April 22, 2010 | 10:05 am

It Is Easy To Green Clean

Posted by Mihal Levy

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It’s Earth Day and what better way to celebrate than by green cleaning your home.  (Ok, I can think of a few, but that’s not the point.)

With the help of Green Clean; The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning Your Home by Linda Mason Hunter and Mikki Halpin, you can learn how to clean your home with products safe for the environment and your family.  What can be better than this?  Besides having someone else clean your home, of course.

The book is waterproof and stain resistant, so you can read along while you are cleaning your shower.  Green cleaning is simply broken down according to areas in your home with the tools you need, daily,weekly and monthly checklists, as well as easy do it yourself cleaning solution recipes from dishwashing liquid to stain removers.

Green cleaning is not only better for the environment, but safer for you and your family and often less expensive than using toxic, regular store-bought cleaners.  According to Green Clean, “Scientists at the National Tocicology Program found five to ten percent of all chemicals in production could be carcinogenic in humans.”  The book further states that, “We’ve become dependent on these chemicals.  The average American household uses forty pounds of them each year.”

So, why not start to make a difference in your own home.  Here are some quick tips and recipes taken from Green Clean to get started:

-Use a half of cup of ground coffee in a bowl on a center shelf to absorb smells in your fridge for a few days

-Repel ants with cinnamon and cayenne pepper.  Sprinkle along their path of entry.

-Easy carpet spill absorber:
Cornstarch or Cornmeal
Broom
Vacuum Cleaner
Pour cornstarch onto spill, leave on for fifteen minutes, sweep up and vacuum the excess.

You can even read Green Clean in the bath while relaxing.  Or maybe read it while cleaning and save relaxing for relaxing, unless reading books on cleaning helps you relax like it does for me, go figure.