natural cleaning products?
- Chemical cleaning products are more toxic and corrosive and they can lead to skin burn.
- Chemical that is commercially manufactured can cause health issues like asthma and other respiratory problems
- They are quite expensive
- They are not reliable and can lead to non-healthy environment
- They need to be used according strict instructions
What are the solutions to these problems?
There is only one alternative to these chemicals that damage human lives, natural products are the perfect fit to solve the problem. The green natural products will cost you less and they are easy to get.
How to clean your home with natural products
What natural cleaners do we have at home?
The most popular natural cleaners are baking soda, washing soda, vinegar, lemon juice, Hydrogen pyroxide.
The power of the first four of these cleaners comes from their pH level as either basic or acidic. The baking and washing soda are both alkaline in nature, with baking soda being mildly basic on the pH scale, and washing soda is very basic. As bases, these cleaners work best on oily dirt and therefore are used commonly in all-purpose cleaners and in the laundry. White distilled vinegar and lemon juice are powerful cleaners because of their mildly acidic nature, meaning they are useful, for example, in removing soap scum and hard water deposits.
Lemon juice. Apply a small amount of lemon juice on the affected surface and wait for few minutes. Then take your damp cloth and apply a little baking soda and wipe it off. You can clean your bathroom glass shower door by applying the pure lemon juice on the glass. Then wipe it off with a clean cloth after you have sprayed it with warm water.
Vinegar. It can be used to kill off the weeds that appear between your interlocks bricks in the driveway. Just spray the vinegar on the weeds after a few dry days so that the weed can absorb the liquid quickly. Diluted vinegar can also serve as a good floor cleaner for the ceramic tiles. It gives the tiles a bright and shining surface and makes it very neat. Vinegar also softens natural fabrics. A half cup of vinegar can be added to the washing machine to give soft and static free clothes.
Baking soda. The wonderful thing about baking soda is that it helps to control odors inside and outside the home. Just put an open box of baking soda in your refrigerators to control odors from food. You can also keep a box of the baking soda in the lockers you store your shoes and sports gear. Spray some of it in the cat litter box or garbage can before you insert the linear. Baking soda is also a natural stain fighter on fabrics. Take a half cup of warm water and add a mixture of about 6 teaspoons of baking powder to the stains before washing.
For the purpose of cleaning, you can make natural cleanser from white vinegar with baking soda plus water and a few drops of antibacterial tea tree oil. Wash out empty spray bottle and reuse it for this natural cleanser.
You must know some rules while cleaning home with natural products. Everything in a technical sense is a chemical. Even natural cleaning ingredients, such as baking soda (NaHCO3) or hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).
The general rule is not to combine an acidic and an alkaline product together
When trying to make effective homemade cleaning solutions a general rule to follow is not to combine an acidic and an alkaline product together, or they will neutralize the pH level of both, making them ineffective. For example, combining baking soda with lemon juice will provide you with a nice smelling paste that is neither basic, nor acidic, but is basically neutral in pH and therefore does not have as much cleaning power as either substance separately. A large exception to this rule is that vinegar and baking soda can be combined together when you want a chemical reaction that fizzes and bubbles. This physical action of fizzing and bubbling is useful, for example, in cleaning out slow drains by physically moving the blockage. You would never combine vinegar and baking soda together to make a super cleaning all-purpose cleaner, for example, because they would just neutralize each other and not be as effective.
Finally, hydrogen peroxide is not powerful because of its pH level, like the other natural cleaning ingredients, but it has natural bleaching ability. That is why it is often used in the laundry as an alternative to chlorine bleach to help whiten and brighten your clothes or remove stains. In addition, it is effective as a natural disinfectant and can kill many types of bacteria, viruses, and molds. Therefore, using hydrogen peroxide is an effective way of disinfecting your kitchen and bathroom, as an alternative to chlorine bleach. Please note that hydrogen peroxide is much more effective for disinfecting than vinegar.
So remember these rules when making effective household cleaners – use hydrogen peroxide, not vinegar to disinfect, and never combine an acidic and basic cleaning ingredient together if you want to clean your home effectively.
To finalize it all Colossians 3:25 says “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men”.
