Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Crawling Machine vs. Clean Floors

Now that Charlotte is a crawling machine. (Update: On all fours now!) We have started to focus on the cleanliness of our floors and what chemicals we put on them. In an adult house it normally isn't thought of unless you are trying to rid your house of harmful chemicals or you crawl a lot... *sounds of crickets* ...well anyway, we have primarily switch over to an "all natural" or buzz word "green" way of caring for our floors. But while I was thinking about writing about this I thought to myself well what is in the products we used to use?

Swiffer Wetjet Antibacterial:
On the front of the package were the active ingredients...
Didecyl Dimethyl Ammonium Chloride (DDAC): From my brief research it is a skin irritant, that looks like it. In large doses on ingestion increased incidence of blood-related conditions. So okay this could be bad, but not likely.

Chlorhexidine diacetate: Generally is of low to moderate acute toxicity, but is highly acutely toxic when applied to the eye. It causes liver effects in animal studies. Although moderately to highly toxic to fish. So don't put it down your drain!

On the side of this bottle it says this contains no phosphate, chlorine bleach, or ammonia. I guess that is a good thing. But right above that it does state that this product is harmful to humans. Interesting.


Well there is my research. I pulled one thing out from under my sink and that was the result.

What do I use now? Great question...
Primarily water, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, baking soda and essential oils. NOT all one time. But all of them can be ingested. (Well I wouldn't suggest drinking rubbing alcohol but that does evaporate very quick.)

Quick recipes (We wrote these with a Sharpy pen on our bucket): Per 1 gallon of warm water. Wood: 1 Cup of vinegar. Linoleum: 1 squirt of dish soap. Tile: One capful of rubbing alcohol. Vinyl: 1/2 cup ammonia. Each of these I add about 5-10 drops of essential oil. I am a fan of tea tree and lavender. Carpet: sprinkle baking soda leave for 30 mins and vacuum.
Using these we save a ton and now all I need to worry about is what Luna brings and leaves on the floor.
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