DIY Green Cleaning Products

Easy cleaning products you can make at home -

Having a clean and comfortable living space is just plain lovely, and it is a simple pleasure that we all can enjoy.  Most people agree that keeping toxic chemicals out of our homes is important, and this leaves us with a dilemma.  The green cleaning products on the market today are often overpriced, less green then they claim, and/or produced by the same giant corporations that churn out the bad stuff.  But, fear not, for as you may have heard, making your own safe and effective cleaning products is both easy and inexpensive!  I run my own Eco-Friendly cleaning business in central Maine, Quality Green Cleaning, and I have gotten very good and mixing and using my homemade cleaners.  Here are my favorite tried and true recipes:

All Purpose Cleaner
1c. White vinegar
2c. Water
5-8 drops peppermint oil

This is a great cleaner!  Mix it up in a spray bottle, grab a few reusable rags and your ready to go (you may want to buy a few funnels for easy mixing)  It wont streak or leave a film, is safe to use on almost all surfaces and fabrics, including food surfaces like counters and cutting boards, and it works.  It really shines (*pun*) on windows and mirrors.  The best way to clean a dirty window or mirror is to spray it on and wipe with a lint free microfiber cloth to remove any yuck, then use a small squeegee for a perfect streak free shine every time.  Little squeegees make doing windows a snap!  Don't have a squeegee (well go buy one!) then you can polish with a dry cloth for the same effect.

Floor Cleaner
2.5c. Water
2.5c. White Vinegar
20 drops Tea Tree Oil

This is another non residue cleaner, and it works great on laminate, tile, and finished wood floors.  I like to take this stuff in a spray bottle and spray and damp mop as I go.  It dries without leaving a film, but you can buff with a dry cloth for extra shine if you're so inclined.  You can also store this in a jug and add it to warm mop water if that's your style - great if you have wintry salt stains on your floors.  It cuts through sticky gunk like nobodies business.  Tea Tree oil has antimicrobial properties and smells really "clean".  An all around great floor cleaner.

Wood Floor Cleaner
1c Castile Soap (peppermint is nice)
6c. Warm Water
10-20 drops Pine Oil

If you have a wood floor that is not polyurethaned or sealed, this might be the stuff for you.  I use this on waxed, unfinished, or very worn floors (where the finish is mostly worn away)  Whenever dealing with unsealed floors always try a little first to see what's what.  This cleaner is great at getting up dirty gunkyness that older, seldom cleaned, wood floors tend to collect, it also nourishes the wood and protects it a bit.  It will leave your floor glowing with good health!  Castile soap is awesome, I use Brommer's, but there are a lot of great brands out there.  Again, spray it on, and dry or wet mop, depending on how dirty the floors are.  This stuff really responds to a good buff afterwords with a dry rag or mop.  (This cleaner is not good on laminate or polyurethane treated floors as it can be slippery or leave a residue on those surfaces.)


Wood Cleaner/Polisher
1/2 c. Canola Oil
1/4 c. Castile Soap
1/4 c. warm Water

Keep this in a jar (old peanut butter jar works good).  It will separate so shake before you use.  Use a cloth to rub into wood, then buff with a clean dry cloth to a glorious shine.  Shines, protects, and discourages dust.

Borax & Baking Soda are the other major players in my cleaning arsenal.  They both work great on stainless steel sinks, bathtubs, tile, grimy or stained floors (laminate), etc.  Both can also be used in toilets to remove stains and odor. Sprinkled on a damp sponge or cloth they add scrubbing power, or you can make a paste with a bit of warm water to really clean a grimy, greasy bathtub. Be careful on flat top stoves and granite though, as it can scratch.  They both can leave a gritty residue, so rinse very well, and if using on a bathtub or shower I recommend spraying the tub down after you rinse with the all purpose cleaner, wiping, and even buffing and drying with a cloth after to make the tub shine and prevent water stains. You can also use your handy squeegee for this!    

I also recommend Hydrogen Peroxide on mildew, or rust stains.  It has a bleaching action and if left to sit a bit can work wonders (it can pull color from fabrics though, be careful!).

A few drops of any essential oil with a few cups water in a spritz bottle makes a great fabric and air freshener.  I like geranium oil!

These are the basics of my cleaning kit.  All so cheap and easy to make, and all work amazingly well and are safe for you, your family, pets, and plants.  Happy cleaning!

