TEE-CEE’S TIP

Hi, Tee Cee, I am spring cleaning. (Yay, spring!) Do you have any favorite “green” or “Zero

Waste” cleaners you would recommend that aren’t superexpensive or hard to find? I want to be green, but I have a tight budget.

Thanks, Claudia

Dear Claudia,

I do have favorite cleaners to recommend. They’re effective, extremely inexpensive, and I’m willing to bet you can find them in your kitchen cupboards right now. I hear ya, “Oh no, she’s going to tell us how to make our own cleaners.” Yep. I am. But this DIY could not be easier, so keep with me here.

For a truly clean, truly green, home, take a tip from the original Zero Waste, nontoxic cleaning guru — grandma. Our grandmothers (or greatgrandmothers, depending on your generation) didn’t buy the gazillion different cleaning products on the markets today, and her house wasn’t any less clean. In fact, it was potentially cleaner in that it didn’t have toxic residue on surfaces or indoor air pollution from using or storing what are often toxic cleaners.

Over the decades, marketing campaigns have been pretty successful in getting us all to believe that our houses will be crawling with germs if we don’t use their products. But numerous studies and recommendations from no less than the Center for Disease Control and Prevention have shown that hydrogen peroxide in particular is as effective or more effective than conventional “antibacterial” cleaners and disinfectant products.

And if our goal is a clean and healthy home (which, it is, right?) we don’t want to be using products that may make things look and smell “clean,” but contain toxic ingredients or volatile organic compounds that are potentially giving us asthma, cancer or poisoning our water systems.

And then there’s the Zero Waste benefit. By making your own cleaners, you’ll prevent single-use plastic bottle waste, and we’re all about that.