If you’ve ever spent an afternoon with your head half in an oven breathing in toxic oven cleaner, you know innately that household cleaners and especially kitchen cleaners are bad news. Ammonia, bleach, butane, sodium hydroxide and a host of other carnigens strip away your family’s health, so we say, it’s time to stop the madness and start using organic kitchen cleaning products whenever possible.
Let’s start with the beast of the kitchen first: the oven. Here’s the ugly truth. If you want a clean oven the all natural way, you’re going to have to scrub and scour. We don’t like it anymore than you do. You will need baking soda, water and vinegar.
- Remove oven racks.
- Mix water and baking soda into a past.
- Coat inside of oven with the paste and let sit for a long time. Up to 24 hours.
- Scrape off the paste, or, better yet, teach your kids the old-fashioned character-building value of hard work and elbow grease.
- Spray vinegar and water on any remaining baking soda residue.
Now that we have the oven covered, let’s move on to the rest of the kitchen. But first, here are ingredients you can use that will substitute for harsh chemical kitchen cleaners:
- Hot water. Steaming hot.
- Baking soda
- Vinegar
- Essential oils
- Lemons
- Lemon juice
You can mix and match these ingredients to clean just about any part or surface area in your home including your granite countertops, floors, cabinets, sink, under the sink, stovetop, range hood and refrigerator and freezer. You can also skip the in-home alchemy and go for trusted names in the all natural green clean department. We like the following brands:
Natural Green Cleaning Products
- Dr. Bronner’s Castille
- J.R. Watkins
- Mrs. Meyers
Also, we’ve found that the type of scrub pad or scouring pad you use can make a world of difference and drastically cut back on the amount of cleaner and heave-ho you have to use. Micro fibers are an excellent choice as is the Scotch Brite General Purpose Scouring pad, though do be careful as it will scratch non stick pans and glass.
Or, go for the gold and say enough scrubbing all together and treat yourself and your family to an electric scrub brush. We have yet to try it, but we are salivating a bit over the CUH Cordless Household Power Scrubber with Rechargeable Battery for Bathroom and Kitchen. It comes with six different brushes! Because who wants to scrub anything and especially with cancer-causing chemicals, really? Not us!
