This Is Not My Beautiful House

The county where I live has a website that has posted free recipes for non-toxic household cleaners. To find out how to make your own high quality cleaning supplies, navigate to the Chittenden Solid Waste District's page entitled, Non-Toxic Household Cleaners Recipes for a Safer Home and a Cleaner Environment.

Most of the recipes on the site come from Clean House, Clean Planet by Karen Logan

Other books you might like on the topic include:

Clean and Green , by Annie Berthold-Bond. New York: Ceres Press, 1990. and
Home Safe Home ,by Debra Lynn Dadd.

There are many places online to find quick recipes for your own home cleaning products. For some easy ones and a good overview on how to make your own Non-Toxic Cleaning Kit go to the article by Annie B. Bond posted on the Healthy and Green Living Blog (http://www.care2.com/greenliving/make-your-own-non-toxic-cleaning-kit.html) Annie describes several concoctions that are made from only five basic ingredients:

Baking soda
Washing soda
White distilled vinegar
A good liquid soap or detergent
Tea tree oil
6 clean spray bottles
2 glass jars

You can also get a brief description of each of these supplies in the article.

My favorite is the one for mold (eww!) she calls Tea Tree Treasure. You only need:

2 teaspoons tea tree oil
2 cups water

Combine in a spray bottle, shake to blend, and spray on problem areas. Do not rinse. Makes two cups.

Annie says: "Tea tree oil is expensive, but a little goes a very long way. Note that the smell of tea tree oil is very strong, but it will dissipate in a few days. "

There is a link at the bottom of that article for over 100 more articles related to non-toxic cleaning. You might also want to read comments of other readers who post their own suggestions too!