Nontoxic Cleaning

Tools and Supplies

Peroxide

We use a lot of peroxide, sometimes a bottle or so a day -- the big 32oz bottles. We use it to wipe down surfaces, like countertops and floors, as a bleach substitute when doing laundry, and more.

Diet tonic water

We use this much the same way we use peroxide: to wipe down surfaces and in our laundry. We sometimes combine the two to soak things in or to wipe down surfaces. Sometimes, if peroxide won't kill it, diet tonic water will. And vice versa.
Proviso: We soaked some keys in a combination of peroxide and diet tonic water and the keys began to gradually dissolve. I had to stop doing this because the keys began to get less reliable for unlocking things. It's effective for killing things but can leave some keys looking like they have scorch marks and should't be used too often on metal items because it can damage them.

Salt

This is good for killing fungus growing around sinks and in bath tubs. I also sometimes pour it in the toilet tank.

Tea bags

We recently began buying large tea bags. Each bag is intended to make a 32 oz. pitcher rather than a cup of tea. We hang one in each toilet tank and switch it out about once a week. We flush the old bag down the toilet first and then put the new one in, usually right before showering because this stuff has a strong effect and the old bag is very nasty. Just hang the string over the side of the tank like you would do in a cup and stick the toilet tank cover on top to hold it in place.

Our toilets are one area where we just lived with a certain amount of dirt rather than use toxic cleaners and we didn't know what to do for a long time. Though I did pour salt in the tank, peroxide in the tank and bowl, etc, nothing seemed all that effective until we began using the teabags. Without any scrubbing, the mold and mildew growing in the toilet bowl has died down considerably. Mold in the rest of the bathroom is also less of a problem -- grows back slower after it is cleaned and some of it has simply died with no further cleaning. My bathroom doesn't have a lot of mold growing in it but my sons' bathroom does. It has been a big problem that has been very resistant to everything we tried. Getting rid of the washer and dryer reduced the amount of mold growing in their bathroom and putting a teabag in the toilet tank also caused big improvements.

I don't have any wood floors, but I have read that tea is a good nontoxic cleaner for wood floors. I imagine I will find more uses for it as time goes on. I'm very impressed with the results we are getting.

Baking Soda

We sometimes use baking soda as a nontoxic cleaner. Mostly, we use those baking soda boxes intended for the fridge and freezer to soak up toxins in problem areas. There are several in the two unused bedrooms of my apartment, several sitting in front of the sliding glass door in my living room, and several sitting on top of (top cabinets) or in front of (bottom cabinets) the particle board kitchen cabinets. On that note, I will say we don't use our particle board kitchen cabinets and almost never open them. We consider them too toxic to store anything in.

How often these boxes need to be switched out depends in part on how bad the problem is. When we first began using them, they had to be switched out more often than they do now. Our home has gradualy gotten cleaner over time, which effects how much gunk the baking soda soaks up.

Hot and Cold

Big temperature differences can kill germs. Some germs are more vulnerable to heat and some to cold. Using both heat and cold back to back can be especially effective. I don't recommend you put anything (other than food) into your freezer as a means to kill anything. We did that with a drinking glass a few months ago. We ended up throwing out the glass, all ice trays and other stuff and we are still trying to resolve the problem it created. Whatever was growing on the glass apparently loves the cold and apparently spread like wildfire.

Everyone should be familiar with boiling medicinal syringes to sterilize them. We do that and have a cook pot set aside specifically for that and a set of tongs that also gets used for nothing else. We also pour boiling water down the sink sometimes to kill stuff. Wipe surfaces down sometimes with a paper towel soaked in hot running water. Use ice to help clean the disposal. (Start the cold water, then start the disposal, then start putting ice down it while it is running. It takes a fair amount of ice but its surprisingly effective to get rid of old food particles and sharpen the blades). We also use hot and cold treatments on laundry, which is described a bit in my remarks on how we wash our clothes (below).

