No question about it, my excitement was far more noticeable as Homestead Hottie opened up a gift box mailed to her. Packed inside, nearly a half-dozen bottles of Martha Stewart’s clean products, everything from glass cleaner, toilet bowl scrub, laundry detergent and dish detergent.

Martha claims her product line if “effective, responsible and safe” with most being 99% plant and mineral based cleaning products. All ingredients in the cleaning products are said to be biodegradable with no artificial ingredients. Even the bottles are fully recyclable. These are all great features and just the type of products we’re always on the lookout to use here at the Half-Acre Homestead.

Using this batch of green cleaning products left me thinking Martha should stick to other things, mainly baking that 12 hour cake or hot gluing the most fantabulous wedding decorations you’ve ever seen this side of the Mississippi. If fact, I found her green cleaning products less than effective at their labeled task.

I like the pump spout on this bottle of laundry detergent but that was about the only thing I liked.

Martha Stewart’s clean Laundry Detergent smelled pleasant enough and had a thick, detergent like cream to it. We used the whole bottle of detergent and as long as your clothes weren’t soiled, they came out smelling and looking clean. Light to moderately soiled clothes often came out with stains and dirt still in place. Heavily soiled clothes didn’t stand a chance of coming clean with Martha’s detergent. Any level of soiling required the clothes be washed with our homemade natural laundry detergent.

Steer clear of Martha's Dish Detergent if you're looking for clean dishes.

Much of the same is to be said for the Martha Stewart clean Dishwasher Detergent. This detergent is fragrance free but I noticed right off the bat that it is extremely runny. While most liquid dish detergents are gels, Martha’s is watery and not very viscous at all. We used most of this bottle and found each and every wash with the detergent to leave our dishes covered in a scummy film. Dried or baked on food debris was never removed by the Martha Stewart clean Dishwasher Detergent and most truly dirty dishes had to be washed by hand following a run through the dishwasher. The results were so bad I quit using the detergent and it has since taken me several washes and hard hand-scrubbing to remove the film that Martha Stewart’s detergent left coating my dishes.

Martha's All-Purpose Cleaner has been effective in quickly cleaning lightly soiled areas of the house.

I have used the other cleaning products off and on, mainly just for convenience factors so I don’t have to sprint to another area of the Half-Acre Homestead when I need to clean. For the most part I’ve found the Toilet Bowl cleaner and the All-Purpose cleaner to be pleasant smelling and effective at cleaning. The Carpet Stain Remover had a “spotty” track record on our carpets, cleaning half of the stains with a bleaching effect noticeable while the other half of the stains were left untouched.

As for now, we will continue buying green cleaning supplies from the likes of Seventh Generation and Dr. Bronner’s. The rest of the cleaners we will make on our own. It was wonderful to receive a box full of green cleaners as a gift but I would recommend not buying them for lack of effectiveness.

There’s been a lot of talk about how harsh our everyday, household cleaners really are.  Not only to ourselves but also to our environment.  We’re beginning to see some, commercially produced cleaners that are more natural and biodegradable.  It’s a small niche market right now but as the green movement picks up, more and more companies are turning to more sustainable options.  Not only will it be better for our environment in the long run, it will also protect our children from allergic reactions, poisonings and illnesses in kids associated with chemical-laden cleaning products.

Smaller companies like Seventh Generation are working to produce more natural cleaners and more sustainable lifestyles.  The Burlington, Vermont company lends its employees up to $5,000 to buy a hybrid car or make energy-efficient upgrades to their homes.  They also reimburse employees up to $500 for alternative commuting costs and gives them another $500 to buy energy efficient appliances.  The company also participates in a reforestation program in New Orleans.   Another company making environmentally friendly cleaning products is Method.

Even cleaning giants like Clorox are entering the green age.  This month they’re releasing their new line of cleaners called Greenworks.  The eco-friendly products will be sold right alongside their normal line and will apparently cost about 20% to 25% more.  As part of their move to get on the green movement, the Clorox company also purchased Burt’s Bees for $950 million back in November.

