Sustainability and environmental awareness is something on everybody’s radar these days. As a matter of fact, it’s been on the radar for at least the last 30 years, if not longer. However, we’re all learning more and more about the spate of problems that the environment’s facing – and we’re part of that environment, so what it faces, we face as well.
If everybody did just one or two things to be greener and more sustainable on a regular basis, this would add up to a huge difference over time (London’s Congestion Charge and ULEZ zones are a great example) – just like steps in the wrong direction do. And what better place to be green than in your home when you clean it? After all, if you’re thinking about your immediate environment, caring for it and making it clean, why not do a few things to look after the wider environment at the same time?
To get you started, here’s a few ideas that you might like to try when you clean your home.
Use Rags, Not Paper Towels
Paper towels are handy, they’re super-absorbent, they clean up just about anything… and they’re a nightmare from the waste perspective. You can’t recycle them, even though they’re paper because they’re covered in whatever muck you just wiped up. You definitely shouldn’t flush them down the toilet because they’re much sturdier than toilet paper and they don’t break down in the sewer system as well, resulting in some very nasty blockages that some poor person has to fix. You could possibly compost them, as they are biodegradable, which is probably the best option. Or if you’ve got a fireplace, you could burn the old paper towels in your very own waste-to-energy programme.
Use cloths when cleaning your house
However, you could skip the whole disposal problem – and save yourself a bit of money at the same time – by using rags for wiping up bits around your home. This is what professional London domestic cleaners do – it helps keep the costs down, which is a bonus for everybody. Not that you have to do out and spend money on buying cleaning cloths. Any old cotton or cotton blend fabric will do the job – old T-shirts, old towels, frayed sheets and the like. As an added bonus, you’ll be keeping tatty old fabrics out of the waste stream. Cleaning rags last for ages and they can be tossed into the washing machine and reused for years (I think I’ve got some in my cleaning cupboard that have been used for over five years and they’re still going strong).
It can be a good idea to have one set of rags for foul and mucky jobs, and another set for things like dusting or wiping down countertops. Find a system that works for you – old towels for toilets, for example, and sheets for the kitchen, for example. Or use colour or size as a guideline.
Rags can also be used for cleaning windows and glass, as they don’t shed scraps of paper on the surface like paper towels do. Just make sure that they’re free from lint!
Don’t Wash Clothes As Often
A lot of our clothes have synthetic blends in them. However, little scraps of synthetic fibre – which is a type of plastic – work their way out of the fabric and into the water system, where they don’t break down. They do this every time you wash them. The answer is to only wash things when you actually have to, which helps reduce the amount of plastic buzzing around in the water. You can wear shirts, jumpers, skirts and trousers at least two days in a row and you won’t smell (socks and undies are a different story!).
Compost The Dirt
It can be tempting to just throw the dust you’ve swept from the floor into the dustbin. The same goes for the lint from the washing machine and the contents of the vacuum cleaner. However, if you’ve got a compost heap or compost bin (or have access to a community one – we need more community compost facilities!) then this is where those big balls of fluff and hair ought to go. Most of the dust in our homes is skin particles and shed hairs, and this is great for your garden, as it’s rich in nitrogen for leafy growth.
Switch To Natural Cleaning Products
You can ditch a lot of those commercial cleaning products they wave in front of us on the supermarket shelves. The truth is that you can do a perfectly good job of cleaning your home using natural and renewable products. Don’t forget water in the list of natural cleaners alongside things like baking soda, salt and vinegar. Water is the closest thing we have to a universal solvent and all that a lot of those commercial cleaning products to is to increase the wetting power of water by breaking its surface tension. In fact, professional window cleaners use just water (well, pure de-ionised water and a good amount of elbow grease!) when they wash windows with those big old telescopic reach and wash window cleaning machines. Water doesn’t leave a residue and it’s readily available. In London this is of a particular advantage due to the large number of high-rise buildings. And (I think) London leads the green wave in the UK. But don’t quote me on that last fact 😉
Green Cleaning with Vinegar
The other bonus about using natural cleaners is that they’re a lot safer not just for you but also for your children and pets. Vinegar and baking soda are safe to eat, though not very nice to taste on their own. This means that you can let even small children use them safely and start them off on a lifetime of good home cleaning habits!
Although it’s debateable because of palm oil, I’d include soap in the list of natural cleaners because some use tallow (an animal by-product) and others use vegetable oil. It’s detergent that uses mineral oil – a fossil fuel by-product. Palm oil does have some environmental problems but at least it comes from a plant source and sustainably managed plantations are possible; it’s the least of two evils, if you ask me. Other natural cleaners you can use around your home include salt, alcoholic spirits (e.g. vodka) and lemon juice – although you’ll need your own tree and a surplus of lemons if you want to use lemons for cleaning.
Dry Naturally
One of the big consumers of electricity (which has to be generated somehow!) in many homes is the clothes dryer. You can save a ton of electricity, which frees some up for use in electric vehicles, as well as saving yourself a fair bit on your power bill by drying clothes naturally. If you have the space in the garden, then a good old-fashioned washing line can do the job beautifully. If the weather’s unpredictable as London weather goesand/or you don’t have much space, then one of those folding clotheshorses does the trick. As an added bonus, you don’t have problems with excess heat shrinking woollens, and you don’t get that annoying static cling either. Bonus hack: hang shirts up on hangers and they’ll naturally fall mostly wrinkle-free and be a breeze to put away!
Ditch The Air Fresheners
The synthetic perfumes in air fresheners of the sort that get used in toilets are pretty vile for the environment and for you. Kick them to the kerb and don’t buy any more of them!
However, you may want to do something about the pong in the smallest room of the house. The simplest method is just to open the window and let in some fresh air! However, you can also make your own sprays from water, a little vinegar and a few drops of essential oil.
To get nice smells in the rest of the house, instead of relying on those sprayed room scents or those ones that plug in and put out a puff of synthetic scent every few minutes, use diffusers, fresh flowers, essential oil burners, scented candles or just enjoy the smell of cooking.