Let’s be Green Cleaners
March is the green month. St Paddy’s Day, first day of spring, new grass, tree buds, and lots of spring-cleaning. Hopefully, there will be a day during March when you will be able to throw open your windows and let fresh air fill the house. It’s good to get everything cleaned inside so that when the weather is good outside, you can really enjoy it with a clear and clean conscious.
This spring, how about cleaning green, without chemicals? E-cloths, Swedish dishcloths, and Good Grips washable dusters can make that happen.
E-cloths come in a wide variety of useful products such as dusting gloves, window polishers, bathroom cloths, and floor mops. The best thing about E-cloths is the fact that only water is used. No detergents or soaps are necessary to break down and remove dirt. Endorsed by the Good Housekeeping Institute in the UK, wiping a surface with an e-cloth can remove up to 99% of bacteria, with just water. The material makes the difference. E-cloth is made from very, very fine fibres, one thousand times finer than cotton. Water naturally attracts dirt and bacteria as the molecules are electrically unbalanced (every water molecule has a partial negative charge). When an e-cloth is wetted with water, wrung out and then used to wipe a surface, the dirt, dust or other particles are attracted to the water molecules clinging to the fibres in the fabric. And then are wiped away. Each E-cloth can be laundered over 300 times. That’s a lot of savings in cleaning liquids, plastic bottles and chemical use in your home. Each cloth is tagged to identify the purpose, and the bathroom cloths are yellow, just to avoid cross contamination use.
Swedish dishcloths are another great way to clean and be sustainable. We have been selling these for a number of years, for good reason. Each dishcloth can hold up to 20 times its weight in liquids, will work as hard as 17 rolls of paper towel, can be laundered dozens of times, used safely on all surfaces, and is made from 100% naturally materials. The fabric composition is 70% wood cellulose and 30% cotton fibre. The patterns are pretty, and this year, many of our new dishcloths have a darker background so they look nicer for a longer time. When a Swedish dishcloth is at the end of its useful life, it can be composted. Invented in Sweden in 1949, these lightweight cloths are good for so much more than dishes.
Another great addition to your spring-cleaning kit is a duster, floor or wall, from Good Grips. We have spider webs in our house. Rarely do we see spiders but somehow the webs appear, long, dark threads looping across the walls. (I think the cat handles the spiders but he isn’t into web removal.) It is so satisfying to go along swooping up spider webs. The duster snaps on to the pole so it is easily removed for laundering, and I don’t have to touch the sticky webs. The pole extends and the dusting head pivots so you can clean ceiling fans and other awkward things over your head without needing a ladder or stool. The floor dusting cloth has big loops all around the floor pad, picking up dog hair and dirt from under and around furniture. It is also easily removed for washing. Good Grips do such a good job on making products that work well.
Did you know? The tradition of spring cleaning goes back over 3000 years, particularly in Iran, where ‘shaking the house’ is still practiced in preparation for the Festival of Nowruz, the Persian New Year.