Green Clean: The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning Your Home
by Linda Mason Hunter & Mikki Halpin
If you're like me, you'd rather not “clean” your house with the toxic chemicals that many common household cleansers contain. But figuring out what safe alternative to use to wipe down counters or refresh the bathroom is not often clear, especially when so many commercial products claim to be environmentally-friendly, even though you can barely pronounce the names of their ingredients.
That's where Green Clean: The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning Your Home by Linda Mason Hunter & Mikki Halpin comes in.
This handy little book offers safe cleaning suggestions for every room in the house – and because it's waterproof and stain resistant, you can take it to every room in the house, too. The authors actually encourage you to throw it in the same cleaning bucket you use for sponges, soap, squeegees, and other gear, reassuring you that it will never be the worse for wear.
What I particularly like about the book are its “must-have recipes.” These dozen recipes – for an all purpose castile-soap cleaner, a general carpet cleaner, and scouring powder, among others, “will replace nearly every commercial cleaning product in your cupboard,” say the authors. I've found that to be the case. Not only do the suggestions to use baking soda, castile soap, lemon juice, and water work, but they are cheap. I'm a big fan of saving money as well as protecting the planet, and the suggestions in this book harmonize both those tunes beautifully.
