From the category archives:

Non-Toxic Cleaning

Make Homemade Green Cleaners and Save $1,612 in Five Years

November 12, 2011

I’ve been slacking on my, “Save $50,000 in five years” series. It’s a lot of work (all those calculations!) However, it’s time we got back to it, so without further ado… Let’s look at cleaning products. Why use green cleaning products? In this post I’ll be comparing the costs green cleaning products only – both [...]

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Homemade Apple & Spice Air Freshener for Autumn

October 17, 2011

In the fall, it’s nice to have an air freshener that fits the season, and homemade spicy apple air freshener does just that. Better yet, it’s much safer than chemical air fresheners. Note: this air freshener works best if you have a wood-stove or fireplace. You can make it if you have a oven and are cooking something [...]

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Green and safe kitchen pantry homemade cleaners

October 15, 2011

You can easily buy eco-friendly cleaners that work well and that are safe for your family. However, there’s no need to spend money on said cleaners when you can just as easily, and inexpensively clean your entire house with items most people have on hand in their kitchen pantry. Baking soda & lemon: Grab some baking [...]

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Easy Homemade Organic Liquid Hand Soap

December 7, 2010

Hopefully, you’re already greening your hand washing routine with reusable soap dispensers and other tactics. However, another way to keep it green and clean is to reuse all those weird soap slivers you end up with. Homemade hand soap made with left-over soap slivers: Collect old soap slivers. You’ll need a bunch. If you just [...]

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Your kids don’t have to know about paper towels either

November 19, 2010

Seventh Generation often sends me stuff to review. Today we got a box from them and Cedar decided to open it while I drove him to school. He worked at it, finally got the box open, pulled out something and said, “Well THIS is funny looking toilet paper!” I was driving so I had no [...]

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Green Product Review: Shark 2-in-1 Vac-then-Steam

October 25, 2010

Review summary: The Shark 2-in-1 Vac-then-Steam is a very water-efficient way to get your floors super star clean, really fast. Although I thought the vacuum function could be a bit better. Read other popular Growing a Green Family posts! Read more green product reviews Subscribe to Growing a Green Family to get even more green [...]

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Reader Question: Should You Toss Unused Toxic Cleaners?

September 20, 2010

Today we’ve got a reader 2-part question, collected from the Seventh Generation company review post: The first part of the question… “My mom is transitioning from nasty chemical cleaning products and detergents to relatively more eco-friendly choices, such as Seventh Generation. However, she asked me if she should use up the nasty stuff she has [...]

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Green clean correctly with cloth towels vs. paper towels

March 19, 2010

One of the best green cleaning tips is to clean with cloth, not paper towels. There’s many reasons for this such as money savings, tree savings, manufacturing energy savings and more. In the last three or so years I’ve owned exactly two rolls of paper towels, but only because they were sent to me. Those [...]

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Poison Prevention Week – Homemade Green Cleaner Safety

March 19, 2010

It’s Poison Prevention Week 2010 and part of this week’s campaign is focused on the safety of household cleaning products. Sadly, Poison Prevention, the organization behind the event references Clean and Safe in the 21st Century (pdf) as the guide to have if you’re concerned about household cleaner safety. Clean and Safe is a guide [...]

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Green Company Review: Seventh Generation

March 10, 2010

A while back, Seventh Generation sent me some green-cleaning products to review. I’ve already reviewed their toilet bowl cleaner and I’ll be posting more reviews soon, but thought that it’d be easier to first take a look at the company as a whole; check out some of their eco-pros and cons. BASICS: Seventh Generation has [...]