Eco Friendly Cleaning Products
Do you realize how much money you spend on every facet of household cleansers from toilet cleansers to general cleansers to mopping floors ñ the list seems endless. We walk down the shopping aisles selecting commercialized products for cleaning practically everything within and outside our home. The bulk of our shopping cart contents apart from foodstuffs are cleansing products both for personal hygiene and the cleanliness of our home.
Have you ever wondered how our Grandmothers coped without the availability of all these commercialized products? Were their homes dirty, were they dirty, did their homes not smell clean and fresh without the availability of aerosol room fresheners, were their clothes stained because they didn’t have access to pre-wash stain remover?
Have you heard of washing soda, borax, hydrogen peroxide, bicarbonate of soda, ethylated spirits, and good old vinegar? These outmoded products are every bit as effective as their commercially available counterparts, but there is an added bonus, the outmoded products are all environmentally friendly. Laundry soap powder per se was made by grating laundry soap. Soap powder is still commercially available as a pure laundry detergent.
Eucalyptus Oil is ideal for removing black scuff marks from vinyl flooring. For cleaning and disinfecting the use of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide added to a cleaning cloth can be used for wiping down bench tops and cutting boards to help kill bacteria. 3% hydrogen peroxide can also be used for treating mold on bathroom tiling. Just make up a spray bottle of 1 part peroxide to 2 parts water. For stubborn hard to remove mold you can use it straight.
Place a bowl of baking soda in your fridge and it will absorb food odors. Water stains on wooden floors can be removed with a sponge dampened in a solution of baking soda dissolved in water.
Bottled soda water can remove wine stains accidentally spilt on clothing.
In the Bathroom
Have you seen the price of these newest whitening toothpastes? Not cheap are they? How about trying a toothbrush dipped in 3% Hydrogen of Peroxide and then did it into bicarbonate of soda (also called baking soda) or you may prefer to make up a paste. Dip your toothbrush in Hydrogen of Peroxide and then dip it into salt as an alternative.
Common cooking or the more refined table salt is excellent as a breath freshener. Just place enough salt in a glass of warm to hot boiled water so that it is strong enough to be palatable and gargle. Common salt in the ratio of 1 teaspoon to 1 pint of warm or hot boiled water and you have an effective antibacterial for bathing wounds.
If you have a computer you can access all environmentally safe products for many different applications. In fact, you can get lost for hours viewing all the different environmentally safe products that work just as effectively as the commercially available non-environmentally safe products and you can save yourself a lot of money in the process.
Clean Drinking Water at Home
One of the primary needs of a household is the access to clean and potable water. However, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, houses are located in areas which have poorly-maintained water supplies and they would have to find a way to find water that’s safe to drink. Of course, they can always buy from independent water suppliers but they are usually expensive.
To solve this problem, the household can opt to install water filters into their water system. The basic principle of these filters is that they remove any impurity in the water, leaving only water that’s safe to drink.
Depending on a particular family’s needs, there are several options available to them when looking for home water filters.If they only need to filter their water occasionally, there are pitchers specifically designed for this purpose. One just pours the water on top of the container and the water passes through the filter to produce potable water. The only problem with this is that it has limited use and cannot filter large volumes of water at one time.
Meanwhile, there’s the filter which can be fitted into faucets. If a family uses water from the faucet quite a lot (e.g. cleaning food, washing hands and even for drinking water), then they can choose this option. The problem with this is that like pitchers with filters, it cannot clean a lot of water at one time. Filters of this kind also have a short lifespan.
While the previous two are good as temporary solutions to water problems, fitting a household filter would be one that is long-term.There are companies specializing in this kind of service and you might want to give them a call if you have a serious water problem. Keep in mind, though, that this option can be quite expensive. But it’s a good trade-off if it’s a good water supply you’re looking for.
Green Home Heating Choices
Households of today are faced with the harsh reality of rising fuel costs. While this situation is already apparent in the pump prices of gasoline, the burden is made heavier during the winter season. A lot of homes use diesel-fed heaters to keep their interiors warm. Now diesel prices are also on the rise which is why more and more families are looking for cheap alternatives to the traditional heating system.
But prices aren’t only the issue here. The environment also takes a hit everytime fossil fuels are burned. So the challenge to consumers right now is to find a cheap and environmentally-friendly solution to their heating problem. Below are some of the options.
- The first option is good if you’re just starting to build or remodel your home. To keep your homes warm during winter, you can opt to orient to the south the windows of the rooms that you often use. By doing so, sunlight falls on those rooms in winter which can help heat the room without using the heater. This method is called passive heating.
- However, if remodeling the house is not an option, another cheap alternative is by using biodiesel or biodiesel additives to your fuel-fed heater. The good thing about using biodiesel is that it comes from renewable sources such as vegetable oil or animal fat. You should be careful when using this though, as too much biodiesel can clog your engine.
- Sometimes, the problem with your heating is in the heater itself. You should therefore keep it well-maintained so that you’re sure that you’re getting the optimum energy while using the same amount of fuel. Also, if you think your heater already needs to be replaced then do so. The heaters of today are now more energy efficient so it would be good to opt for the newer models.
Natural Cleaning Products
A household that depends a lot on chemical-based cleaning products are putting their lives and their children’s lives at risk by having them around the house. The chemicals used in those cleaning products are toxic and could be fatal if induced especially by children.
