8 Eco-Friendly Spring Cleaning Tips

8 Eco-Friendly Spring Cleaning Tips

This Spring, we're all staying at home a lot more than usual. While we're practicing social distancing, there's no better time to spring clean (or should I say, quarantine clean) your home!

We've talked about a couple zero-waste cleaning swaps on our blog already, but here we want to share a more comprehensive guide to eco-friendly cleaning, with 8 tips & tricks you may or may not have heard of before.

Eco-Friendly Cleaning Ingredients

There are a handful of simple ingredients you should know about to help you with your earth-friendly household cleaning routine!

1. Baking soda: A natural deodorizer, that also causes dirt & grease to dissolve in water. It works as a gritty scrubber, and reacts with acids like lemon and vinegar.

2. White vinegar: disinfects, loosens dirt, and removes mold.

3. Lemon juice: disinfects, cuts through grease, and polishes metal.

4. Olive oil: picks up dirt, and polishes wood.

5. Castile soap: a multi-use natural soap and all-purpose foaming cleanser.

With these ingredients, you can clean almost anything in your home without toxic ingredients that are harmful to the environment and our bodies.

8 Eco-Friendly Cleaning Tips:

1. Use a reusable spray bottle & make your own cleaning solutions. Our DIY Cleaning Spray Bottle has 5 Natural cleaning recipes printed right on the side, and we have another all-natural, all-purpose cleaning recipe on our blog. But here are a few super-simple cleaning uses for your reusable spray bottle:

  • Remove limescale with plain white vinegar by spraying the vinegar directly on your faucet and shower, leave for 10 minutes, then rinse.

  • Remove mold with vinegar by spraying it on, letting it soak for a few hours, and then scrubbing it away.

  • Create an easy eco-friendly window & glass cleaner by combining 4 tbsp lemon juice + 1/2 gallon of water.

2. Use Unpaper Towels, rags, or cut-up old T-shirts instead of single-use paper towels.

3. Brushes & Sponges: Reuse your plastic cleaning brushes (if you have them) as much as possible. Then replace plastic brushes and sponges with biodegradable coconut brushes and hemp scrubbies.

4. Switch to reusable dryer balls instead of single-use dryer sheets.

5. Switch to an essential oil diffuser or potpourri instead of air-freshener sprays.

6. Refresh your dishwasher with vinegar. Fill a dishwasher-safe bowl with 2 cups of white vinegar and place it on the top rack of your dishwasher. Run for one cycle to get rid of odors and bacteria.

7. For Drain De-clogging: Pour a pot of boiling water down the drain of your kitchen sink once a week to flush fats and oils away.

For more serious clogged drains, use a combination of a 1/2 cup of baking soda, followed by a 1/2 cup of white vinegar. Cover the drain, and let it work its magic.

8. Remove odors with baking soda. For the fridge, pour at least 1 cup of baking soda into a shallow, open container. Or, place a box of baking soda with the entire top removed in the fridge and as close to the source of the odor as possible.

Remove odors from your carpet by sprinkling it with baking soda, leave it for a few hours, or overnight, then vacuum it up.

 

We hope you've found these tips useful for a more environmentally friendly, and clean home!

Happy Spring (quarantine) cleaning!