What I Use Now: Non-toxic Household Cleaners & Personal Products

Knowing my propensity to over-research consumer products, sometimes a friend or family member will call me to ask my advice about a particular non-toxic cleaner, lawn treatment, or mattress. But recently my neighbor decided to completely overhaul all her household cleaners and personal products and asked me to share with her what I use. And as I pulled up some old blog posts to share with her on these topics, I noticed that while much of the information and reasoning behind my choices was still up-to-date, many of the products were not. Some products have been discontinued. Some have been replaced with less toxic or more effective ones.

So I decided to make an exhaustive online list of our household cleaners and personal products to share with her and others that I intend to continually update. This list shares what I am actually using now in my own home and with my own family, 10+ years into the eco-friendly journey. The page also includes links to posts on the category (laundry, kitchen, teeth, hair, etc.) and where to find more information about your own cleaners or my cleaners

I would also like to note that there are a lot of great green cleaners out there now (or you could make your own non-toxic cleaners, although I never have), but for certain categories, it took a lot of trial-and-error to find something that worked for us: in particular, dishwasher detergent and hair products (our family has thick curly hair). I hope my painful experiences will spare you some.


You will find the continually updated list here:
What I Use Now: Eco-friendly Household Cleaners & Personal Products

Did I leave something off that you'd like to see? Let me know in the comments below. 

You May Also Like

• 6 Tips for a Non-toxic Summer
• 6 Strategies for Choosing Non-toxic Personal Care Products 
• Natural Deodorant that Works for My Husband
• How Green Is Your Hair? Non-toxic Hair Care for the Entire Family
• Green Cleaning - How to Identify a Green Cleaner
• All posts on Personal Products
• All posts on Cleaning

Would you like more ideas and tips about Going Green Gradually? Sign up for my free email subscription to get each of my posts delivered to your inbox (I usually post one or two times a week). You can also follow me on Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Twitter, or with your favorite RSS Reader. I hope to see you again soon!

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. Your purchase via these links helps support my blog. Thank you for your support. Read my full disclosure policy here.

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Two Things to Do Before You Spring Clean

Get Rid of Stuff

Before spring cleaning is the perfect time to ruthlessly eliminate clutter, since deep cleaning often involves moving lots of stuff around. And by clutter I mean stuff you own that you don't use, don't need, and maybe don't even want. I've seen a lot of spring cleaning checklists that include tossing clutter while cleaning out this or that. This would never work for me. If I were taking everything out of a drawer to wipe it out, and I stopped to consider whether I should keep or get rid of each item, I would never finish cleaning anything. Take the week before beginning spring cleaning to purge the contents of one room each day and get rid of as much as you can before you ever spray a cleaner or wipe down a surface.

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Easy Eco-tip Tuesday: Clean with Vinegar

Today's Easy Eco-tip

Green your cleaning routine by cleaning with vinegar. 

The thought of replacing all your favorite tried-and-true household cleaners with greener cleaners, whether homemade or store-bought, can be overwhelming. A very simple and cheap way to green your cleaning routine is to just clean with a spray bottle filled with straight or diluted vinegar. I personally use straight vinegar with a wet sponge and don't bother with dilution. Use vinegar to clean your kitchen table, kitchen counters, bathroom counter and toilet surfaces, mirrors and hard floors. (One caveat: do not use vinegar or other acidic cleaners on natural stone.) Vinegar disinfects, deodorizes, is completely safe, and very inexpensive. I buy two gallons at a time at Costco. It has a strong smell, but it dissipates quickly and after a few minutes there is no smell at all.

What is your favorite green cleaner?

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Easy Homemade Starch for Ironing (and DIY Alternative to Dry Cleaning)

Do you take clothes to the cleaners? My husband used to take his dress shirts and pants to a dry cleaner. Once I entered the green path, I learned that there are many reasons to avoid conventional dry cleaners:

• the chemicals involved  (PERC) are pretty nasty
• dry cleaned clothing off-gasses some of those nasty chemicals into the air you breathe
• dry cleaning generates an enormous amount of waste from single-use plastic bags and hangers (although the hangers at least can usually be returned and reused)

As is often the case, first I found a greener alternative, and then figured out a DIY solution because the greener alternative was so darn expensive. In addition, it's not entirely clear that all of the "greener" dry cleaners are actually all that eco-friendly.

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How to Make Letting Go of Clutter a Little Easier

Naming your clutter can be the first step on the road to freedom.

I finally checked out The Happiness Project from the library. I know everyone else has already read it and discussed it in all three of your book groups, but it takes me a while to get around to reading the bestsellers. At any rate, I enjoyed the chapter that addresses clutter. While working to reduce the stuff in her house, author Gretchen Rubin identified types of clutter she and others have trouble getting rid of. Several categories I immediately identified with.

Types of Clutter

• Bargain clutter: things that you bought because they were on sale
• Freebie clutter: things you have because you were able to get them for free
• Nostalgic clutter: momentos from the past
• Aspirational clutter: things that you own and aspire to use someday
• Buyer’s remorse clutter: things that you bought which you later realized you didn’t need or want, but you hang onto it rather than admit that you wasted your money on a bad purchase. 
• Conservation clutter: things that are theoretically useful but currently useless to you

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Spring Cleaning: A Minimalist Approach (Green Phone Booth)

I like a clean house as much as the next person, but I sure don't like cleaning. Before kids, I didn't mind cleaning too much and kept a pretty clean house. Of course, it wasn't that hard to keep the house clean when my husband and I both worked full-time and no one was dumping a bowl-full of food on the floor several times a day. But now that I have three little ones, and the amount of kid-free time I have to get anything done has shrunk to a pin-head, it's hard for me to spend those precious 5 minutes between nursing and wiping a bottom doing dishes or mopping the bathroom floor. In one of the great ironies of life, children bring more messes and infinitely less time to do anything about it.

