Green Clean For The Holidays

Family, friends, parties, dinners, get-togethers celebrations, the holidays are filled with social interactions that happen indoors and focus around good company and food. Your house has to be cleaned and prepared for guests, food must be made served and then leftovers stored. It can be a stressful time for many gracious hosts but it doesn't have to be. Our Eco-friendly Cleaner Susan Switalski has advice for making your events go smoothly while staying stress free and green.

Let’s prepare

The first order of business is determining how many guests you will have, and how much space you have to work with for your party. So let’s start off with some dusting. Since you can’t always have the EcoMaids over to prep your party spot for you, it’s good to have your own dusting products for those in-between times. Typical dusting products are heavy with toxic chemicals, try something cheaper and greener with a less over-powering smell but the same effect. Make a light dusting spray with 2 tea bags, lemon juice and water. Boil the water then add tea bags to steep until the water is completely cool. Put the tea mixture in a spray bottle with a teaspoon of lemon juice. To clean, spray the mixture on a microfiber cloth and dust away. To get those small or hard to reach places, carry a small paintbrush to wipe away the dust. For shining up wood; some linseed oil with a microfiber cloth will work great for wiping away the dust and shining up wooden tables.

For a quickie curtain fix, put your curtains in the dryer (On low heat or delicate if they’re fragile!) for a few minutes to remove dust and also kill dust mites. The dryer lint trap will pull dust, mites, and small debris away much faster than trying to wash, dry and press the curtains and they will look just as fresh and clean. While we’re on the subject of laundry there are many DIY recipes for eco-friendly laundry soap, look for one that most suits your tastes and needs, it should include soap flakes, borax, washing soda and baking soda. Your clothes and linens will be fresh and clean without smelling artificial.

Set the table

After dusting down the party space, it’s time to prepare the place settings. Pull out any tables or chairs you will need and wash them down with a non-toxic cleaner of your own design. For this it’s time to make your own multipurpose cleaner. The EcoMaids use their own cleaner but in lieu of having the maids come visit; you can whip up a near replica of your own. In a spray bottle mix two cups of hot water with one teaspoon of baking soda, one teaspoon of borax, and two teaspoons of lemon juice or white vinegar. This can be used as a freshener for dusty tables, an eco-friendly counter-top cleaner, or just for a general wipe down after cooking.

For more serious stains and grime your going to want to make a paste out of white vinegar and flour and rub it on the surface. Let it sit for a bit and wash it off with water. For tables you could also use linseed oil or an organic slightly scented dusting/ shining agent like the one we use at EcoMaids, to leave a nice Cinnamon scent.

Shine the silver
Shine your silver the old fashioned, non-toxic way. Line your cleaning basin with aluminum foil, place your silver pieces so they all touch the foil as much as possible, cover with boiling water and dump in a hefty cup of baking soda, and bit of salt. The non-toxic chemical reaction will pull the tarnish right off the silver. Let sit until your pieces look good. For heavy tarnishing you may need a more direct approach, mix baking soda and water into a paste and polish the surfaces until they shine and then rinse off with water. Don’t be afraid of putting the baking soda down the drain either, its non toxic and can help clean out the pipes.

A word about pots
Many of us own non-stick pots, but what many of us don’t know is that at high heats, the chemical covering that makes the pots and pans non-stick vaporizes. When vaporized it is toxic to humans, so do your best to use non-stick pots and pans at lower temperatures only (<300 degrees). For safer alternatives to non-stick, use stainless steel, copper, or cast iron cookware.
For anything from cleaning dirty pots, pans and heirloom bake-ware left by the guests to rinsing your crystal stemware, just add one-half cup of borax to a sink full of hot water. Borax is delicate and robust enough for the job. Scrub well and rinse with clear water. And when your borax treatment or conventional dish washing can’t get tea or coffee stains out of your cups and mugs, use baking soda sprinkled on a damp cloth to rub the stains out.

Cleaning the stove
Most of the holiday cooking occurs on and around your stove so it’s a good idea to give it a thorough cleaning inside and out, before and after the event. The easiest way to clean an oven is to pull it out, wipe down the sides with your homemade multipurpose cleaner or a natural enzyme substitute, and clear away the dust and debris from the bottom. Sometimes you may need to leave the cleaner to soak for twenty min or so.

For regular oven maintenance the traditional self clean setting is wonderful, if you want to inefficiently heat your kitchen for an hour in the process. For a quicker clean, use a solution of one court of hot water mixed with four tablespoons of baking soda for a quick wipe down. When confronted with tougher stains, make a baking soda and water paste and really rub it into the stains. Leave it over night and give it a good working over in the morning.

For super heavy cleans you can try rubbing on a paste of baking soda and adding vinegar. The reaction between the acidic vinegar and the basic baking soda is enough to knock most stains and messes right off. An alternative is to steam the oven with a bowl of water and lemons. Float two cut and squeezed lemons in a baking dish filled with an inch of water, bake for an hour and scrub away at the inside of the oven as normal. The acid in the lemons will help break down most stains or baked on messes and makes a final clean much easier.

Washing down the fridge

Refrigerator care is crucial to the long term life of your appliance. But only during the holidays; when lots of different people are peaking in to help out, does it become apparent that it really needs a clean. It can seem like a big job but the benefits are well worth it. The best way is to defrost the fridge and clear everything out. But if that's not an option, then you can clean out individual shelves one at a time. Rinse the shelves in your sink with warm water, some vegetable based dish soap and a teaspoon of baking soda. While the shelves and drawers are out use the dish-soap and baking soda solution to wipe down the sides bottom and all the grooves with a microfiber cloth. You can clean the freezer in a similar way, but it’s very hard to near impossible to get a good clean without defrosting it already.

Nuking microwave grime
An easy way to soften up grime and build up in a microwave is to follow the lemon in the oven trick, cut and squeeze a lemon into a microwave safe bowl and add about an inch of water and microwave for three or four minutes. This helps loosen mess and you can use the lemon to clean and disinfect. Remove plates and shelves from the inside and clean it all with the lemon, or with one of your home made multipurpose cleaners. Don’t forget to clean the sides, and underneath!

For other small appliances, lemon juice and microfiber cloths will clean everything but the hardest grime. Just dampen the cloth with a solution of water and lemon juice or water and vinegar and wipe away.

Microfibers and Appliances
You may have noticed that microfiber cloths are used in alot of these cleaning applications. The EcoMaids believe that soft microfiber cloths are best to use because they are strong and are designed to lift dirt and grime away from surfaces, and are durable enough for many repeated uses and cleanings. While weaker cloths may be acceptable for short term use they do not have the same powerful cleaning abilities. At EcoMaids all our microfiber cloths are made from recycled and sustainable materials. Most other cleaning cloths are not nor do they hold up as well as microfibers under multiple laundry cycles.

To clean small kitchen appliances and just about anything else, simply dampen your cloth with your home made multipurpose solution or a solution of water and lemon juice, or water and vinegar (about 1/2 a squeezed lemon or 1/4 cup of vinegar per gallon) to clean, disinfect, and deodorize any small appliance in the kitchen.

We hope our cleaning tips tricks and solutions will make your holiday season much less stressful and a whole lot greener.

Happy Holidays
Susan Switalski
EcoMaids