5 Changes to Make in Your Home This Spring
for a more natural & sustainable home
Make Your Own Cleaning Products
Thinking about switching out all your cleaning products to homemade natural products can be daunting! Try starting with one swap at a time, and soon enough preparing these cleaning products will be second nature. Start with an all-purpose cleaner, it is simple, cheap, and one of the most used cleaning products!
What you will need:
Distilled white vinegar. You can purchase a gallon for less than $3.oo. (That’s a much better deal than buying all purpose cleaner!
A reusable glass spray bottle & a Mason Jar
Citrus peels! Lemons, oranges, limes, any citrus will do.
Instructions:
Eat your fruit, but save the peels to fill up your Mason Jar. You can stick to one type of citrus or combine multiple scents. Fill up your jar the whole way!
Fill up the jar the rest of the way with distilled white vinegar.
Let the jar sit for 2-4 weeks. You can check on it occasionally to see if you are content with its smell. Over time, the vinegar smell will fade, and the citrus smell will take over. Whenever, you are happy with its scent, it is ready!
Strain the peels, and pour you cleaner in a glass spray bottle. Dilute with 1:1 ratio of water. Get to cleaning!
You can make lots of other cleaning supplies, window & glass cleaner, laundry detergent, dishwasher pods, and more! Find out what you are comfortable with switching over this season.
2. Line Dry Your Clothes When You Can
While line drying will is not as convenient as throwing your clothes in the dryer, it does have many benefits. Line drying your laundry causes less ware on your clothes, therefore, allowing them to last longer. It will also save you electricity by not using your dryer!
Lastly, is what I consider the best reason to start line drying. I am always looking for ways to spent more time outside in the spring and summer, and I think I will be much more excited to do laundry, if I can get some Vitamin D at the same time. I personally hope to start line drying my laundry outside this spring/summer, once I can get a line set up.
3. Adapt a Lower-Waste, Natural Floor Cleaning Routine
The start of spring typically means spending more time outside, and bringing lots of mud and dirt inside! So let’s reevaluate how we clean our floors. If you are currently using a classic mop to clean your floors, you are already doing great! However, it seems that products like the Swiffer/Swiffer wet-jet have taken over when it comes to cleaning floors.
I understand why this may be the case, I personally do not have much space in my home to keep a mop and mop bucket. The Swiffer can be stored easily and aren’t messy. However, Swiffer products use single use pads and contain many harmful chemicals. If you currently have a Swiffer and don’t want to get rid the convenience, a great swap is this spray mop by Bona. You can find these at Amazon, Target, and Walmart. It is the same concept as the Swiffer WetJet, but the cleaning pad is reusable, you just throw it in the washer! It also uses a refillable cleaner bottle, which you can fill with any cleaner you choose. You can even try DIYing this simple floor cleaner:
DIY Floor Cleaner:
2 drops castille soap or Sal Suds
2 cups water
5-10 drops essential oil (If you have pets, make sure the essential oils are safe for them)
Feel free to research other natural floor cleaning recipes that are made specifically for your type of floor.
4. Ditch the Traditional Lawn
Our traditional American grass lawns do not provide any sort of habitat to our pollinators. There are many ways you can make your yard more sustainable; two popular ways are by replacing grass with a more beneficial ground cover or simply by letting your grass grow wild. It has been encouraged the past few years to participate in “No-Mow-May.” This meaning when winter has passed and grass begins growing back, wait to start mowing your lawn again until after May. Just delaying mowing a month or two allows the pollinators a chance to take advantage of all the dandelions and other wildflowers that may appear in your yard and start pollinating!
However, my favorite way to create a more sustainable lawn, is to replace a part (or parts) of your yard with flower beds, vegetable gardens, native bushes, or even just wildflowers. These will all be so much more beneficial to the pollinators than the grass that used to be in its place. Consider creating a section of your yard to grow low maintenance herbs. Many herbs are perennial, even in northern climates. I am in growing zone 6B, and I have mint that grows back on its own every year, and I never even have to touch it. It smells lovely, flowers in the fall, and I can use it for culinary purposes; it is all around more beneficial than our standard lawn.
5. Take Inventory of Your Trash
With all the deep cleaning that tends to happen around spring time, this is a perfect time to take inventory of your trash. Now, you don’t have to throw all your trash on the ground and write down every item you see. Simply take notice to what things you are throwing away, and what items are taking up most of your trash can. Once you take note of the things you are constantly throwing away, try to find a way to produce less of that waste. You may be shocked to realize how much you consume produces waste. Maybe you will find a lot of food wrappers, or packaging from deliveries, or if you are like me, your own main issue is paper towels. I have been trying so far this year to really be intentional about how/when/and how much I use paper towels. Once you tackle reducing waste in one area, try the next thing, and eventually you will have found you have created small sustainable habits that are better for the planet and might even be saving you money.