Click here to read the rest of this post at The Green Phone Booth

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10 Steps to Greener Laundry

1. Do less laundry.

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Green Phone Booth: Mold

This week at the Green Phone Booth, I ask readers how to get rid of mold without bleach: A Plea for Help: Mold. If you have a non-toxic mold eradication success story, please post it in the comments!

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Do Less Laundry

Today's edition of Lazy and Cheap Ways to Be Green is about laundry. With today's labor saving appliances, laundry is a whole lot less work than it used to be. But I still find folding and putting away laundry to be a chore, so I like to minimize the amount of wash I do. By doing less laundry, you save time, energy, water,  money, and prolong the life of your washables. All it takes is a willingness to lower your standards of cleanliness.

How to Do Less Laundry

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Green Cleaning - How to Identify a Green Cleaner

In a perfect world, perhaps we would all make our own household cleaners from vinegar, baking soda, soap, hydrogen peroxide, lemon juice, salt, tea tree oil, etc. However, I still find myself relying on the convenience of store-bought cleaners on a regular basis, so here are some tips for finding a green cleaner (or making sure your favorite cleaner is green enough) until we reach DIY cleaning nirvana.

Look for Cleaners with One or More of the Following:

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The After-Christmas Cleanup

This is a guest post by Kelly Smith from miskellany, long-time blogger and the mastermind behind the Green Holidays series. 

I love Christmas – the warmth, the light, the togetherness, and, yes, the food. But there is also something so energizing and renewing about cleaning up after Christmas and starting the new year with a clean slate. If Christmas cleaning and organizing are not among your strengths, here are a few tips to get you started:

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I Love Line Drying

I've been meaning to line dry for a long time.  Now I'm finally doing it! -- thanks to my engineer husband (and a very inexpensive nylon line).  When my first was in cloth diapers, I frequently dried the diapers on a rack, but drying them like this on a line is way more awesome.  In a matter of weeks, I have gone from a reluctant foot-dragging I'll-get-around-to-it-someday line dryer to a true believer.

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The Smell of Clean

What should clean laundry smell like?

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Nothing But Soap: Review and Giveaway

I am pleased to introduce you to Nothing But Soap: all-natural, vegan, naturally scented, and handmade products by Amber Perks.  Amber makes

• Laundry soap (lavender, tangerine, tea tree or unscented)
• Reusable dryer bags (in 3 varieties)
• Dishwasher soap (lemon lime)
• Lemon cleaning scrub
• Carpet deodorizer (lavender mint, lavender rosemary, cinnamon clove, or dust mite and germ fighting with essential oils)
• All-purpose cleaner

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Green Cleaning - Laundry

Possibly the hardest part of switching to greener cleaners is deciding which ones to buy.  Once you have a tried-and-true cleaning favorite, it's hard to bother to switch to something new, even if you've read about the problems with conventional cleaners.  Luckily, I've done all that annoying research plus trial-and-error stuff for you.  In my Green Cleaning series, I introduce you to all of my favorite green cleaners.  There are definitely others out there that work.  These are just the ones that I've tried that have worked for me.  


My Laundry Cleaners

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Outdoor Clothes (Lazy, Cheap and Green)

Here's another Lazy and Cheap Way to Be Green:

Keep a set of "outdoor clothes" for each child.  Put these clothes on your child before they play in the mud outside, remove them when they come inside, and keep them by the door for the next outdoor adventure.  My kids have outdoor pants and outdoor jackets (when it's cold).  Wash the clothes when absolutely necessary. 

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Do You Have Wall-to-Wall Carpets?

 Wall-to-wall Carpets:  Cozy Contaminant Collectors

Four years ago we rented a home with hardwood floors by chance.  We lived in that home for the first year of my first baby's life, which was when I started obsessing about toxins and such.  During my research, I came across a lot of unfavorable information about carpet, like this quote from The Green Guide:

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Green Cleaning - DIY Cleaning Recipes

One thing I like about this blog is that it sometimes spurs me to make changes sooner than I might have otherwise.  But more often, I am a better compiler than doer.  Such is the case with Do-It-Yourself cleaners.  By far my favorite DIY cleaner has one ingredient: vinegar. But I haven't ventured too far beyond it.  But I am hoping to expand my DIY repertoire soon (especially when my current cleaners run out), and when I do, here are the resources I will turn to:

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Green Cleaning - Bathroom

 

Possibly the hardest part of switching to greener cleaners is deciding which ones to buy.  Once you have a tried-and-true cleaning favorite, it's hard to bother to switch to something new.  Luckily, I've done all that annoying research plus trial-and-error stuff for you.  In the next couple of weeks I'll be introducing you to all of my favorite green cleaners.  There are definitely others out there that work.  These are just the ones that I've tried that have worked for me.


My Bathroom Cleaners

Bathrooom counters, sink and bathtub

• Bon Ami
• Other suggestions for bathroom and bathroom surface cleaners from The Green Guide

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Green Cleaning - Kitchen

 

Possibly the hardest part of switching to greener cleaners is deciding which ones to buy.  Once you have a tried-and-true cleaning favorite, it's hard to bother to switch to something new.  Luckily, I've done all that annoying research plus trial-and-error stuff for you.  In the next couple of weeks I'll be introducing you to all of my favorite green cleaners.  There are definitely others out there that work.  These are just the ones that I've tried that have worked for me.

My Kitchen Cleaners

Kitchen table and counters

• Vinegar in a spray bottle (diluted or not):  vinegar naturally disinfects and gets rid of yucky smells
• Seventh Generation all-purpose or disinfecting spray (occasionally)

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