A Look Back - The Books

I love to read, and I love to know what everyone else is reading and what they're thinking about it all.  Nothing is quite as pleasing as running my eyes down a long list of books, a list of books read by a close friend, and noting what I've also read, what I would never read and perhaps a few I'd wondered about.  Such a list has the makings of a long and varied conversation that, among my wild and amazing friends, could go on through the afternoon, through a few bottles of wine, and right into the evening.  And, with the January Maine nights coming on shortly after lunch, being bone cracking cold and hauntingly dark, I think just such a list should be presented here.

This has proved to be the year of the Woman, and won't my good friend and roommate, a tireless champion for what he feels is the unsung woman in all of life's varied pursuits, be glad to hear it.  Without intention or awareness I sat down to my list of 38 books read this year and discovered my top 4 were of female authorship, and my top 10 harbored 8 more brilliant ladies.  Rather remarkable considering how skewed (according to my roommate) I tend to be towards male authors (and male everything).  But, I will not de-emphasize the feminine this year, as it was a pervasive undercurrent to my reading.

The Top Five

1. The Passion, Jeanette Winterson - This was my find of the year, and a remarkable one it seems to be.  I happened upon this book in a short article on NPR Books.  I requested the hard to find title from Bangor Public Library on a bored whim.  I had liked the way the author of the article (Stephanie Staal, http://www.npr.org/2011/08/05/133476730/three-gutsy-heroines-to-celebrate-womens-history) had made the book sound so unusual, sexy, and intelligent.  I forgot about it entirely, and when the book showed up at the Maine State Library I turned it over in my hands having no idea why I'd requested it.  Which made it all the more delightful when I read it and just loved the hell out of it.  It is indeed unusual, sexy, and very well written, but to that I would add romantic, violent, heart breaking, funny, and beautiful.  I don't know what I loved more, the setting of a lunatic Venice, the bizarre & sexy leading lady, the unabashed melancholy of the prose, or the haunting way it lingers with me even now, but it is a precious and rare kind of a novel that everyone should take the time to read.


2. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf - I read this novel for about the 5th time this past year.  That's cheating! you may be yelling, but it's my list and I can put whatever I want on it.  This book, always a massively enjoyable read for me, was particularly potent this year. I found myself startled anew by the way Virginia Woolf writes about the inside workings of my heart as if she'd studied the minutia of my secret thoughts for many lifetimes.  It is incredible; she seems to mirror back our own lives, and does so with a precision that makes you feel dam near afraid, and to top it off, she does this in settings that are so far removed from our own day to day life, yet looses nothing in the transference, it remains pitch perfect.  Her books are the writings of a master of both language and the nuances of suffering, and her works are genius.


3. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor - An author I had wanted to read for some time, so I was pleased when this collection of short stories was chosen for my book group's summer read.  Short stories are far and away my favorite thing to read, and this collection was everything I had hoped - brilliant, dark, funny, grotesque, haunting. She gives voice to the displaced, painting local color and human suffering and joy in one stark snapshot of life, shocking and sometimes grotesque, and of course haunting.  Southern Gothic at it's best, written by an amazingly honest and observant woman.  She stands shoulder to shoulder with some of my favorites - Donna Tartt, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, and William Faulkner.


4. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton - I do love Classic Literature and I was eager to read this well loved and much praised story of life in the upper crust society of New York circa 1870.  And though I knew I would like it, I ended up absolutely adoring it.  The final scene of this book is what I would call a delicate mind blower, and it gives perfect expression of an absolutely indefinable experience.  The book is quick, engaging, amazingly complex and well written, and it leaves you feeling like you know something very slippery and beautiful and important in a way you will never loose.  A must read for the classical lover of love.


5. A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines - This book should have been a grind to get through, given the dark and ugly content and the impossibly unlikeable characters, but despite (or perhaps due in part because) these gruesome details and ornery folks I found it to be a perfect story, woven like good poetry, turning the cumbersome and filthy frenetic into a single note that goes off in your gut like a revelation.  Gaines shows a deep understanding of the human psyche and a comprehensive sense of place, both literal and metaphorical.  It is a really involved and complicated grouping of emotions, ideas, and facts turned into this simple, heart breakingly elegant story.  Exceptionally honest and compassionate.


