Happy Day, Earth!

Today is Earth Day, my husband is out picking up trash along a section of road and we are busy preparing for Mechanicsburg's Earth Day Festival. Our contribution to the festival was to do a program on Leaf Printing for the children and to have an ongoing display of Earth friendly cleaning products you can make yourself. By making your own products you know exactly what the ingredients are and also you can often make these products for a fraction of the cost of commercial cleaners. An excellent book to use to pursue this topic is Clean House, Clean Planet by Karen Logan. Here are some of the recipes:

Earth Friendly Scrub
1 2/3 C baking soda
1/2 C water
1/2 C liquid soap (Dr Bronner's is best)
2 T vinegar (add last)
Whisk the first three ingredients together and then add the vinegar. The consistency of this scrub should be so you can easily pour it into a recycled flip top bottle. If it is too thick add some more water. If it is too thin add more baking soda.

Floor Cleanser
1/2 white distilled vinegar
1/2 water
Add a few drops of essential oil to a small amount of alcohol (any type).
Mix all three together.
Note: Essential oils don't mix with water --S0 that is why you mix them with a little alcohol first. Then they will disperse throughout the cleanser.

Do you have problems with Pests?

Basil planted around your porch or tucked behind your ear repels gnats.
Pennyroyal repels fleas
Tansy and also black pepper repels ants
It is easy to make you own Herbal Moth Chaser: Mix Cedar chips, lavender, rue, wormwood and mint together in any proportion. Put the loose herb mix in muslin bags or in nylon stockings and use in place of moth balls in closets and garment bags.

Don't want to make your own Moth Chaser? Don't worry we'll make it for you.
Don't want to make your own cleaning products? Consider using Seventh Generation Brand products. They have a full line of biodegradable, vegetable based products for household cleaning. I use their dish soap and on the back it states: "If every household in the U.S. replaced just ONE bottle of 25 oz petroleum based dish washing liquid with our 25 oz vegetable based product, we could save 81,000 barrels of oil!" Pretty impressive thought if you ask me.

Happy Earth Day to you! Go Green!