Earth Day - Clean Green

Earth Day falls on April 22, 2008. This year, thanks to a wide variety of inspiration and information, I have made many more personal changes to green things up around the house.

If you have yet to start on making any green changes, here are a few recipes for easy, healthy cleaning products. Making one change per month makes it easier to make ongoing changes. But really, my motivation was set once I started to do the research about the chemicals and their side effects in many of the products we used.

So here's a quick green clean shopping list:

Vinegar
Borax
Salt
Lemon Juice
Essential Oils for fragrance
Vegetable Oil and Castile Soaps
Baking Soda
Spray Bottles (check out the beautiful linen spray bottles here)

From these ingredients you can make:

Countertop/Surface Cleaner
Combine Vinegar and Salt for a great scrub for many surfaces and non-porous surfaces

Window Cleaner
Vinegar & Water is a classic window cleaner. Use newspaper for a bright shine

Room Freshener
Pour vinegar in a cup to remove odors from your room. Or use vinegar to clean and freshen fabrics (test in an inconspicuous place first)

General Cleaner
With a bit of water the castile and vegetable oil based soaps will clean almost any surface.

Borax (about 1/2 cup), Splash of Vinegar and 1 Gallon of Hot Water can be used to clean and disinfect your rooms and make them sparkle.

When you bottle your cleaners, be sure to order some cute and creative labels to let everyone know what ingredients are included, and what you can use them for.