Green Home Cleaning

Green Home Cleaning: Easy Eco-Friendly Tips to Clean Your Home.

1. Make vinegar a staple of your cleaning products cache.

Distilled white vinegar is an excellent alternative to harsher cleaning products.

2. Use the mildest cleaner possible to get the dirty job done.

3. Use a less-toxic alternative cleaner.

These include vinegar, lemon juice or baking soda in various combinations to get out surface dirt.

4. Take a pass on home-use pesticides.

Instead, pour boiling water down the ant hole outside to keep the teeming insects in check; and caulk to keep ants and other insects from wandering into your home.

Better yet: Keep pests from coming inside in the first place. Less-toxic baits and traps often work well on stubborn pest infestations. Products such as dehydrating dusts, insecticidal soaps, boric acid powder, horticultural oils and pyrethrin-based insecticides are all good first-response weapons to an insect home invasion.

5. Clean and rinse all equipment over your lawn or garden, not on paved surfaces or down indoor drains.

Home drains and paved surfaces allow your cleaners to flow freely into waterways.

Green Garages.

1. In the garage, choose metal drip pans, which can be moved and cleaned up safely if the car is leaking fluids.

The proper method of disposal: Soak up the spill with sawdust or cat litter, sweep it into a bag and put it in the trash.

Plan to repair a leaking vehicle promptly to help keep fluids out of storm drains. And don't hose down the area to clean it up. Anything washed off the ground and into gutter and storm drains enters local waterways untreated.

2. The Eco-Friendly Car Wash.

Instead of setting up shop on a driveway or street, where soapy water may flow to a storm drain, wash your car on a lawn or unpaved surface.

3. Consider instead a neighborhood car wash.

Choose one where water is recycled.

4. Paint touch-ups.

Choose latex paint whenever possible. This water-soluble variety makes paint thinner and solvents unnecessary.

Whatever type of paint you're using, simply cover the brushes at night when a job is in progress, saving a thorough water wash for when the job is complete. Clean latex paint from brushes and containers in a sink; filter, settle and reuse thinners and solvents for oil-based paints.

Dispose of unusable paints and thinners, thinner residue and paint strippers at a household hazardous water collection site.

Preventing Water Pollution at Home.

1. Clean up spills, lawn and yard clippings with a broom, not a hose.

Otherwise, these items head out of your yard and into the waterways.

2. Tightly secure the lids to trash can and recyclables bins.

This will help keep the contents of each from blowing into storm drains.

3. Safely dispose of any toxic products at a household hazardous waste facility.

These include pesticide and yard chemicals, oven cleaner, drain cleaner, motor oil or paints. Never pour potentially toxic products down indoor drains or street gutters.

4. Recycle or dispose of oil and other automotive fluids properly.

5. Control pool algae by regulating chlorine levels and by using a pool cover to block sunlight.

Don't use copper-based algae control products.

6. Pick up animal wastes the green way.

Use a recycled bag disposed of in the garbage can or a toilet.