organic Archive - Seite 2 von 2

I promised recipes and diys – so here we go. This morning, a chain of events (trying out another Ayurveda recommendation, massaging my skin with oil – taking a shower – greasy bathtub) led to me seeing the necessity to clean the bathtub right away. After having read and thought about the whole no poo concept only so recently, the thought of grabbing the bottle with the suspiciously blue (kinda like the blue Gatorade) and strong smelling cleaning product that we have used so far didn’t seem so appealing. There must be something else, I thought, and checked online. Disco! To no surprise, even a very quick research delivered a bunch of helpful sites, and I ended up cleaning the bathtub with a lemon. Yes, with a lemon – and it worked, too.

Among the results of my quick search, I particularly liked a (Swedish) blog post by The Green Eco Journal. The instructions were short and easy, while covering many things you might want to clean in a house/apartment. Also, all that you need according to post is vinegar, baking soda, lemon, and olive oil.

Here is my translation of the post, so please note that the source for the following (unless otherwise marked) including the picture is The Green Eco Journal, anything lost or messed up in translation is completely my fault:

(White wine) vinegar

For cleaning in general, pour equal amounts of water and vinegar into a spray bottle. Comes in handy when you want to clean up something.
To freshen up the toilet bowl (it literally says „seat“ but from the rest I gather that it must be the bowl – Solveig), pour two to three deciliters (ca. 1 cup – Solveig) white wine vinegar into it. Wait a few hours, then scrub and flush.
To clean windows, use the vinegar/water mixture for general cleaning. Spray onto the window. Instead of wiping off the mixture with a towel, use pages from a newspaper (from what I know it works – which it does! – because there are silver particles in the black ink – Solveig). (Paper towels get stuck easily.) You can still recycle the nepspaer after this.
To clean the floors, pour vinegar into the bucket instead of your regular cleaning product.
To clean the laundry machine, pour 1/2 deciliter of vinegar (ca. 1/5 cup – Solveig) into it. Start the machine without laundry. This helps to take away old laundry detergent that might have gotten stuck.

Baking soda

This is a good cleanser for stains and to take away bad smells. It’s also excellent to clean pots.
You can pour half a deciliter (ca. 1/5 cup – Solveig) into the laundry machine to clean it. So next time you’re going to wash something, your clothes will get extra-soft without you needing to add strong fabric softeners.
Mix a little bit of baking soda and castile soap (my link – Solveig) or regular dishwashing detergent to clean sinks and surfaces that are hard to reach. It’s also a good cleanser for drains. To make it smell nice add a few drops of essence.
If you have rugs that smell because of pets, sprinkle some baking soda onto the rug before vacuum cleaning them.
For cleaning the oven, mix 3 ts baking soda, 1 ts salt and 1 ts water. Spread the mixture inside the oven and let it sit for 8 hours. Scrape away and wash off afterward.
For when your drains get clogged: pour in 1/2 deciliter (ca. 1/5 cup – Solveig) and 1/2 deciliter of white wine vinegar. Let it sit for a while, then rinse with warm water.
Another way to clean the toilet bowl is to pour in 1 ts baking soda and 4 ts vinegar. Let it sit for 15 to 30 minutes, then scrub and flush.

Lemon

Lemon juice is good against grease stains. So it’s perfect for kitchen cleaning.
To get a natural and fresh scent in a room, make your own room spray from warm water, 1 ts baking soda and 1 ts lemon juice, and put the mixture into a spray bottle.
To „bleach“ white laundry, add lemon juice to your laundry detergent.
To give your dishes that extra shine, add lemon juice to your dish washing detergent (not on anything silver, though).
A spray bottle filled with half water and half lemon juice comes in handy when taking away stains from windows and mirrors.

Olive oil

Mix 2 tbs olive oil and 1 tbs lemon juice to create a natural furniture polish.
When cleaning brass and steel material, use a cleaning rag with some olive oil on it.
When cleaning shoes, use some olive oil and a few drops of lemon juice to make them nice and shiny.

