Sustainability in the household – Part I – Detergents
Use more sustainable cleaners at home!
In every household there is dirty laundry, dirty dishes, dirty work surfaces, doors, floors and the bathroom requires some intensive cleaning and care at times! In the supermarkets and drugstores, we are confronted with a large number of cleaning agents. We are spoiled for choice with so many options. But is it really necessary to use a chemical-polluting agent for each area of the house? Or is all this stressful for the environment and also our wallets?
YES! It is okay though! There are now so many sustainable products on the market that we can buy to help our environment. In organic supermarkets especially there is a huge selection. But even in supermarkets such as DM or Rossmann there are options. At the moment I use a lot of products made by Frosch. Simply because they promote their products with nature-based active ingredients, with surfactants of renewable plant origin and free from many harmful chemicals. In addition, there are no animal ingredients, etc. For me, the products of this brand offer a good price-performance ratio.
All in all, I have a white detergent, a colored detergent, a vinegar cleaner, glass cleaner and hand-rinse balm at home.
For the dishwasher I use Bio-Tabs from Sonett.
Sustainable dishwasher tablets by Sonett
Instead of buying expensive organic products from the supermarket, it is still much cheaper and more sustainable to make your own, because packaging is saved. In order to wash my coloreds, I have been using dried horse chestnuts that had been crushed with the food processor for half a year. Instead of a blender, you can also put the chestnuts in a cloth bag and chop them with a hammer. For a machine of coloreds I take three tablespoons of chestnuts and pour them over in a glass of hot water and let them soak either overnight or for about an hour. Quickly you can see the foam that forms on the water; chestnuts contain herbal surfactants that can be used for cleaning. (More about washing with chestnuts in one of the next articles)
Self-made detergent
I usually wash clothes at a maximum of 40 degrees Celsius. Unless it is extremely dirty laundry or bedding. For a house dust allergy bedding should be washed at 60 degrees.
Remember to generally dose detergents correctly. Not much helps in this case, but pollutes our environment.
I have not used softener for five years now, and I have not noticed any difference or disadvantages.
Fragrance dispensers in the bathroom, room sprays with bad odors? I think you can safely omit these remedies. If you smoke, you may prefer to smoke outside, or use natural scents, such as vegetable oils or sliced orange with cloves.
For me, however, the real solution for more sustainable household cleaning is olive oil, soda, core or gall soap, soda, citric acid, vinegar and coffee grounds. With these natural products, many household utensils and unclean surfaces can be cleaned.
With olive oil, I care for my wooden boards or other wooden furniture. Soda can also be used as a detergent in addition to chestnuts. It is also great for cleaning clogged drains.
Coffee grounds as fertilizer
With coffee grounds I fertilize my plants and use it as a scouring agent for particularly unclean areas.
Vinegar and citric acid are perfect for decalcifying. But vinegar has also become an all-round cleaner for me, which cleans cabinet surfaces or the kitchen table and my wash taps. Soda is used as a general-purpose cleaner, e.g. as an oven cleaner, as scouring powder, as a dishwashing detergent or softener replacement.
Nuclear or Gallic soap enable us to produce some cleaning agents:
Environmentally friendly gall soap
Underestimated home remedy Mustard soap: 15 amazing examples of use
Further articles on the subject: http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/chemikalien/wasch-reinigungsmittel/umweltbewusst-waschen-reinigen/fruehjahrsputz
An article by Sabrina von der Heide.
