Table of Contents:

Introduction
What's Under Your Cabinet?
Warning Labels
The Most Common Toxins in Cleaning Products
What Can We Do?
What to Do With the Toxins
Finding Safer Cleaning Products
Green or Green Washed?
The Best Green Commercial Cleaners
All Natural Cleaning Straight From the Pantry
Baking Soda
White Vinegar
Lemon Juice
Final Thoughts

Spring cleaning is a time-honored tradition for many of us.  It stems from a time before all the modern conveniences that make travel so easy for us today.  People were basically shut in for the winter months. Cleaning, laundry and even bathing were not easy things to accomplish in the days before modern plumbing and hot water heaters.  The house tended to get a little ripe after 3-4 months of being closed up!

When spring came and things warmed up, ladies could finally air out the house and clean all the things that accumulated dirt and grime through the winter.  Rugs and bedding, even the mattresses, were carried out into the yard to be aired and have the dirt beaten out of them. Every surface of the home would be scrubbed and polished top to bottom.

For centuries, this spring cleaning was done using hot water, homemade soap and good old-fashioned elbow grease.  As time went on, different substances were found to make cleaning easier and so these were also incorporated into the cleaning process.  Lemon juice, plant extracts, vinegar, baking soda and other natural substances were used routinely in the household cleaning chores.

It wasn't until the 1900s that you started seeing too many commercial cleaning products and even then, they were naturally derived for several decades.  When we started seeing synthetic cleaning products was after World War II when companies had to figure out what to do with surplus chemicals.  Some of these companies would have gone out of business if they hadn't opened new markets for their chemical production.