Monday, March 5

Squeaky Clean!

Wow, I am once again flabbergasted by your response to my confessions of being a slovenly housewife!!
I am about to give you all an overwhelming feeling of superiority by showing you a few before photos - I'm not usually competitive but I don't think any of you can beat my levels of filth - so please don't try!

Now remember my findings are very unscientific. Before I start to talk cleaning products (you have your chance to walk away now) I do think that you need to consider what your cleaning commitment is - i.e. are you a little and often sort of girl; wiping as you go, doing the washing up immediately after dinner? or are you the sort (moi) who leaves everything for another time, then shamed by the imminent arrival of a tidy friend has a major clean-a-thon? It does make a difference to the type of products I will recommend.
Greasy filth!

Even more greasy filth!!
As you can see I had my work cut out - so I divided the cooker in 2, one side I used natural and environmentally friendly products, the other Cif cream cleanser....

Action shot
Results

This was the "natural" side - there were still bits of grease and smearing, but remember my cooker had been left for about 2 weeks

This is the Cif side - like new.
My Conclusions
If you want to use natural and "eco" products you need to not only spend more money buying them, you need to be very diligent with your attention to cleaning on a very regular basis.Another thing that I discovered especially with the natural products like bicarbonate of soda and the borax is the amount of water needed to rinse them - if like me you are on a water metre it's something to consider.
If you do keep up with your cleaning then really milder products are definitely for you.
Under my sink I shall have a real mix - Cif, Ecover cream cleanser, the bicarbonate of soda as my abrasives. Today for instance after I had made steak and kidney I just wiped the still soft grease splatters away with a damp cloth then sprayed the oven top with white vinegar and that was enough to bring it back to looking really clean - if I leave it again to build up then I will certainly need Cif.
Tomorrow I will offer my product recommendations and a few tips!

9 comments:

  1. Oh no!!!!
    I am the leave it to build up over the day and then clean like a mad thing the next morning before the arrival of one of my super clean - super organised friends arrives for coffee..... but i am also very "green" - moving to build an Eco house etc.
    What am i to do?????
    I think i'll wait for more of your results with my fingers crossed - so if you could just let me know when your results will allow me to be lazy and green , that would be great!!!
    Tracy x

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  2. My urgings to clean the grease come and go like the tide... sometimes I wipe clean right away (I admit the easiest way to do it); other times I scrub like crazy to remove what took days to create! ahhhh... I am now liberated! The world knows I have grease! =) PS - do you know the American equivalent to Cif?

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  3. Hello Tracy! I don't think it is possible to be lazy and green - but there are a few things worth trying - the ever so humble washing soda - I am currently trialing the liquid version and I hope that this might be the lazy girl's saviour:)
    Hi Louise:) - I will photograph the Cif and you might recognise the shape of the bottle - I don't think it's crucial to have that particular brand - I will try and have a look on a few sites and speak to my friend who is in NY as she will probably be familar with products both side of the pond.

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  4. you know that i'm girl 2...the guilty cleaner...luckily my mum/friends normally phone before they call round...my dad freaks out at washing up left in the bowl...but if he chooses to pop round unannounced that's the risk he has to take :)

    i'm normally to be found cleaning my oven/washing windows when there's something else that i really should be doing...so i fear that the 100% green way ain't for me. i do try to make up for it in other ways...using less elctricity by not ironing for instance ( can i leave the corner yet by the way?)

    looking forward to more results from the gigilab tomorrow! x

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  5. Hello Kelly, yes you can leave the corner:)
    I can't be green - as green as I'd like to be....but I have a theory that green people aren't that clean.... but that they aren't really bothered about dirt -hope none of them are reading this!

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  6. If I had visitors on a weekly basis the house would always be clean, but living so far away from people we know means we live in a near permanent bomb site.
    What's really annoying though is that I'm a cleaning fiend at work and the other staff can't believe my house is anything but immaculate.

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  7. I'm a bit of a mixture. Sometimes I'm obsessive about cleaning and at other times I let it all go to ruin. I'm particularly bad with the cooker top though. Like you I let it build up too much so that when I come to clean it it's a really horrible job. As for the inside of the oven, well, if I say that smoke comes out for the first few minutes after I turn it on, I think that tells you just how much in need of a clean it is! Problem is that now it's so bad I fear I may need to use something un-eco on it to stand any chance of getting it clean. I am a bit of a mixture with my products as well. I try to use as many ecover products as I can but I do still have in chemical cleaners for those desperation moments when I've left the cleaning to long. I would love to find a really good range of natural products as I do feel very guilty every time I use something bad.

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  8. Someone once said to me 'by the time you have thought about it, you could have done it'. So, I took this advice on board and try to apply it to most things in life, particularly the cleaning. I like seeing your oven clean by the way;)

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  9. Anonymous5:52 AM

    This is a really good recipe for eco friendly cleaner in the kitchen:
    1 cup vinegar
    1 cup ammonia
    1/2 cup bi-carb soda
    3 litres warm water
    mix and out in bottle
    Add a few sprigs of lavendar because it stinks a bit.

    This is good for the kitchen, but not so hot in the bathroom - at least, not my bathroom.

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