I’ve been interested in making some environmentally friendly cleaners at home.  I recently bought two different books that have different formulas and recipes for homemade cleaners.  I picked up Homemade: How to Make Hundreds of Everyday Products Fast, Fresh and More Naturally and 1,001 Secret Household Hints and Formulas.  I’ll of course post my thoughts on these books when they finally arrive.  I’m hoping they turn out to be helpful in our pursuit to continue living in a more sustainable way in 2008.

Do you have a homemade or store-bought cleaner that’s environmentally friendly and works great?  Post a comment and let us know about it!

I generally mulch mow my lawn meaning I finely chop the clippings and leave them on my lawn to decompose and provide green manure for the rest of the growing season.  If the lawn is too thick or too long, I’ll compost the clippings.  Most of the time it just simply doesn’t make sense to throw grass clippings away.  It’s a great waste of time and resources to bag all those clipping, haul them out to the curb for pickup and watch all that water and fertilizer you bought get hauled off to the landfill.

That said, there are times when you do need to bag yard waste and there are greener alternatives to the normal plastic lawn garbage bag you might buy.  This past week I’ve been trying out some EconoGreen Plastics bags made by Jig-A-Loo.  The company has just released a line of trash bags and plastic drop cloths made entirely from recycled plastic.  They also claim the bags are “oxodegradable”.  Supposedly an additive in the plastic helps accelerate the decomposition of the plastic into simple organic compounds when it’s exposed to oxygen.

In my tests using a handful of bags the company sent me to try out, I found them to look, feel and hold up like most normal bags.  They weren’t any more puncture resistant to twigs and sticks but also weren’t like the thin, cheap trash bags you might find at the discount store.  If you do have some trash that needs to be thrown away and can’t be composted, these bags seem like a good option to help reduce the environmental impact at least just a bit.

The EconoGreen line includes large trash bags, tall kitchen bags, lawn and leaf bags, contractor bags, garage and automotive bags, wet/dry vac liner bags and drop cloths.  Home Depot is said to be carrying the full line of EconoGreen plastic products.

That’s why green cleaning products like vinegar are so much more beneficial to your house and home.  Not only is it cheap, especially when you buy it in bulk like we do, but you can find it just about anywhere and it’s safe.  White vinegar has so many uses, I was surprised to find out all that it can do.

1)  Have ants?  Vinegar will actually repel ants and eliminate their scent trails so more can’t come looking for their lost friends.

2)  Have lime-scale or hard water spots in your bathroom or sinks?  Simply spray vinegar on the scale or stains and let it sit.  After a few minutes wipe clean and scale be gone!

3)  Coffee pot running a little sluggish?  Run a batch of vinegar through your coffee pot cycle to clean those hard water deposits inside.  Rinse with water when done.

4)  Stinky pit stains or smelly clothes?  Spray vinegar on your clothes before you put them into the wash.  Vinegar works as a fabric softener and deodorizer.

5)  Got pet stains on your carpet or furniture?   Douse the spot with a healthy dose of vinegar.  Not only will it eliminate the odor but it will also deter your animal from coming back.

6)  Chopping onions or cooking them?  Some people have said a bowl of vinegar set out in their kitchen will scrub the onion odor right out the air.

7)  Looking for a scrubby bubbles cleaner alternative?  Mix vinegar with baking soda and dump into your toilet for a clean scrub or pour down your drains to clear and freshen them.

Do you have more ideas for how to use vinegar around the house?  If so, leave a comment about how you put it to use in your green home.

T remarked that the odor was so bad her eyes were watering and she was almost certain the dog had been sprayed because of the way she was acting.  Co-workers told me to pickup lots of cans of tomato juice on the way home, with extra to make a Bloody Mary to enjoy during the bathing process.  While I’ve heard good things about the tomato juice, I’ve heard it takes several washes and wondered if there was anything better and not chemically based for getting rid of the smell.

