Healthy for You and Your Home, Cleaning Tips!

Just in time for some spring cleaning, this is for all the people (like me) who hate cleaning and chemicals full stop. 

Over the weekend everyone in our busy little household had to get our shit together and actually do some cleaning, as we had a house inspection.  Now we are all quite slack with cleaning, letting things go a little bit, so over the weekend quite a significant bit of work was needed to get things looking up to scratch.
So we have had quite a few little accidents in the house of late, and in my attempt to not resort to chemicals (blah!) I did some experimenting.

Carpet Stains:
Ok so the few little accidents involved leaving blood and other things on the carpet, and left me to think that I would never be able to get it out! Then I came along this friendly little grime-buster!  Warm water, with a dash of white vinegar and (eco-friendly) dishwashing detergent.  Lightly scrub the carpet with a sponge or towel soaked in the recipe above.  Then pat down gently with a clean, damp cloth.  Leave to dry, and repeat if needed.
On the blood stains, I probably repeated this process about three of four days in a row.  The key really is persistence!
Make sure the room is well ventilated, otherwise manually dry the wet patch with a fan or hairdryer.

Mould in Silicone
Now I don't believe this is the most environmentally friendly way, but it is the only thing I found that works, and you don't have to scrub needlessly for hours!  Mix up a thick past of bi-carb soda and bleach.  Apply liberally to the silicone along the bottom of the shower, bath, sink etc.  Leave for as long as possible.  I left it on overnight, and the results were amazing!! I believe this could also work for other extremely resistant stains on grout, sink basins or whatever.

Weeding
In places were there is unwanted, stubborn grass, instead of getting some absurd weed killer out, spray on white vinegar.  If using the commercial variety as bought, you may need to spray it liberally over the unwanted grass several days in a row, as the vinegar is quite a low concentration (20%?).  However, (I haven't tried this) you can concentrate white vinegar by freezing half a bottle of it overnight. In the morning, tip the bottle upside down over another bottle, and as it defrosts, the vinegar will drip out first, as it has a higher freezing point than water.  After a couple of hours, remove the top bottle which should only be mostly ice-water, and you can use the concentrated source of vinegar that has dripped into the bottom bottle.
White vinegar is also very effective on all other weeds, however just remember, it is not selective and be careful when spraying it near plants that you would like to keep.

General Cleaning
White vinegar again. Use it in a spray bottle, and just wipe it away with a damp cloth.  For more stubborn areas such as soap scum, sprinkle a little bit of bi-carb soda over the area and spray vinegar over it.  It will cause a chemical reaction, and fizzle up, and as it does so, this is when you scrub away. White vinegar can be used for everything, as a glass cleaner instead of windex, an oven and stove top cleaner, floor cleaner, even a deodorizer for your toilet! I'm in love.

Paint Smell Removal
Another accident involved a fist and a wall (not anyone who lives in this house's fist).  So when patching the hole up we had to use paint that matched the rest of the wall.  Luckily the house we rent has some left over paint from when it was built, so it was just a matter of finding the right paint for the wall and slapping it on.  Unluckily the paint was not very friendly to the nose, and probably the environment, and our inspection was the next day!! So to get rid of the smell? I put a bucket of (you guessed it!) white vinegar in the room and left it there overnight.  It absorbed the smell.  Apparently what also works is halved onions and water in a bucket instead.  The next day, just ensuring that the house inspectors really didnt suspect a thing, I burned some lovely coconut incense (my favourite!). 

Using these products, I actually don't mind doing a bit of cleaning every now and again.
And just for your ease of mind, we passed our house inspection with flying colours! He didn't even feel like he had to come up the stairs to inspect the other two bedrooms!

Have a great day!