And for those who love lists like I do, here are the rest of them, ordered from favorites down to the despised :

The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Gunnar's Daughter, Sigrid Undset
The House of the Spirit, Isabel Allende
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote
Full Dark No Stars, Stephen King
Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
The Magus, John Fowles
The Complete Works of Flannery O'Conner
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clark
Diary, Chuck Palahniuk
The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami
Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
11/22/63, Stephen King
The Once and Future King, T. H. White
Palace Walk, Naguib Mahfouz
The Hunters, Claire Messud
Eat, Pray, Love, Melissa Gilbert
The Memoirs of Catherine the Great
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Nine Lives, William Dalrymple
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
Barabas, Par Lagerkvist
The Dwarf, Par Lagerkvist
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, Joan Didion
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris
Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Julian's House, Judith Hawkes
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
William Faulkner, Carolyn Porter

Some Thoughts on Guadalajara, Travel & Life

My Journey through Five Airports and One Mexican City

I am on a plane looking out at the mountainous terrain of what I believe to be Kentucky.  Maybe.  To my right sit the older couple from New Jersey who compelled me to think, "I do not want to die next to these weirdos.", earlier in the flight.  Strange how the idea lacked emotion or concern for death.  I will soon be in Houston Texas for the first time ever.  I am embarking on a journey to Guadalajara, Mexico - though so far I have seen mostly snow.  Not in my home state of Maine.  When I left Portland it was raining.  But in New York.  I spent a day and half waiting for it to stop snowing at LaGuardia.  It snowed for thirty hours and they got almost two feet of accumulation.  Unbelievable.

Kudos to the people of Texas for building the nicest airport I have ever been in.  It is amazing.  Clean and efficient, filled with friendly people and bright sunshine.  They have an amazing tram system that links all the different gates.  I ate a black bean burrito in a little shop near my gate.  A beautiful and bored looking Mexican girl brought it to me.  I notice all the men in Houston are short and broad and look like the kind of fellows you'd like to drink bourbon in a dance hall with.  Loud laughter and wide butts.
The flight to Mexico is amazing.  Due to delays and missed connections I end up landing at the Airoporto de Guadalajara at 11pm.  The moon is full and and is as large and clear as wonder itself.  La Luna.  I am in awe of this scene when the women next to me says something in spanish.  I turn, she is small and dark and has bright pink lipstick.  She has two gold teeth which glint with cold white moonlight.  "Mi Madre es morte."  I stare at her, alarmed.  Two tears trail down her plump cheeks, leaving silver tracks in the unreal light pouring through the tiny portal of a window.  I glean from some rapid fire spanish she throws at me that her mother is dead, has died recently, and that she is traveling to Guadalajara for the funeral. 
She cries gently as she speaks, and I touch her arm and say, "Lo siento." 

Customs, a concern from the git-go, was no problemo.  Despite the late hour everyone is friendly and the process is clear.  No one makes fun of my exhuasted "Hola!  Como Esta!"  I get the first stamp in my new passport book.  Jalisco, Mexico.  It is beautiful.  I exchange my money - $100 dollars gets me about 1200 pesos.  I am unsure of what this will mean, but it looks promising.   I walk out into the cool night and am whistled and hollered at by about twenty taxi drivers, one swoops over and hustles me into his car.  He is large and plump.  I give him the name and address of the hotel in my slow concise spanish and we are off.  He drives a hundred miles an hour with incredible skill.  The city is a jumble of metal, wood, billboards,graffiti, scrubby trees, abandoned shopfronts, white walls and people.  My hotel, Hotel San Francisco is in the historic center of the city on a narrow stone street across from a stone courtyard with a fountain.  Next door is Sol Sexi's Bar, which is bursting with noise, laughter, shrieking and people.  It is now almost 1am.


