Tips for a Chemical Free Home

Over the past two years, I have been replacing the things we use in our homes and on our bodies with more natural, chemical-free products.  In today’s post, I am going to focus on the items that we are using in our home. Hopefully, you will find this information helpful as you get on the path to a more chemical-free home as well.

Two Important Points

1. Just because they stick a natural ingredient or two in there, doesn’t mean they removed the chemicals. For example, if your favorite dish soap swaps out its artificial fragrance for essential oils, but makes NO other changes – they can say “now made with essential oils” – but all of the bad ingredients are still there.

2. Natural does NOT mean non-toxic. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t regulate what it means to say “Natural” on the cleaning product bottle. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a few brands that have been tested and had some of their products still contain toxic ingredients (even though they advertise as natural) are Seventh Generation, Method, Green Works, and Mrs. Meyers, to name a few. It’s not to say some of their products aren’t fine, as you will see on the EWG website – but it does show that some of their products are in fact NOT fine, as far as toxic ingredients go.

Scents and Fragrances

Everyone likes their home to smell nice. One easy way to do that is to keep it clean. For the extra scent boost though, you should stay away from the use of traditional air fresheners, candles, wax melts, etc. These things release chemicals into the air we breathe.

For candles and melts, try to buy soy candles made with natural ingredients, usually using essential oil for fragrance instead of chemicals.  There are lots of small-batch makers that are making amazing products, a couple of my favorites are Free Reign Farm and Beauty & Bliss.

For air and fabric fresheners, there are natural alternatives. I like this kind from the Sun & Earth.

Essential Oils

Essential oils are a great, natural way to make a variety of chemical-free products at home. It is important, though, to learn a bit about essential oils before trying to make your things.

Essential Oil Education

For example, you shouldn’t put undiluted essential oil directly on your skin. Mixing essential oils with water or a water-based ingredient like witch hazel doesn’t actually dilute the oil, only carrier oils of some sort dilute the essential oil. If not formulated properly, your homemade concoction can grow bacteria and actually be quite harmful.

Though people don’t really have allergies to essential oils, it is possible to have sensitivities to certain oils (both physical and emotional.)  Also, some oils shouldn’t ever be used around pets, and cats are even more sensitive than dogs.

A couple of great resources are the websites for Plant Therapy Essential Oils and Edens Garden Essential Oils. They both have informative blogs that include information and recipes about the proper use of essential oils in your home.

Buying Pure Essential Oils

It’s also important to make sure you are buying pure essential oils. Young Living and Doterra are very popular, but Eden’s Garden and Plant Therapy are two other good, pure brands. You don’t have to buy the most expensive oils, but you do want to make sure they are pure. Don’t just go online and find the cheapest bottle of essential oil you can find – chances are it isn’t pure.  And if you are paying for 10% lavender oil mixed with 90% almond oil, you are actually paying more per ounce for the actual essential oil anyway.

Essential Oil Diffusers

Back to the air freshener topic, you can buy an Essential Oil Diffuser for use in your home.  Diluted oil gets put into the diffuser and expelled into the air. Again, you want to be aware of pets and other family members when considering which oil(s) to diffuse. If you are interested in more information about essential oil use around pets, there is an Animal Aromatherapy group on Facebook.

Ingesting Essential Oils

One other thing I wanted to mention here is that you should not ingest essential oils. Some companies say that you can, but opinions on this differ and mine is that you shouldn’t. You can make your own decision on what’s right for you.

Chemical-Free Cleaning Products

Using chemical-free cleaners in your home is also very important. Think about what you clean your floor with and then walk on it with your bare feet. Or, your kids play on it, and pets walk around and lay on it. What’s in your floor cleaner? How about the dishes you wash and then eat food from, what is in your dish detergent? How about the fumes that are released in the air after you are done cleaning your bathroom, what chemicals are in those fumes?

Truly Free

I recently found Truly Free and love their products! The first time you purchase one of any type, it comes with a plastic bottle – but after that, all you receive is the refillable pouch. The products are natural, work great, AND this system is eco-friendly.

Norwex

Another company I want to mention here is Norwex – the basic idea is that you can clean with just Microfiber cloths and water. There are no chemicals or cleaning products needed for most of your home, which makes cleaning totally non-toxic and will save time, money, and your health.

Cleaning with only Norwex Microfiber and water reduces the need for harmful chemicals in your home. Norwex products remove up to 99% of bacteria from a surface with only water, and your home stays cleaner longer! The micro silver in the wet cloth self-cleanses within 24 hours to drastically reduce mold, fungi, and bacterial odor.

Norwex also saves time and money. A typical family of four saves almost $600 a year on cleaning supplies – plus you clean in about half the time!  My friend Rebekah over at Simply Living Green is a Norwex consultant, and she also wrote this blog post about how to clean your home without chemicals if you’d like to check it out.