That’s when I sent a good friend of mine back in Flagstaff a message to see what he’s used.  He had the unfortunate experience of having both his dogs sprayed and then they ran into the house, fumigating his two story abode with the smell of woodpussy.  He got back to me with his favorite and effective green skunk deodorizer recipe and here it is:

Green Skunk Wash Deodorizer Recipe

-  1 bottle of hydrogen peroxide

-  1/4 cup of baking soda

-  A few drops of liquid dish soap

Mix all ingredients together and get to washing!

As it turns out, I got home and the dog did not get sprayed, thankfully.  It seemed as if the creature simply wandered through the yard and was quite smelly but never deposited it’s fragrance on my four-legged beast outback.  Do you have a good home remedy or green recipe for getting rid of a skunky smell?  Leave a comment with your recipe or email me and we’ll post it in a future article!

Last year, I discovered some creative ways to recycle your Christmas tree.  You can check them out by reading this post called Christmas Tree-cycling.

We’ve been receiving a lot of gifts by mail this year and thus have dealt with an overload of packing materials.  Most people think you can only throw all that stuff out but luckily you don’t have to.  You can donate those packing materials back to shipping stores.  They’ll gladly re-use them and keep them from just a one-time use before going into the landfill.  You can also call the “Peanut Hotline” at (800) 828-2214.  For more about packing materials read The Joy (and horror) of Packing Peanuts.

For electronic items or toys, hopefully you opted to power those items with some rechargeable batteries.  That’s really the best option.  But once those batteries lose their charge and aren’t useful anymore you can still recycle them instead of throwing them out.  Visit the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation for more details on where to send them.

I’m not a parent yet but I think purging old toys and donating them is a wonderful idea, especially after the holidays when the kids are overrun with new things to play with.  There are several ways parents run this but the most popular seems to be when the parent sits down with their child and asks them to pick out a toy they don’t use anymore (one for each new toy received) and then donate them to charitable thrift stores.

Did you get a new cell phone for Christmas?  How about donating the old one if you don’t want to keep it around as a backup!  A group called CollectiveGood will take your old cell phone and you can write it off as a tax-deductible donation.  If you live near one of 1500 UPS stores spread across the U.S., you can head over to their location.  Each store has a free envelope so you can drop off items like cell phones, ink cartridges, digital cameras and MP3 players and send them in for recycling.  The shipment is also free.  Thanks UPS!

First, consider alternative ways to wrap your presents instead of using the traditional roll of paper purchased from the store.  You can use just about anything.  One of my personal favorites is using the “funnies” from the newspaper.  It’s colorful and fun!  You can also old posters, maps, sheet music and any other piece of recycled paper you can think of.  People have also suggested wallpaper scraps, scarves, pillowcases and fabric remnants.

If you’re more into bags, a lot of the shopping bags you get while doing the holiday shopping could double as gift bags once you get to wrapping.  You can just use some ribbon and tissue paper to dress it up a notch.  Clothing can be rolled up tightly and tied with a piece of ribbon before sticking in a stocking or placing it under the tree.  Large items in a box can be hidden with a blanket or by tieing a scarf around it.  Small items like jewlry or cell phones can be hidden inside the tree.  I’ve done this a couple of times and have gotten a lot of enjoyment watching my recipient trying to find their hidden gift and then see their surprise when they finally pull it out of the branches.

It’s also good to think about how you can recycle all that wrapping paper.  A lot of municipal recycling programs can’t recycle the glossy, printed wrapping paper.  If that’s the case you might want to consider going for the old fashioned look by using plain craft paper.  You can use rubber stamps to dress up the wrapping paper and decorate it yourself.  Than you can rest a little easier knowing that mountain of paper won’t be headed toward the landfill.

Do you have any suggestions on how to reduce, reuse or recycle your gift wrapping?  Please share them if you do!