Cleaning Tips To Ensure a Healthier Home!

Cleaning Tips To Ensure a Healthier Home!

If you’re anything like the typical Canadian, you are touching about 300 different surfaces every 30 minutes or so. That’s a lot of germs that are spreading around! It is estimated that about 65 percent of common colds and 75 percent of food-borne illnesses are the direct result of coming into contact with germ laden surfaces. This is precisely why keeping a clean home is so necessary!

It is important to bear in mind that I am in no way suggesting that you need to sterilize your house from top to bottom. Germs are a necessary part of life! Occasional exposure to common bacteria and viruses actually makes our immune system stronger. In fact, children are more at risk of developing an excessive immune response if they do not have sufficient exposure to germs around them. In essence, their immune systems are finding it harder to recognize the difference between real threats and harmless nuisances such as dust bunnies. Our overly sterilized environments are partially the reason behind the growing incidences of allergies, asthma, and auto-immune diseases. It is crucial to our health to allow our immune systems to come into contact with the occasional virus or bacteria in our environments.

That being said, a clean home is still a necessity for humans! However, there is an important caveat I’m about to mention here – a clean home does not necessarily equate a healthy home! It is very important for the health of you and your family that you become mindful of the products you are using in and around your home. The cleaning products that so many people use can actually be contributing to or even exacerbating existing medical conditions.

Dousing everything in your home with antibacterial cleansers and chemical disinfectants does not lead to a healthy home. Most commercial cleaning products contain an overabundance of toxic chemicals that are both dangerous and carcinogenic. It is interesting to note that household cleaners labeled as disinfectants must be registered pesticides with the EPA, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Think about it for minute. We all know the dangers of pesticides being sprayed on our food but we happily allow these pesticides to be sprayed onto the surfaces and into the air of our homes?!

There is a reason why those cleaning products often give you watery eyes, cracked hands, and headaches – they are attacking your body! How does it make sense that people still use products to clean their homes that can’t even be allowed to touch the skin?! Do you honestly think these cleaning products just magically evaporate? They don’t! They stay on the surface you just wiped down and in the air around it.

It used to be that just ‘hippies’ and those ‘crazy environmentalists’ went on and on about green products. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is not just about the environment though. It’s also about the health of you and your family. If that won’t get you to change your ways, then I’m not sure what else will.

For those of you who might just be willing to reconsider in light of what we now know, I have some cleaning tips listed below:

• Mix together 1 1/2 cups of water and 1/2 cup of white vinegar in a spray bottle to make an inexpensive and all natural cleaner. This can be used clean windows as well as cleaning bathroom/kitchen surfaces to dramatically reduce populations of mold, mildew, bacteria, and viruses.

• Mix together 1/2 cup of baking soda,1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar, and a few drops of tea tree oil to create a natural antibacterial solution to clean your bathtubs, sinks, and counter surfaces.

• Mix together 1/2 cup of white vinegar and a few drops of lemon essential oil to dust and polish your wood furniture with the fresh, clean smell you’re used to.

• Sprinkle toilet with about 1 cup of Borax (sodium borate) and spray 1/2 cup of white vinegar over the Borax. Allow the mixture to stand for a few hours and then scrub thoroughly to disinfect and whiten your toilets.

• Simmer a mixture of cloves, cinnamon, and herbs in a pot of water on the stove for half an hour to naturally deodorize the air and neutralize bad odors.

• Place your wet kitchen sponges in the microwave (the only good use for having one!) and heat for three minutes to kill 99% of the bacteria lingering on them. The Hygiene Council found that 70 percent of kitchen sponges in the U.S. failed the hygiene test by having high levels of bacteria so do this quite regularly to get rid of those germs.

Basically, white vinegar, baking soda and a few essential oils can do pretty much all the disinfecting and cleaning in your house – naturally and safely. These products will not harm your health nor the health of your family. A nice bonus is that they are probably cheaper than most of those harmful cleaning products you currently use! Give it a try – you have nothing to lose and so much to gain!