I live in an apartment. A very small apartment. Which translates to: “I, at this moment, am not the proud owner of my very own pooch.” I haven’t had a dog since I left my parent’s home. And you know what? I miss it terribly. I love dogs. I have two cats, and they’re great. But. It’s just not the same. As soon as I’m able, I have every intention of getting myself an English bulldog and a German Shorthair. It’ll take some getting used to again, having dogs around. But I’m prepared for the mess. I cleaned up after my parents dogs for years and got pretty dang good at. I have even developed a modified recipe and technique for cleaning dog urine naturally from things you’ve probably got in your house already. So if you’re lucky enough to have dogs already, and are unlucky enough to have clean up after them, then check out this article and happy cleaning!
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Raise your hand if you don’t love to clean cat urine…….yup…….that’s what I thought… no one. Ok, maybe my counting skills aren’t quite what they used to be. My cat urine cleaning skills, on the other hand, are about as good as my nunchucking skills, which is to say, pretty darn good. Cleaning cat urine just doesn’t have to be a big daunting ordeal. It’s just not that bad. It’s certainly nothing to click your heels over, but still, not bad. It also happens to be quite easy to clean cat urine naturally using supplies you’ve probably got sitting around your house already (e.g. vinegar, peroxide, baking soda, dish soap). With a simple recipe and some step by step directions, this article will explain how to do just that.
Cleaning stained glass windows can be a scary thing. So scary, in fact, most people with stained glass in their homes never clean it. Well, some of those people are probably just lazy. But you can clean stained glass both safely and easily if you just use the right supplies and techniques. Lucky for you, I found out what those supplies are, and I can tell you exactly how to clean stained glass without worrying about damaging the artwork built into your home. And if you’re worried about coming in contact with the lead that probably holds your stained glass windows together, the article even includes some information about how to work around the lead without endangering your health.
Learning how to clean linoleum floors with vinegar is just about one of the easiest and most sensible lessons we can offer a person who is just now realizing that all of these gimmicky cleaners and toxic chemicals are just about large companies playing the average consumer. I’ve been cleaning floors with vinegar for quite some time. Even when I was working as a janitor in our state university system, I was using vinegar to clean floors. Of course, there wasn’t a lot of linoleum there because larger institutions usually choose vinyl over linoleum. For large traffic situations, this makes a lot of sense, but for domestic use, linoleum is cheaper, easier to clean, and is made from all natural materials.
So the next time you’re considering your options for flooring, think about linoleum. The fact that you can clean linoleum with vinegar and it’s easily recyclable makes linoleum the obvious choice for someone looking to install “green” floors.
Cleaning stoves can be one of two things: very difficult, or very easy. If you’ve been using a splatter guard while you cook with oil and butter, you’re probably looking at an easy clean up. If you throw caution to the wind while you cook, like I do, then you’re looking at a more difficult stove cleanup. In this article I approach how to clean a stove using nothing more than baking soda and a little elbow grease. Oh, there’s some vinegar in there too, but it’s mostly there to clean up the baking soda after it’s clumped up with grease and oil. Have you always wanted to know how to clean a stove without using toxic chemicals that may end up in your food? Well, this article will show you how.
I’ll go ahead and admit it: I was a bed wetter. I know the value of a clean mattress. Unfortunately, and perhaps precipitously, I don’t think my parents used organic cleaners to clean up my pee. This may explain why I still suffer from asthma even though I’m going into my very late 20s. Considering that we spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping, it makes sense to be sleeping in a clean environment, free of toxic chemicals that would otherwise make their way into our lungs, our eyes, our skin and everything else we hold dear—if you know what I’m saying. Luckily for you, there are a number of ways to clean a mattress without having to resort to toxic cleaners. We’ll begin with the easiest and perhaps most accessible ways to clean a mattress and work our way down to what’s considered “state of the art” by today’s housekeeping standards.
Article: How to Clean a Mattress
This is our first post on the How to Clean Things Blog, and I’ll take this time to tell you a little bit about How to Clean Things and this blog.
How to Clean Things started as a spin-off of How to Get Rid of Things. When we first started it, we were putting up articles almost every other day for a couple of weeks. Things were working out great, but something was missing, something you might see in a few of the earlier articles: environmentally friendly cleaning practices. So we decided, hey, this is the 21st century, right? If female astronauts can drive from Texas to Florida without having to stop for a potty break, then we should be able to clean something without damaging the environment, right? Yes.
So, How to Clean Things was born anew. We did some redesigning, a little cleanup, and added an ethical responsibility to help protect our fragile ecology while teaching people how to effectively clean just about anything. As you can see from the eight existent articles, we’re still working on the “anything” part.
Speaking of existence: this blog exists to keep you informed about recent article changes and resources that we have found helpful in our quest to clean things in an ecologically sound manner.
