Spring cleaning: it’s an annual ritual with practical and spiritual benefits. We sweep, scrub, and wipe away the residues of a perhaps cloistered winter. We make our homes ready for a fresh start to a new seasonal cycle and meet the outside world again.
It takes a good bit of elbow grease, especially for those of us who go all out with a top-to-bottom cleansing. It also usually involves a lot of stuff—not only brooms, mops, sponges, and rags, but a panoply of products, each with its own special area of application. There’s the oven cleaner, the dish detergent, the toilet bowl cleaner, the bathtub disinfectant, the floor cleaner, and on and on.
All those products come at a cost that can be more than economic. The Environmental Protection Agency ranks indoor air pollution as one of the worst environmental health hazards, with common cleaning products the most prominent culprit. Many (including some with the word “green” in the brand name) contain chemicals associated with short-term effects like headaches, dizziness, and irritation of eyes, nose and throat, and, worse, longer-term problems ranging from respiratory illness to reproductive dysfunction and cancer. It seems counter to the whole project to pollute our bodies while freshening up our living spaces.
There are certainly safer cleaning products, but it takes research to find out what they are. The EPA doesn’t regulate household cleaning products, unless they contain pesticides. Furthermore, labeling requirements are slack, so ingredients can be listed simply as “surfactants” or “foaming agents,” without specifying what chemical is included, let alone its effects on human health or the water supply. Unidentified “fragrances” cause problems for many people, and are rarely substances anybody should inhale. Fortunately, it’s tremendously easy to avoid this entire set of problems by using a small number of inexpensive, easily available natural products to clean your home.
There’s nothing particularly special about most household cleaners. Home-made cleaning products take almost no work, or none at all, to make, and are generally every bit as effective as anything with a brand name. All you generally need is something rough enough to scrub with, something with the right pH (level of acidity) range, some chemical-free soap, and something that smells good to you. Most of what you need can fit in one bag, and you can easily find it all at your Co-op.
THE BASICS (AND ACIDS)
The bacteria living on surfaces around your house (or in stains on clothes and other fabric) only thrive within a certain range on the pH scale–mostly in environments that are slightly acidic. Shifting the pH of those environments a bit toward either the acidic or alkaline (basic) end of the scale kills most undesirable microbes very efficiently. Baking soda and cheap white vinegar are so effective that you’ll see one or the other of them in the vast majority of homemade cleaning recipes.
Baking soda is fairly alkaline. As its technical name, sodium bicarbonate, indicates, it’s a salt. The mineral structure of its molecules makes it just coarse enough to dislodge solid material when used as a scrubbing agent, while still soft enough to avoid leaving scratches on surfaces. Its alkalinity gives it an antibacterial (and, some studies suggest, an antiviral) effect. Intriguingly, it’s also the reason baking soda is such a fantastic odor-eater. It bonds with molecules, largely acidic, that are responsible for bad smells, and creates a balance, transforming them into stable forms closer to a neutral pH level. Finally, it’s just alkaline enough to partially break down organic matter, loosening gunk and aiding its own scrubbing power.
Distilled white vinegar, on the other hand, is fairly acidic. Though it’s not a professional-grade disinfectant, its pH is effectively too low for most household bacteria. It also helps dissolve food organic matter and accumulated mineral deposits. Apple cider vinegar, incidentally, works just as well. Many cleaning jobs require nothing more than baking soda and vinegar, either in sequence or in combination. If mixed, it’s best to use more of one than the other, to avoid ending up with a pH-neutral cleaner that removes visible stuff while leaving bacteria alone. A vinegar wash following a baking soda scrub produces a small version of the “volcano effect” familiar from countless home science experiments. The energetic production of carbon dioxide released as the acidic and basic compounds react with one another further loosens organic matter, making it easy to scrub it away (it’s also responsible for the rising effect of sodium bicarbonate in baking). The sequence is a highly effective instance of household chemistry.
SIMPLE SOAP (AND OTHER ESSENTIALS)
Honestly, baking soda and vinegar alone, with the help of water, can take care of the vast majority of your spring cleaning tasks. There are some other natural, inexpensive multipurpose products that are great to have on hand, though. One that shines is simple Castile soap.
Castile soap originally hails from Spain, where it was made from a base of olive oil. Today’s commercially available varieties typically use other plant-derived oils like hemp, coconut, and avocado, combined with natural alkaline varieties of sodium. Dr. Bronner’s is the most well-known brand, and it’s a good one—entirely natural, often organic, and environmentally friendly, with none of the arcane ingredients included in almost all familiar dish and laundry detergents. Castile soap is widely available in both liquid and solid forms. It’s versatile, good for washing dishes, clothes or hands, and works well to clean carpets, walls, or just about anything else in the house. It’s nearly always diluted, usually with water. Like baking soda, castile soap is alkaline, so it shouldn’t be mixed with vinegar or other acids, which will neutralize it. On the other hand, vinegar can be a great followup to soap, dissolving any streaky residues.
For some more hardcore cleaning needs, including stubborn stains and situations in which you want a more powerful disinfectant, hydrogen peroxide is the way to go. It’s non-toxic, and much more environmentally friendly than bleach. For some of the same tasks (as well as many of those suited to vinegar), cheap vodka is another useful alternative, and it’s odorless, aside from the alcohol.