The life of the family shouldn’t be at risk in the first place because there are natural alternatives to chemical-based cleaning products. Not only are these natural cleaning products safe to use, they are also cheap and can be used for a variety of purposes aside from cleaning.Below are some examples of natural cleaning products and what they do.
- Vinegar - the attributes of vinegar as a cleaner has been known to humans since time immemorial. Even a quick search on the internet on its uses yields thousands of results which suggest different uses of this product. For example, half a part of vinegar mixed with half a part of water could be steamed in a microwave and the resulting moisture could be used to clean the interior of the oven.
- Lemon - lemon contains one of the strongest food-based acids. It is therefore effective in cleaning tough dirt like soap stains on surfaces. Aside from that, lemon juice is also good for cleaning glass, brass and copper materials. Finally, since lemon has a sweet scent, it lends itself as a good air freshener. Putting lemon peels on garbage bins is an example of this.
- Baking Soda - is another popular natural all-purpose cleaner. It can be used in softening fabrics and in cleaning and polishing metals.
What were mentioned above are only a few of the most common household items that you can use to clean your house. Again, since you can use them for a variety of purposes, you save more money than buying cleaners which only serve a single purpose. So stay safe and use natural cleaning materials!
Residential Wind Power
The world of today is faced with environmental issues as well as economic ones. With global warming looming over the planet, more and more governments are getting serious in finding alternative means of energy. And since the cost of fuel continues to rise, alternatives to this power source are also being researched.
Currently, wind power is being looked into as a viable energy source in the near future. Some countries are already taking bold steps into making this a reality. Take the United Kingdom, for example. One of the UK Parliament’s MP, John Hutton, said that all of the homes in the country could be powered by wind farms by 2020.
Aside from having an alternative power source, wind power can also help in reducing electricity costs in households. By having residential wind turbines, homes can reduce the amount of electricity that they source from their local power grids which translates to saving money. And if they exceed their power production using their turbines, they can sell the excess power to their local providers, albeit at a much cheaper price.
But the use of wind power has several downsides which may hinder its acceptance by the general public. First, there’s the initial cost of installing a wind turbine. The cheapest is already at $6000 and could be costlier depending on the size of the turbine.
Aside from the cost, there’s also the factor of location. Homes that want to have residential wind turbines should have at least an acre of open area. It is also important that the location of a home has at least 10mph of winds in order to have a reasonable use of the turbine.
Finally, there’s the change in how the coastlines look for those countries who will install wind farms around their coastlines. This was admitted by Hutton but said that it is a good compromise if the benefits of wind power were taken into consideration.
Home Composting is Easy
If you are planning to produce your own organic food, chances are that you already have the basic materials to do it. While you may have piles of gardening tools at your disposal, they would be useless if you do not have a good soil to grow your produce.
Of course you can buy healthy loam soil from gardening shops, but if you’re a true-blue DYI-er, you just might want to make a soil healthy with your own hands.
The most basic step to a healthy soil is by composting. Composting is the process where you put biodegradable materials to your soil and allowing bacteria to work on them. After some time, humus is produced which keeps the soil light and well aerated.
Before you dump every biodegradable thing you can in your backyard, you must first know the materials that are best used in composting. Doing so would help make the decomposition process faster so you can have a healthy soil in no time.When making a compost, create an ideal mix of brown materials such as dried leaves and the so-called green ones like kitchen refuse. Some of the materials that you can use in your compost include cardboards, coffee ground, hair, newspaper and the likes apart from the usual kitchen refuse like carrots, cabbage, etc.
When composting, there are two options that you can choose from. First is the so-called passive composting wherein you let nature take its course after you put the materials on the soil. The other is called active composting wherein you take a hands-on approach in the process.
In passive composting, you may have to wait a long time before you can produce any results. Typically, it may take at least a year to get the results that you want.Active composting, on the other hand, is for those who want to use their soil immediately. In well-maintained composts, results can be seen in a month’s time.
Save Money With Compact Fluorescent Bulbs
With soaring world gas prices, consumers are having the headache of their lives. The same amount of money which used to fill a tank of gas can now only buy lesser fuel. Aside from that, the fuel prices also affect those countries which depend on fossil fuels for their power plants. Because of that, the cost of electricity also rises.
We are finding ourselves in the same situation like what happened in the 1970s when the price of fuel also shot up. That is why the use of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) is once again becoming more and more significant.
CFLs were invented by Ed Hammer of General Electric in response to the oil crisis in the 1970s. Right now, CFL bulbs are gaining popularity in reducing electric costs.Compared to incandescent bulbs, the CFL has a longer life and consumes less electricity. A typical CFL lasts 15,000 hours compared to the incandescent which only lasts 1,000 hours. Such a big difference can also significantly cut costs in buying new bulbs.
Then there’s the factor of energy consumption. To illustrate their diffrence, an incandescent bulb consumes 15W and the CFL of the same luminosity consumes only 5. The difference in consumption only gets bigger as the luminosity increases. At the most, a CFL consumes 30W compared to the 200W of the incandescent with the same luminosity.
However, CFLs still struggle to grab a large piece of the market. The main reason for this is its price. CFLs cost significantly higher than incandescent bulbs and even fluorescent ones. But this is of course offset by the fact that it saves energy (as much as $30 in savings to US consumers) and has a long lifespan.
Another issue with CFLs is its disposal. A CFL bulb contains mercury which is hazardous to the environment and to people. It should therefore be disposed of carefully. People are therefore advised to return them to stores where they bought the bulbs or send them to recycling plants where they could be safely disposed.
