Clean your house green

Please follow along. This is a knee-bone’s-connected-to-the-leg-bone’s- connected-to-the-foot-bone story about “green” cleaning products. So if you’re ready, let’s take a meandering little walk.

In June, Judy Theodorson, director of WSU’s Daylighting Lab in Spokane, told me about a recent graduate who had won a design award for sustainability. As we talked about related issues, Theodorson mentioned she didn’t use toxic chemicals to clean her home and I asked her why.

“Because I have 5 1/2-half-year-old triplet boys at home,” she said. “And I can’t control where they put their hands and mouths every minute.”

In September, I was at the Daylighting Lab again for an open house and Theodorson told me she’d recently hired a green cleaning service. Also, she said, one of her students had started a green cleaning business, so I got curious and called Theodorson’s green cleaner, April Gleason.

Formerly a financial planner for Merrill Lynch, Gleason told me that after having a baby girl she began reading about toxic cleaners and found there were non-toxic alternatives. Inspired, she started her own business, Clean Green, which does natural cleaning for homes and businesses. In addition, they create cleaning kits for people.

“We try to educate people that they don’t really need the ‘blue stuff’ for windows,” she says. “Vinegar and distilled water work just fine. Or people dump a ton of bleach down the toilet when all they need is a little baking soda. Swish it with the toilet bowl brush and you’re done.”

Hmmm. Sounded easy, thrifty. So next I called Emily Vancil whose business, Eden Green Cleaning, was quite new. Vancil and her partner, sister-in-law Katy, had just worked the past weekend for their first client. As an interior design student, Vancil said green cleaning just made sense to her: “The green side helps reduce the toxins brought into the house. Why not use products that won’t hurt anyone or hurt the environment?”

Yes, I thought, why not?

So on my daily morning stop at the local Safeway, I checked out distilled white vinegar. A gallon of the store brand costs just $2.69. It had a tip on the label: “Clean stainless steel by rubbing the spots with a cloth dampened with vinegar.” Nifty.

Next I scoped out a large box of baking soda for $1.19. It featured eco-friendly household cleaning suggestions on the back – even recommended I “Add ½ cup into a tub of warm water for a refreshing bath or foot soak.” It would leave my skin feeling “naturally smooth, soft and clean.” Well, now, that ain’t no Toilet Duck promo.

I asked the store’s general merchandise manager Kelly Lorimor what cleaner she used at home.

“Bleach,” she said. “It disinfects.”

I asked about non-toxic alternatives, but she was dubious about their effectiveness. So where could I turn to find out if the actually work?

Not the bailiwick of the Spokane Regional Health District, I learned, but they suggested the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA’s Seattle office Pollution Prevention coordinator, Carolyn Gangmark, explained that bleach is an effective disinfectant because it oxidizes microbes. If you mix one part commercially-available bleach with four parts water, the resulting 1 percent bleach solution is effective enough to help kill many common household bacteria.

Baking soda works by changing the pH of the surface being cleaned and discourages bacteria from living there.

“The rule of thumb,” Gangmark said, “is whenever possible, try to use less toxic rather than more toxic. There’s a lot of overkill out there.”

I followed up on that information with the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Allison Gray who noted non-toxics may also have an “elbow grease component.”

That is, during cleaning you may need to scrub with a brush rather than simply wiping with a sponge. For non-toxic cleaner recipes, Gray referred me to Argyle Baukol, Living Green Specialist for Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs.

Baukol was glad to supply the recipes you see here and shared Living Green’s mission statement: “Living Green means making choices in our day-to-day lives that reduce our impact on the environment and move us in the direction of a sustainable lifestyle – one that is healthy, ecologically sound, economically viable and socially just.”

So, ultimately the choice between toxic or non-toxic cleaners is yours – no matter which way you go, don’t forget to add elbow grease.