Now all we need to do is find the appropriate dumping site for the poo we’ve been using …

If you can’t eat it, you probably shouldn’t put it on your skin, either. That’s the philosophy behind „No Poo“, which obviously both stands for „no shampoo“ and/or shampoo without „poo“.

I learned about No Poo in the current issue of åter (meaning „back“, „backwards“, „again“), a Swedish magazine about self-sufficiency and alternative life styles. Although I didn’t find out about this concept until yesterday, I am not surprised that it exists. As a lot of people clearly do, I have been thinking along those lines myself: when you are concerned about your health, you realize after a while that it’s not just about what you eat.

The stuff we use on our body is as important as what we put into our body, since that’s actually were it all ends up. (I am not even going to open the can of worms that is the clothes we buy which are treated with all kinds of chemicals – another reason for buying second-hand.)

When I still lived in Germany, I was really excited when organic became popular and affordable thanks to franchises like the dm-drugstore or the Alnatura organic super-market. Being on a university student budget, I was glad that I could buy organic food and cosmetics (not all the time and all my food/products, but still). I became aware that these products weren’t ideal, and that the whole franchise concept of these stores also meant that they probably weren’t as humane and great as they seem.

You shouldn’t fool yourself, these kinds of stores and their products really only fulfill a minimal standard. I don’t know about dm, but I remember that Alnatura seemed less great to me when a friend told me that the notes with customer questions (Alnatura apparently has a blackboard for comments in their stores) about the wages for Alnatura employees always disappear „mysteriously“ – and unanswered.

Still, I thought, as long as I can’t print my own money, getting the stuff that at least abides to a minimal standard of eco-friendliness is better than no standard at all. (I am aware of the issue with small producers not having the financial means to get their products certified as organic, and the possibility of certified organic stuff being a bluff – but for the sake of keeping one train of thought, I don’t want to go into that right here right now, either)

After I moved to Sweden, where everything is more expensive in comparison, and a lot of organic products I see in stores are actually imported from Germany, I started stocking up on organic cosmetic products (not that I use a lot, mainly shampoo, conditioner and some mascara) on every one of my visits to Germany. Friends and family knew, so whenever I get care packages, they’re filled with organic soap, tea, deodorant, all that good stuff. I had a box in our bathroom cabinet filled with alverde stuff to last for years.

You read right: had. Like I said, I already knew that organic products that only have the EU certificate that guarantees a minimal standard are not necessarily ideal. There are all these rules like if so and so many ingredients are organic, the product is organic – meaning, there can be crap in there but they can still call the product „organic“. Then Peter told me about one ingredient, sodium „something“ sulfate (the „something“ being interchangeable), which may cause cancer. Although the fact that this may be didn’t come as a surprise, having heard someone (whose judgement I trust) say it so straight out made it impossible for me to shower and not think about it. First I cracked jokes about my „cancer soap“ and my „cancer shampoo“ but then I stopped. Stopped joking AND and I am on my way of stopping applying poo, too. Even if I believe that the equation isn’t as simple as shampoo = cancer, why take a risk?

Another reason for why I have been wanting to make my own shampoo (and other related products) is: I like making things myself. So in a way this really doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a sacrifice but one more fun thing to do.

For those of you who speak Swedish, I cannot recommend åter, and Tanja Thuman’s No ‚poo article in the current issue (1/13) highly enough. Same goes for (her?) website, nopoo.se (also Swedish). Obviously there’s lots of stuff in English to be found if you just search for „no poo“.

Here are just three links that seem interesting and inspiring to me (note though that I haven’t actually tried any of this stuff yet – feel free to beat me to it and tell me about your results):

Teeth whitening and hair care – Yolanda Bertaud’s blog is full of health related recipes and diys – love it!

The Oil Cleansing Method – No poo skin care.

Skin Deep – A database with lists of ingredients for skin care products and their health risks.