cleaning at our house

Matt & I are green veggies. Ick can anything be worse than snotty vegetarians and their lifestyles? Anyway, I usually enjoy reading posts about housekeeping on other blogs because I'm obsessed with cleaning supplies (weird-o) and maybe just maybe, you guys might enjoy reading it too? I'm posting my favorite eco-friendly/biodegradable products too because its probably a good idea to think about hazardous things in your homes to be rid of. Especially for little chilluns.

I hate mopping. More than anything. Our kitchen is giant so it takes a long time to clean, not that I'm complaining, yay giant kitchen! Plus I always feel like something's not right with the mopping.

Well... the mom in-law bought me a mop I actually like now. It's by Cedar I think but the bottom is a microfiber material which is awesome stuff and really gets the dirt out.

 

I use Ecover floor soap. Good and bad about this stuff. Good: great cleanser, great smell, concentrated so you get a lot for a less money. Bad: hard to find. The only place I can find ecover products, and they're all pretty great, is Whole Foods which means when I'm working in LA proper.

 We have an heirloom tea set that's made with actual silver that has to be polished. Never in life did I ever imagine I'd own silver but I love our tea set. Made me cry when I received it at the bridal shower.

 

I use a microfiber cleaning cloth...

...and I think I should be using silver polish for it but I actually use JR Watkins aloe and green tea all purpose spray (available at Target) that I swear by. It's pretty, it smells wonderful, and it's a fantastic cleaner. It gets out practically anything.

 I dunno what Martha Stewart would tell me to do but the combo works. See? All shiny.

For the dishes by hand, I use JR Watkins aloe & green tea dish soap and for the dishwasher I use Seventh Generation automatic dishwasher gel. In the lemon scent of course.

And because I have OCD, I couldn't help but buy these puppies that work great too (actually I have the whole JR Watkins line of this green tea smell) and are biodegradable. I always find anything disposable like that to be bad but when something is able to decompose in a landfill, I don't feel bad at all. Which is why I've recently made the effort to have biodegradable party supplies that of course my brosky made fun of me for.

And this is probably one of the best discoveries made. I have tins of it in almost every bath in the house and the kitchen. Unbelievable the stuff it gets out. My fridge was caked with oil splashed on it from the stove and it got it all out with some scrubbing. You can get it everywhere, I even found it at the 99 Cent Store. It's rooted in history, doesn't scratch, GO GET SOME. For your pots, showers, countertops, ovens.

Tomorrow I will post about another quirk of mine in our home relating to cleaning products.