Speaking of odors, essential oils can play a fabulous role in a spring cleaning arsenal. A few drops of citrus, mint, cinnamon, or rosemary oil—pretty much any variety you enjoy—will lend a pleasant aroma to any homemade cleaning mixture, masking the sharp smells of ingredients like vinegar or peroxide. Some even have antibacterial properties of their own, boosting the effects of cleaning. They can also enliven your mood with their aromatherapeutic qualities, contributing to the emotional boost a freshly cleaned living space can provide.
USE WITH CAUTION
There are a couple of products that show up in many DIY cleaning recipes that have longstanding popularity, but that have recently fallen under some suspicion. Borax (sodium tetraborate) has long been used for various household tasks, especially as a natural “laundry booster,” and shows up as an ingredient in many of the laundry soap recipes you’ll find online. Borax is probably all right if used with the proper safety precautions, but it is a potent substance that should be used in well-ventilated areas, can be harmful to the skin and eyes, and may have harmful effects on male reproduction with extended exposure.
Fels Naptha has been a go-to heavy-duty soap bar for nearly a century, and is also included in recipes for laundry detergent and other cleaning tasks. It’s clearly more “natural” (a word we should always think critically about) than most commercial cleaners. On the other hand, it’s a concentrated, powerful product containing compounds with possible bad health effects, and some that aren’t great for the environment. Many DIY cleaning enthusiasts propose alternatives to both these products (like switching baking soda out for Borax), while others still consider them safe enough for home use when balanced with their effectiveness. As always, do your own research!
RECIPES, TIPS, AND TRICKS ABOUND
It’s easy to go online and find countless formulations for home cleaning products based on the major ingredients considered here. From all-purpose cleaning spray to dish soap to grout scrub, it’s usually just a matter of water with a little soap or vinegar and some essential oils or steeped citrus peel, or a bit of baking soda and some water. Those who like to keep it simple can most likely get through an entire spring cleaning with two or three simple concoctions, while there are countless possibilities for anyone who gets a boost in satisfaction from mixing up just the right thing for a specific task.
There’s no shortage of nifty cleaning hacks to meet particular needs. Simply cutting a lemon in half and microwaving it in a bowl full of water makes it easy to wipe down the interior instantly. Dry salt is the perfect scrub for a cast-iron skillet. A little cornstarch added to a solution of rubbing alcohol and water makes for a streak-free spray for windows and mirrors. Vodka can clean surfaces—like marble—that vinegar can damage.
For many clogged drains, one or two treatments of baking soda, followed by vinegar and then hot water, will take care of the problem. It also provides the satisfaction of foaming up and hissing in a big way–which just makes it feel like something’s getting done (hydrogen peroxide can provide similar satisfactions). Sprinkling salt on a cutting board and rubbing it with a lemon scrubs out organic material and, if left to sit for a few minutes, does a good job of disinfecting. Almost any cleaning problem has a natural solution.
SMOKE
What about smudging, the practice of briefly burning bundles of dried, aromatic plant material? There is something deeply satisfying about using smoke to purify or sanctify a space; it has an elemental attraction as a ritual of cleansing and preparation for what comes next. On the other hand, “smudging” per se is an American Indigenous practice, and many native people consider smudging outside its cultural context to be problematic and appropriative. They often particularly ask that non-Indians refrain from burning white sage. Not only is sage culturally important; it’s also frequently overharvested or improperly gathered, and widespread demand for bundled sage has actually made it difficult for some indigenous populations to access it for their own use. There are other traditions of burning herbs for ritual purposes, and many alternative herbs (like rosemary, bay, pine, and countless others) that can be easily purchased, wild-gathered, or grown at home.
It’s been widely suggested that burning herbs has demonstrable powerful antibacterial effects. Unfortunately, that seems to be a rumor based on a study of one particular blend of herbs used in India, which was indeed found to eliminate the majority of undesirable bacteria from a space for a striking period of time. It may be that other plants can have similar effects; it simply hasn’t been demonstrated. There’s more evidence to suggest that smoke can alter the ionic charge of the air, and that this might indeed have positive short- to medium-term effects on mood, as well as on odor-causing particulate matter. Whatever the practical effects may be, some sort of concluding ritual can make a spring clean deeply satisfying, more than hard work.
AIR
Let’s be clear: when it comes to cleansing, whether a space or a body, there’s no substitute for the outside air and natural light. Numerous studies over many decades (including in hospitals) have found that simply opening the windows can rapidly change the bacterial population of indoor spaces; undesirable microbes die off to be replaced by harmless or beneficial ones. We don’t need to make war on invisible critters to enjoy a healthful space. What we want is generally a sanitary home, and not a sterile fortress. Sterilization in general, by eradicating all microbial life, makes perfect breeding grounds for the first strong bacterial population to come along, and it robs our immune systems of the opportunity to adjust to small-scale encounters with pathogens (which are generally present outdoors in comparatively diluted forms). For most of our hygienic needs, nature really is enough.
We clean at this time of year for a reason. It’s not only meant to prepare for the work of the home that needs to be performed in the year to come. It’s also time to greet the wider world we’re all a part of, in the time of its renewal. While we’re cleaning our homes, let’s remember to fling open windows and doors, hear the sounds of birds and neighbors, and let the light and air back into our lives as we’re welcomed by the spring!