Like Nothing I've Seen or Felt Before
My time in the city center of guadalajara was amazing and life changing. The weather was wonderful, cool in the morning, bright sunshine and clear sky's, working its way up to hot by 2pm and then as the sun sank low it cooled slowly back into the upper 40s. The people were kind and beautiful, there were so many plump laughing babies I lost count. Everywhere there was history, in the buildings, courtyards, fountains, and the streets themselves. Hundreds of vendors sold every product imaginable. Musicians roamed about along with mimes, acrobats, and armed military. Outside the historic and commercial center the buildings and people changed. There is a stronger homeless presence, more empty shopfronts, stripped vehicles, and garbage, but even there the people were friendly, no one paid me much mind. Walking to El Panteon de Belen, an old and amazing graveyard outside the city central, I saw a park filled with homeless people. They hung their clothes on trees and bushes, had blankets and possessions strewn about. But even here in the park I saw an old man laying in the grass holding aloft a dirty chubby baby. He spoke gently to it and hoisted it higher and the baby laughed and laughed, waving fat arms around and the man laughed, his toothless grin joyous and momentarily unencumbered by his residency in a filthy park.

Sometimes walking the streets I smell pee, sometimes a strong smell like sticking your head into a big bag of dog kibble, and sometimes the wind brings the sweet scent of orange blossoms from the orange trees that line the avenues. Mixed in with these standbys are the smells of cooking food, wonderful, and the many scents worn by the Mexican men. Hair tonic, cologne, I don't know what, but these guys smell really good. Strong, but good. I can't stop looking; at the balconies, fountains, musicians, children, and people. The sun is hot and wonderful. The food is amazing and cheap.

My travels home are exhausting and incomprehensible.  I end up at four different airports in less then fourteen hours.  I am at one point starving to death and forced to subsist on a glass of cran-apple juice containing at best four ounces of actual juice and two packages of pretzels, both slightly larger then sugar packets and a quarter full of pretzels of the stick variety broken into pieces not much bigger then tic tacs.  Another moment in time finds me wishing dead what I had thought to be a beautiful and angelic baby.  It's capacity for high pitched caterwauling is beyond anything I have ever known.  I eventually reach Newark New Jersey and find myself eating some soup and drinking Bass ale next to a large red faced man who is telling me about how his cousin got pulled over by a helicopter ( am I even hearing him right?  He is speaking english, but...) going 180mph on the turnpike in Connecticut.  "Right," I say, "you got to watch out for that."  I am thinking of Hallowell, Maine in a way I never have before, with frank and limitless love and longing.  I've always liked my home, but now it seems to me to be the softest and loveliest of places where everyone understands me and where I know just what to do and say, and where I am free to do and say nothing at all if I like.  Home.

A Guide to Grief : The Loss of your Pet

When a Good Friend Dies

The loss of a pet means different things to different people. Even under the best of circumstances it can be a difficult and painful transition. And of course, life does not always present us with tidy partings. Sometimes the loss can be sudden and unexpected, taking a young healthy pet from the prime of it's life, other times a pet's owner is forced to euthanize a sick or injured pet. These are difficult situations.

Whether the loss was sudden and unexpected or a long illness in an older animal, most people find a whole bevy of emotions that will accompany the transition. This is entirely normal, and although certain wellsprings of feeling can be intense, and seem overwhelming, the best thing to do is embrace them, truly feel them, and then let them go. In grief we often find ourselves adrift in a dark sea, but the idea of escaping or turning away from painful emotions is only a way of delaying and distorting what is a healthy and necessary part of life. Take the time to grieve. Know that the pain will not last forever, that it will change and soften over time, turning from pain and sadness to a gentle grief blanketing the wonderful memories of the life and love you shared with your pet.

There are many things you can do to help move through this time. When I lost my dog Janus in November of 2011, I found the journey through grief came in steps, and there were many things I did along the way to help me fully experience and move beyond the pain.

"Ever has it been that love knows not it's own depth until the hour of separation" Kahlil Gibran

When my dog Janus was first diagnosed, at the age of 11, with an aggressive and very advanced cancer, she was already quite ill. She was having a very hard time breathing and her heart was enlarged and beating irregularly. This was the most difficult moment for me. I began to weep, unable to use words or language to express the immense anger and fear that the idea of my dog's imminent death created in me. I cried continuously for the next 12 hours. As Janus was still able to walk around and was still eating, I decided to take her home and spend some time with her.

