Cleaning
The One-Ingredient Eco-Friendly Cleaner That Gets Me Excited to Scrub My Floors
You probably already have the one ingredient...
When it comes to keeping my apartment clean, I am all about the minor victories.
Like, cleaning out a single crisper drawer. Or making the bed. Or reuniting just one pair from my ever-growing bag of errant socks.
So you can imagine my delight when, just this past weekend, I achieved the minor-cleaning-victory trifecta: finding a way to scrub my bathroom floors that's at once more eco-friendly, less expensive, and just as effective as buying a fancy name-brand cleanser.
Like most almost no important discoveries, mine was born out of not wanting to put on pants to go to the grocery store. And a bunch of Google-ing. What I found was a basic formula for a household cleaner that can tackle most surfaces, minus marble and granite: one part white vinegar, to one part water. Aka, one ingredient I already had in my pantry, plus some water straight from the tap.
I wrangled a dusty glass spray bottle from the back of my cleaning supplies stash, filled it accordingly, and got scrubbing with a rag. Not only did it leave my tiled floor squeaky clean—even that one spot where the tiles meets the corner and cleaning dreams typically go to die—but it also worked well on the rest of my bathroom, like the tub, the shower head, the toilet, and the sink. Meanwhile, I felt great about using fewer chemicals and reducing my single-use plastic purchases to complete a cleaning task I face regularly.
While the vinegary scent dissipated not long after thanks to an open window, some sites (like Trash is for Tossers, a great resource for eco-friendly living) suggest adding a few drops of an essential oil to the concoction as well.
I have yet to try my new favorite green cleaner on hardwood floors, but I've read that the same vinegar-water duo is effective at a different ratio on certain finishes, to avoid stripping the wood: about 1/2 cup vinegar per gallon of water. Similarly, for tougher cleaning jobs on non-wood surfaces, the ratio should be adjusted to include more than one part vinegar to one part water.
All of which is information I've filed under "minor victories for next weekend."
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Written by: Ella Quittner
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15 Comments
Do not add oils, or any form of liquid soap to the vinegar and water mix. The reason I told my many customers that is best illustrated like this. If you use soap, or oils, on any floor, you will have to use a garden hose and rinse off to floor to get all the soap residue off. Of course that is just an illustration to penetrate our thought processes to never put any soap on floors. You cannot get all the soap residue off, and it will act like a magnet and attract, grab, dirt going forward. Same process for cleaning carpets. No 'steam' and soap. Dry chemical cleaning only. That's why a freshly 'steamed' clean floor with a soap based product will soil so fast after. Soap residue is left on the carpet fibers. It's literally impossible to remove all the soap.
In showers, the white vinegar-water solution is likewise great, and since the tiles in a shower are collectors of soap in all its forms, shampoos, etc, I use a slightly stronger mix than the one cup white vinegar to a gallon of water. 2 cups white vinegar.
I keep saying white vinegar. Never, ever use yellow vinegar and water as a cleaning solution.
Experiment some with my ratios. Enjoy your clean floors, and showers! On marble and quartz, experiment a little on a hidden area. Not all quartz and marble type products are the same. For those, go with the manufacturers recommendations only. That way if something goes wrong, you might be covered.
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