Posted in Tightwad Tuesdays

Good Morning, and welcome to Tightwad Tuesdays with Canadagirl!  If you are one of my new bloggy friends that I met at the Talk-A-Latte Seminar this past weekend, welcome!  I hope you enjoy my tightwad tip for today (considering one of you asked for it, *grin*).  If you find yourself wanting to participate, simply go visit my dear friend Mary to sign up and get more information.

About three years ago our home went 'green.'  We tossed out all the chemicals in our cleaners and began purchasing only ecologically friendly products.  As some of you know who may have tried this, it is not inexpensive, nor are they commonly found in your neighborhood grocery store.  So, I began looking for homemade cleaners.  I began acquiring books, scoured websites (pun intended - hey, I had this whole post written up last night and my computer ate it, so I'm re-doing it this morning without my caffeine jolt yet), and started experimenting.  And what I found astonished me.  With little effort, minimum cost, and maximum benefits, cleaning your home doesn't have to kill you.  Literally.

See, the thing that triggered my consideration of green cleaners was a fact I had initially read somewhere that stated that some allergies and asthma-related problems are chemical in nature.  Considering that Piper has suffered with severe allergies since toddler years and I have asthma-related issues, I was on a mission to 'cure' him (me too, but mostly him) the natural way.  (As an aside, if you want to frustrate your medically-trained parents, don't take your child to an allergist - have the faith that this is something you can figure out and begin experimenting on him or her.  Then, when your test results are conclusive, attempt to reason with them when you present your findings as medical fact.  Fun times, fun times, LOL.)

So, my research led me to a staggering statistic:  women who work at home are 54% more likely to develop cancer than women who work outside the home.  See, our homes retain the chemicals in the air we breathe.  The facts on endometriosis alone are shocking.  In 1934, only 21 cases of endometriosis were documented.  Today we have over 5 million.  While I understand that chemicals are not the sole blame for the severe increase in medical maladies, I can not in good conscience ignore that they are there and obviously contributing.  Think about this:  the average home has 62 chemicals in it, which is more than a chemistry lab had at the turn of the 20th century.  To read the same report I did, go here.  Scroll down the page until you find the ABC's report by Dr. Joyce Woods.

Obviously, we needed to go green.  Not simply for the environment, but for our quality of life and our very lives, period.  I have had great success with the following cleaners (all of these are in spray bottles that I picked up for around $1 each):

Toilet Bowl cleaner:  pure, undiluted white vinegar

All-Purpose cleaner:  50% water, 50% white vinegar, and 10-15 drops of essential oil of your choice - orange or lavendar are my favorites for this (essential oil is optional in this mix-if you want to use it as glass cleaner as well, omit the oil)

Fabric freshener (along the same lines as febreze):  100% water, 15 drops lavendar essential oil, 15 drops tea tree (Melaleuca [Alternifolia])essential oil

To clean the bathroom sink, I take baking soda and liberally sprinkle it all around.  I then drop 8-12 drops of lavendar or tea tree essential oil on the baking soda, and clean as usual. 

To recycle your black-and-white newspapers before you throw them in the recycling bin, wad them up and use them to clean your glass/mirrors.  They blacken your hands, but your glass will be streak-free.  We have no paper towels in this house, so newspaper is routinely used.

These are the main cleaners I use - if you need a specific one, let me know and I can send it to you.  If you can only afford two essential oils right now (they run, on average, $8/bottle, but last a year each, give or take), I would purchase lavendar and tea tree.  They are both extremely versatile, being disinfectants as well as homeopathic.  If you get a cut or burn, just dab the tea tree oil on it and be amazed at the speed of healing.  Some people do have a sensitivity to tea tree oil (Jigger), so you may want to consider combining it with a carrier oil to reduce it's effect on said people.  Essential oils are found at any local health food store, but if you have difficulty finding them, you can order them online from Mountain Rose Herbs.  I have not personally ordered from them yet, but several reputable companies I have gone through for other homeopathic things do recommed them, highly.

For those of you who have actually followed this post and made it this far and are curious how Piper came out, his allergies were drastically cut when we went green.  They go away completely (except for nature-induced allergies like ragweed) now if he just avoids dairy products.  Oh yes, that one was fun to figure out.

To learn more about essential oils, you can use this report as a reference.  To begin your home library, I highly recommend Herbal Homekeeping by Sandy Maine as an excellent starting (and actually, complete) point.

Once you begin to research homemade cleaners and the properties of some of these essential oils, you may be encouraged to delve into minor homeopathic treatments.  If so, your pantry will become more and more a true pantry as you find room for your oils and books amidst your food stores, much as our foremothers did.  Soon, you will have quite a bit of space taken up in your pantry, as I do.

When this happens, you will feel pride in yourself, for not only are you helping your family to save money, but you are also helping the environment and taking back baby steps of independence for your family.  Our utter reliance and dependence on the medical industry for even the most minor thing is crippling our ERs and unnecessarily overburdening our insurance companies.  Not to mention the whole brainwashing aspect of it, but that's a post for another day.  *grin*

Thanks for sticking with me through this monster of a post, and I look forward to visiting you all to glean ideas from your successes.  Have a tightwaddy day!