Other Natural Cleaning Ingredients

Some other great natural products to have on hand for chemical-free cleaning include hydrogen peroxide and vinegar. Lots of hospitals use peroxide as a disinfectant instead of bleach. Also, bleach is more of an odor masker – especially when it comes to mold – while vinegar actually kills bacteria and mold spores. 

Dishes and Laundry

When it comes to dishes and laundry, these are perhaps some of the most chemical-free items in the home. I mentioned above that we EAT FOOD off whatever we wash with our dish soap and detergent, but we also WEAR CLOTHES next to our skin right after we wash them with our laundry soap.  I don’t like eating soap, nor does my sensitive skin like artificial chemical fragrances.

Dish Washing

We have hard water in our area that is really mineral-heavy.  While we do have a water softener, we still use both dish detergent and a boosting agent in our dishwasher. We also use dish soap for handwashing pots, pans, and other large items.

In my research for this article, I found out that according to EWG, the brand I’m using is currently rated a D. Their rating scale goes from A just like grades in school, so D is not good! So, I actually don’t have a brand to recommend for dishwashing needs. If you have any suggestions, please share them in the comments!

This shows that no matter how hard we try, we aren’t going to get everything perfect all the time. Do what you can to make smart shopping choices, make natural replacements as you can, and adjust accordingly as you learn new information.

Laundry

When it comes to laundry, I make my own laundry detergent with borax, washing soda, and Fels Naptha soap. You can get all of these in the cleaning aisle at your local Walmart, or Amazon has this Laundry Soap Kit.  When it comes to the Fels Naptha soap, the bars are kind of hard and need to be grated. I always use my food processor to do this, because I make a HUGE batch at a time and wouldn’t be able to grate that many bars by hand... Just make sure you clean your food processor really well when you are done so you don’t have any surprises next time you shred food

You also don’t want to use dryer sheets. You can buy dryer balls instead and from time to time, put a few drops of essential oils on them. They last a long time. There are also some makers on Etsy who make really pretty felted wool balls that also last a long time.

Chemical-Free Pest Control

Fleas and Ticks

In our house, we have two dogs and one cat. I LOATHE using the monthly flea and tick preventive, and quite honestly we don’t.  We keep some Advantage on hand in case there is an outbreak, but we don’t use it every month. I just recently bought some plant-based flea prevention for my dogs and cat that we will be trying soon. This is kind of a hard one because though we are striving for a chemical-free home, no one wants fleas in their house.  Diatomaceous earth can also be a great way to get rid of fleas, among other uses. I recently bought some, but {thank goodness}, have not needed to try it out yet.

Ants

As far as controlling ants in the home, once each summer we usually get a quick outbreak of tiny kitchen ants.  This year, I went and grabbed some of those plastic ant traps, and without even thinking about them smelling like peanut butter, I put one in a place that wasn’t totally accessible to the dogs, but one of them found a way to get at it because he smelled the peanut butter.

I found him with it in his mouth, and I didn’t know if he got any of the poison or not, so I used the hydrogen peroxide trick to make him vomit. You use 1 teaspoon per 10 pounds of your dog’s weight and make them drink it.  He weighs 50 pounds, so I put 5 teaspoons in a shot glass and shot it into his throat. Poor buddy. Within 10 minutes, he vomited though!  I learned my lesson on that one.

Cornstarch is a natural alternative for ant removal. Sprinkle it wherever they are, and they will eat it and take it back to the nest. They are unable to digest it, so it kills them.

Roaches and Rodents

Borax can also be a good bug and rodent repellent, especially if you live in an area prone to roaches.  Sprinkle it in the kitchen in places (under the refrigerator, stove, kitchen sink cabinet, etc.) and it will repel them.

Do Your Own Research

All of this being said, the best thing to do in your quest for a chemical-free home is research, research, research.  Google is your friend. Google “Natural recipe for … ” or “natural remedy for …” and bam, results!  Do keep an eye on the websites that have the information though, you want to make sure you are getting your information from trusted sources.

Along the same lines, be careful of Pinterest recipes. As I already mentioned, proper formulations and dilutions of essential oils are very important. And, mixing certain household ingredients can be dangerous as well. Find a trusted website and use their recipes. There are lots of books on Amazon as well, but again there make sure it’s a trusted author – anyone can publish a book.

How to Get Started

I talked about some of these ingredients already, but you can make lots of homemade things with liquid castile soap, vinegar, borax, essential oils, etc. Once you get more familiar with it, you will end up just having these things on hand in your home, and easily being able to make something as needed. Empty spray bottles is another handy thing to have on hand. Essential oils do best when not mixed/placed in plastic, so you might consider some glass spray bottles.

I hope you have found this information to be helpful. I’d love to hear from you in the comments about any natural alternatives you have found to work well in your home!

Here is a video I posted to my YouTube account that has most of the information I included here in this post if you’d like to check it out. As always, thanks for being here with me!