detox your home Archives < Green Clean Bangor

Did you know that almost 2/3 of the cost of your favorite household cleaner is in the packaging and that the number one ingredient is probably water.

Let that sink in.

You just paid all that money for packaging, a label and water. It's enough to drive you to make some serious changes in the way you consume household cleaners. Here are some suggestions.

Consume less. If a product is available in concentrate form it means that one 32 oz bottle of concentrate could save up to 16 single use bottles from the landfill. Buying in concentrate form means you need to use your own applicator, like a spray bottle. I recommend using a professional janitorial level applicator since it will last much longer and work so much better.
Make your own. You can avoid consumer packaging by not being a consumer. Make your own household cleaners. There are dozens of recipes for everything from laundry soap to floor cleaner. You'll need your own applicators of course but will save gobs of money and waste this way. You will need to invest in a few basic ingredients, thankfully most of these are already in your kitchen. We love WellnessMama for her DIY home cleaning recipes. Of course we are working to share our own recipes here on our site, on Facebook and in our Facebook Group, Green Cleaning for DIYers.
Keep it simple. IF a cleaner is truly multi purpose you can avoid the a lot of clutter, save money and reduce waste. Open any under the sink cabinet in America today and you'll find a small army of household cleaners that were intended for a single use: glass cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, marble and granite cleaner, floor cleaner, wood cleaner, dish soap, laundry soap and so on. What "they" don't tell you is that plastic containers that most household products are sold in, leach into the product creating a chemical soup. It's not healthy. It's downright toxic. It's 99% marketing madness.

When we detox homes, removing plastic bottles and containers that are over a few months old is one of the first things we recommend. What other options are there?

Raise your hand if you're concerned about your heating bill.

No shame in that, energy costs are high and many of us have invested a significant amount to keep our homes safe, warm and dry especially in the winter. But did you know that locking your home as tight as a bug in a rug has a downside? The air in a tightly insulated home may not be fresh air. Contaminants and mold may build up, the atmosphere gets ion charged and soon the family may complain of headaches and feeling blah. Are you familiar with sick building syndrome, SBS? It's not just offices. We may take vitamin D in the winter to compensate for the seasonal change in the sunlight, but we also need to think about how to improve air quality in our homes and offices. There's a medium cost, higher tech way to keep your home's air fresh and well circulated. And there's a low tech no-cost way.

Let' start at the top.

First you might think that your furnace already does circulate fresh air since it has vents or a chimney. But your furnace or fireplace isn't pulling air from outside, it's pulling air from inside which of course can lead to poor air quality in your home. You can install a heat recovery ventilator yourself or ask a pro. The unit can run between $300 to $500 range. Here's a link to Popular Mechanics
that will explain how an HRV works.

Of course, you could just open the windows.

That seems counter intuitive in the winter, as New Englanders we work to keep drafts to a minimum. But we're only talking about 15 to 20 minutes here. Open some windows and create a draft through your house. Not every day of course. But winter gives us these little warm ups, so on those days I open just two windows upstairs and the kitchen window downstairs. In my house this creates a perfect draft that acts like a broom sweeping the poor air quality out of my house and sweeping fresh air in. If you have vents in the bathroom or kitchen, turn them on while you're airing out the house. In about 15 minutes you can close the windows and breathe easy with improved air quality in your home.