There is a huge “Green” movement going on right now. Suddenly everyone is all concerned about Mother Earth and how our waste and treatment of this planet is destroying it. Duh. I think humanity is about a day late and a dollar short, but I respect what people are trying to do. Companies have jumped in on that too! You have organic fruits & veggies in the produce section of your store. You have cleaning products that are “greener” and pretty much just about anything else you could imagine.
Personally, I’m not much of a follower as far as trends and fads go and tend to be on the front of them (like my cutting my denim skirt shorter and all the girls at school telling me the fraying was hideous and one year later buying skirts with said fraying.) So my jumping in on this “Green” thing really has nothing to do with our lovely planet (sorry Mother Earth!) It is 100% due to my OCD.
I have OCD (diagnosed too!) and my big thing is germs. I loathe them with a passion. I am constantly using hand sanitizer or wiping things down. I refuse to share my chapstick and when my own husband asks for a drink of my water I cringe. I have been this way for as long as I can remember. It’s actually been a long standing joke in my family. The thing is, OCD really isn’t funny and neither are the consequences of having it. Often times, my hands are cracking and bleeding due to excessive washing. I have gotten out of bed in the middle of the night because I felt dirty and needed to clean up leaving me exhausted and sleep deprived. If I just washed my hands, I won’t pet our animals for fear of germs. The older I get, the worse my OCD gets.
My irrational fear of germs has lead me to wiping things down constantly. In doing this, I am exposing not only myself, but my entire household to the harsh chemicals inside cleaning products on a regular basis! I’m not sure if you have ever read the back of your Windex bottle or your toilet bowl cleaner, but there is some scary stuff in there. I had no idea! I never thought the very products I am using to protect me from getting sick are the same products that are making me feel as bad as I do. The sore throats, the runny nose, the headaches, the burning sensation on my skin, the list goes on. I didn’t once think it could be the cleaning products, until I did my research.
I’ll be honest; I’m not much a researcher and I pretty much always bought cleaning products based on their commercials. If I liked the commercial, chances are I would like the product. So I really had no idea what I was bringing into my home. When I started finding other people out there who were having the same issues as me, it scared the crap out of me. If it was making ME feel this bad, what could it do to my animals? Or worse, our future children! I decided we had to make a change. My OCD is never going to go away, so I needed to find a safer way to work around it, insert greener cleaners.
I’m not just talking Eco-Friendly Mr. Clean; I’m talking vinegar and water. There are so many natural products that do the exact same thing as the name brand cleaners, just without the dye or the harsh chemicals. As a society we have been brainwashed into thinking we had to get these lemon and pine scented products or our home was dirty. I have found that simply isn’t true. There are TONS of recipes out there to make the same cleaning products you use, with materials you more than likely already having in your home! So I’m hooked.
I went over things with T last night and he looked at me like I had 6 heads. I’ll admit, the whole going “green” thing does seem a bit out of no where, but aren’t most great ideas? I’m going to start simple. I am going to make my own general cleaner (for counters & floors), a glass cleaner (we have tons of mirrors) and our own laundry detergent. As luck would have it, we’re out so figured now is a great time to make that switch as well. Eventually I would like to make my own dishwasher detergent, but I still have 3 boxes of it and since it doesn’t come into contact with my skin, I figured it would be safe to use for a while longer. There are a couple other things I would like to change too (like our air fresheners!), but I’m baby stepping this. I need to be realistic.
Another huge perk to doing this, we’re going to save a butt ton of money. Since I am an anti-germ freak, we buy cleaning products on the regular. At any given time I have at LEAST 2 bottles of window cleaner, 3 bottles of toilet bowl cleaner, 1 bottle of soft scrub, 1 can oven cleaner, 3 packs of Clorox (or cheaper brand) wipes, 2 cans of endust, 1 container of pine sol and a few others that aren’t coming to mind this second. Crazy huh? At $2-5 per bottle/can for these items, I would say we easily spend upwards of $50 a month just in cleaning products. So it’ll be nice to have some extra $$ back in our pocket. Initially it’ll be a bit pricy to buy the new containers and rags, mop, bucket (yep, going back to the OG mop) and everything else, but in the long run it’ll be a huge money saver for us.
I’ll keep you updated to how the adjustment is going and what financial/physical effect it is having. I’m hoping that in a month we’ll really start seeing all the positive results from this switch and be able to make more.
No comments:
Post a Comment