Whether your home is large or small, in the city or in the country, it is a space that should embrace you with comfort, health, beauty and a sense of harmony.
As author Cheryl Mendelson says, “When you’re a housekeeper, you use your head, heart, and hands to create a home. Cleaning is an art: combining intuition and physical skill to create comfort, health, beauty, order, and security”. .”
Like Feng Shui, good housekeeping implies our commitment to ourselves through attention to our health and our environment. We are profoundly affected by the environments we inhabit. It is to our benefit when those environments support our health and well-being. An easy way to do this is through your choice of cleaning products.
Did you know that indoor air pollution often exceeds outdoor air pollution? One of the reasons is due to the type of cleaning products that we usually use.
According to Real Simple Magazine, April 2009 Issue, the following inexpensive items can provide you with all-natural solutions for any household cleaning task.
- Lemons. The acid in lemon juice removes dirt and stains. It is especially effective when mixed with salt and used as a scouring paste. Lemons cut through grease, eliminate odors, and even remove limescale.
- Essential oils. One of my favorites! When combined with white vinegar, tea tree oil cleans scratched floors. Orange oil is excellent for removing greasy and sticky items. (Think gum stuck to your carpet.) Lemon oil removes soap scum from shower doors, and lavender mixed with water makes an excellent window cleaner that also repels flies.
- Castile liquid soap. This plant-based soap is gentle and thorough at removing dirt from floors, countertops, leather upholstery, sinks, showers, and even stoves and hoods.
- Borax. Add borax to your laundry detergent to make it more effective. Use it to clean your baseboards, countertops, and walls. Mix some with water to make a paste and use it to clean your pots and pans. Borax is great for removing rust stains, put it down the toilet, let it soak overnight and blast the stains away!
- Vinegar. Simple distilled white vinegar inhibits the growth of mold and mildew. Use it to clean coffee pot, dishwasher, drains, floors, glassware, mineral deposit buildup on shower head and windows.
These five all-natural items can tackle almost any household cleaning task without adding harmful pollutants to your environment, and they cost less than alternatives. You have nothing to lose and improve your health and well-being by changing your cleaning products. Learning ways to live a better, healthier and more balanced life is the foundation of sustainable living. And a sustainable life is living with the principles of Feng Shui, you may not know it!
Feng Shui is an appreciation and understanding of the importance of maintaining balance in all aspects of our lives. When we embrace the principles of Feng Shui along with sustainable lifestyle choices, we truly embrace health, harmony, and balance in our lives.