Hand Vac

We have found that living without a normal vacuum cleaner has helped us raise the bar on cleanliness. Our two big issues with vacuum cleaners are that the brushes are disgusting and can spread germs and fungus ( link ) and that a large vacuum cleaner stores a large amount of dirt that you continue to keep in your home.

It took us two tries to give up a normal vacuum cleaner. I talk about that some here. Both times, we felt sick about a week after we stopped using a vacuum cleaner. Both times, I thought we were sick from the place being too dirty and I ran out and bought a new vacuum cleaner. The second time, my son managed to keep stalling me on actually using it. I now believe it was a die-off reaction. I believe that after a week, the germs and crud growing in the carpet were no longer being actively fed by the germs and crud in the brushes of the vacuum cleaner and began to die. Just like drug withdrawal can be a really miserable experience, the side effects of die off can be really miserable. We still periodically experience this when we manage to do something which makes a major improvement in how clean our home is.

No vinegar

I know vinegar is recommended as a non-toxic cleaner. I don't use it and rarely have it in the house. I don't use it for two reasons:

• We work very hard on trying to keep excess acidity under control and vinegar is acid. We find that using alkaline cleaners, like diet tonic water and baking soda, plays a part in our ability to keep excess acidity under control. I feel that using vinegar would be counterproductive in that regard.
• I once wiped down a countertop with both peroxide and vinegar. Then a friend told me that when they combine, they make a toxic chemical, Peracetic Acid. Oops!. Since I use so much peroxide, I feel it is unsafe to also use vinegar. (This article indicates you can use vinegar and peroxide right after each other to more effectively kill germs. But my personal opinion is that using the two together is not sufficiently non-toxic for my needs. According to its Scorecard listing, it's a health hazard to humans which is "More hazardous than most chemicals in 4 out of 8 ranking systems.")

Procedures

We leave our shoes at the front door.

We just don't track germs and who knows what all over our home on the soles of our shoes. We leave it at the front door. That floor area requires frequent cleaning because it is always one of the most vile corners of my home. I think that speaks volumes.

We wash our clothes by hand.

I know this isn't practical for everyone and it took us a long time to get to this point. But after washing things by hand for several months, we decided to physically dismantle our washer and dryer and haul them down to the dumpster in pieces. Taking them apart was a real education. The inside of my washing mashine was so full of mold, I don't think I will ever own one again.

For washing, we soak stuff in the kitchen sink. Sometimes, we use hot water. Sometimes cold. Sometimes we add a pot of boiling water to the hot water. Sometimes we dump a bunch of ice in the cold water. We pour diet tonic water and peroxide into the water with the clothes. We don't use any detergents. My oldest son does most of the clothes washing. He typically soaks them for at least an hour and then rinses each piece under running hot water. He typically has one piece in his hand he is working on and one piece laying in the sink below it. They get rung out thoroughly and hung to dry. We have an indoor drying rack and we run a fan 24 hours a day. We position the fan at a 45 degree angle to it (90 degrees off one of the corners) to maximize effeciency.
Proviso: Our current set up drips on the carpet and has created a mold problem there which we are still working on resolving. It's still less mold than was in our washer and under our washer so I don't fret too much about it except when it is clearly making us ill, then it gets scrubbed again. If I figure out a better method, I will do an update.

If this is just beyond the pale for you, as it will be for many people, I would encourage you to consider ways to minimize the problem with the washer and dryer. It might be better to not have a person with CF sleep next to the laundry area. If you can find a nontoxice means to effectively kill off the stuff growing in the machine, do so. There was also a great deal of mold growing beneath my washer. If you have to use one, consider cleaning under it frequently. We have seen big improvements in our health and functioning since I got rid of my washer and dryer. Long before we gave up the washer and dryer, we gave up toxic detergents. I was never a big fan of bleach and have long used peroxide in its place. We ultimately ended up using peroxide and diet tonic water in our wash and we still use both of those even though we don't use a washing machine.

We also wash our dishes by hand.

I don't think that requires very much comment, except to note that our dishes our cleaner with hand-washing than they were with machine washing.