Cleaning Non-Toxic-ly

My niece, Collette, asked that I do a post about cleaning without being toxic. I completely agree with that - we both are very sensitive to chemicals. For some reason, I have a nasty reaction to bleach, among other things. I'll post some ideas from Collette later in the week.

In the meantime, here's a tip from me: Instead of toxic cleaners in your shower or bathtub, try using cheap shampoo. It's made to remove the same things from your hair that are dirtying up your bathtub, and it's not toxic. You can actually clean while you are in the bath or shower, and kill two....oh, never mind. Baking soda is another good, non-toxic cleaner to have on hand.

The best thing you can do is to clean before you even can see that it needs it. That way there's never a big buildup. Do I always follow this advice? Unfortunately, no. But it is good advice anyway. A good resource for cleaning tips is Flylady at www.flylady.net. Her advice is that you should never see dirt. In other words, clean often enough that it is easy and you never see a buildup. If you don't let it get really bad, you probably won't have to use honking big ugly chemicals to remove it. I used to always hate cleaning the toilets because they were so bad (little boys). But using Flylady's theory, I found that if I cleaned them every other day or so, it wasn't nearly as unpleasant and so I didn't dread it like before. A little goes a long way. Set a timer for 15 minutes and see how much you can get done in that amount of time. You'll be amazed. Cleaning 15 minutes at a time is do-able, and might make a big difference for you.