How to Efficiently Green Clean Your Kitchen

With minimal effort you can clean and deoderize your kitchen with natural, nontoxic, inexpensive products- combine tasks and save time and elbow grease!

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• white vinegar
• baking soda
• hot water
• spray bottle (empty)
• microfiber cloths (ideal!) or kitchen sponges
• liquid dish soap

1. Mix 1 tsp liquid dish soap with 1 cup of white vinegar in a spray bottle and fill the remainder of the bottle with warm water. You now have an all-purpose cleaning solution!
2. Spray this generously over greasy/ soiled countertops of any material, and onto greasy stove tops. For baked on grease or food remnants, sprinkle baking soda onto area (it will fizz when it contacts vinegar- no worries!) Wipe away with damp microfiber cloth or kitchen sponge. Take dirty baking soda (it will be caked up) to sink and dump into drain.
3. Follow up with 1/4 cup or so of clean baking soda, sprinkled all over sink basin- scrub lightly with microfiber cloth or kitchen sponge to dislodge food remnants and stains.
4. Turn your attention to the coffee maker- brew 1 cup of white vinegar (remove the old coffee grounds first!)and then pour hot vinegar into baking soda coated sink- Voila! Drain cleaned and deodorized! Brew a full pot of plain water in the coffee maker, then dump hot water down drain and wipe away any remaining baking powder from the sink.
5. Finally, empty the trash can and recyclables, spray with your homemade cleaning solution and allow to dry. Sprinkle a bit of baking soda in the bottom of the container to prevent odors.

Tips & Warnings

• An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! When pan-frying or sauteeing, cover the unused stove burners with a cookie sheet- the spattered oil can be easily cleaned from the cookie sheet, saving you the time you'd use cleaning the burners themselves.
• Baking soda is an excellent mild scouring agent and can be used on nearly any kitchen surface- glass oven windows, enamel stove-tops, porcelain sinks, stainless-steel fixtures: none will suffer harm from the scouring action of baking soda.
• Vinegar, concentrated or dilute, is an excellent grease cutter. For especially greasy pots and pans, spray a bit of your all purpose solution to cut the final oily traces that are sometimes left behind when hand washing.
• Keep an open box of baking soda in the fridge to control odors! Remove the top layer every month or so and dump down drain (renew reuse recycle!)
• Vinegar and baking soda, while non-toxic as food items and safe for the environment, could still cause stomach upset if one consumed enough. Be sure to keep even these homemade cleansers out of little hands!
• Vinegar and baking soda are NOT ideal for cleaning wood- such as carving boards or butcher block. Watch for more green articles from me to address this and other types of green cleaning!