In the next stage I found myself unbearably sad. I was not sleeping, and the physical presence of my dog, uncomfortable though not in serious pain, was very upsetting to me. She had lost a lot of weight, and upon returning from the vet she would only eat a few bites of the hamburgers I was cooking for her. I knew I would need to bring her in and have her put to sleep. I new that her quality of life was poor, and that having her suffer was causing me a lot of pain. The thought of making the appointment and bringing her to be euthanized was extremely painful. It was at this time that I reached out to friends and family. I shared my grief with them, explaining what was happening, and that I would be loosing my constant companion of the last 11 years. They didn't have to do or say anything much, it was simply the act of saying the words aloud and sharing my grief with the people I loved, feeling their support and love, that helped me truly feel the sadness. I am so grateful to all those that supported me for the immeasurable comfort they gave me. After reaching out I was able to call my vet and make her appointment. I cried more after this call, but it had a touch of relief in it.

- Think about what you would do if your pet became very ill before it happens. Would you euthanize? When would such a decision be right for you, your pet, and your family? Have a plan in place.

- Reach out to friends and family when you are sad and upset. A simple phone call, email, or even text can take the weight of sorrow a bit off your shoulders, and the outpouring of love and kind words people will give in return is always sweetly surprising and healing. People want to help! They sometimes just don't know how. Share your grief, it will dilute it's intesity and help you heal.

- When an animal is sick or in pain it is extremely overwhelming for people who love it. When you have decided what you need to do - take action right away. Delaying will only cause more pain, guilt, uncertainty, and will extend the suffering of your pet.

Bringing Janus in to be euthanized was the second worst moment in the journey of her death. I made the decision to go alone. I did this because Janus and I had been together, the two of us, always, and I wanted it to be that way in her death as in her life. It was for me a deeply personal experience. Your vet will offer you many options, and these should be things you think about before your pet is ill. You can be with your pet when it is put under, you can wait outside the room, you can drop your pet off, etc. Make a decision that is right for you and your family. Who needs to be there and why? Don't let other people tell you what is right. If you feel you need to be with your pet, then do it. If you feel the scene will be too overwhelming, and that you will only upset your pet with crying and intense emotion, then make a different plan.

I chose to take my dog's body and bury her. There are a whole slew of options today for how you want to lay your pet to rest. Cremation is readily available and if you have a large pet, or do not have space to bury an animal, it is a good option. Whatever you decide it can be helpful to create a moment, for you and your family, for closure. I brought my dog out to a our family homestead, where previous family pet's had been buried, and where my Father's ashes had been sprinkled. This was a sacred and important place, and I felt really good about putting Janus on this piece of land. I buried her immediately, digging the hole in the rocky Maine soil. The work of digging the hole felt good after my muddled and sleepless days and nights. I was tired, weary, and sad, but I can say that after Janus's suffering ended, a large part of my pain and sorrow ended too.

- Have a plan in place for bringing your pet in to be euthanized & for how you will deal with the remains.

- Honor your pet in it's final resting place.

"When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you will see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight." Kahlil Gibran

I was exhausted and took some time to care for myself. I got extra sleep, spent time with those closest to me, and made sure to eat and exercise. I cleaned my apartment and removed all but a few of Janus's things. I gave much of her stuff to a local shelter and to friends, including a cache of dog food. I ordered a large photo of Janus, in her prime, and had it framed. I hung this in a prominent spot, and hung her leash next to it. I also wrote a tribute to Janus which I published online and shared with friends. All of these things helped me feel better about my loss. However you choose to do it, remembering your pet and acknowledging the loss are important. Photos, poetry, essays, gravestones and markers, talking with friends and family - whatever it may be it is important to pay tribute to your friend and all the joy you shared together.

- If your pet had a lot of toys, bedding and food consider donating them or giving them to a friend who could use them. You no longer have that pet, and keeping their accoutrement around can be painful. Keep one or two special items, get rid of the rest.

- Honor your pet in photos, art, written word, or speech. Acknowledge the loss.

-Be prepared for the strangeness of no longer having the pet in your life. Things like being alone in your house, taking a walk without your dog, and no longer having to rush home to feed your pet can be confusing and can reaffirm sadness and loss. This is OK, and in time the strangeness will wear off.

It will take time, of course. I often think of Janus, and sometimes I miss her, simply miss her. But it has gotten better, easier, and I am so grateful that Janus was in my life. It is likely that you will outlive your pet, but this shouldn't prevent you from cherishing and loving every moment you have with them, and remembering them joyously after they are no longer there. Love is larger then death. We grieve for our pets because we love them, but love does not end. Be grateful for the time you had. Find peace in the meetings and partings of life.

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?" Kahlil Gibran