12 months of greening - June - Chemical Audit

We don't make New Year's resolutions in my family, but this year we decided on a 12 month challenge in which each month we do something to reduce our carbon footprint.  We write the challenge on the calender and we try our hardest that month to complete it.  We've done really well so far and many of the changes have become permanent!  I will post about the last 5 months soon, but as it is now the start of June, I will write about what we're doing right now.

This month's challenge is to do a chemical audit of our home.  This means that I plan to go through the whole house (particularly the kitchen, bathroom, laundry and shed) and identify chemicals that we have.  I'll then clean them up - removing as much as I can and disposing of them at the next safe disposal day in town and replacing with greener alternatives where needed.

The kitchen is already pretty good, I have a basic phosphate free, biodegradable dish detergent and I use Ecostore brand dishwasher powder which I'm really happy with.  I have made my own spray cleaner from vinegar and water for years, but I have just started brewing some citrus cleaners that I found on the lovely Enchanted Moments blog (thanks!!).

The bathroom has begun too - I cleaned out the old petro-chemical based moisturiser and replaced it with a Sorbolene that is entirely plant based and not tested on animals, and will be endeavouring to use this instead of a face cleanser too.  I need to make a homemade toner next.  I tried washing my face with soap and water only, which works on normal days, but when I've been at work and needed a feel face of makeup, I need a good cleanse/tone/mousturise routine.  A few months ago I also started making our own soap (using Rhonda's soap recipe at Down to Earth) which I love and went "no-poo" (ie. washing my hair with diluted bicarb and a vinegar rinse).  The kids just use some of our soap to wash, but Stu seems to need shampoo, so I'll be looking for a good eco-friendly one for him.  I then have a few hair producrs to clean out - most of which we never use anyway!


In the laundry, I started making my own laundry powder from this recipe and it works great.  I have a collection of bicarb and vinegar for cleaning and with a bit of elbow grease they seem to tackle just about everything.  But there are some other icky things in there that need the heave-ho! :)

And the shed..... we did a bit of a clean out when we tidied up in there recently, but I know this is going to be a big job - pehaps we'll tackle it next weekend.

Do you use green cleaners and alternatives?  what are your favourites?  Are there any yucky chemicals that you have decided you just can't live without?