• Deep cleaning the house is a great way to get it looking pristine before Spring.
• To deep clean, start with decluttering the room by breaking it into sections and reorganizing shelves, cabinets and drawers.
• Dusting from top to bottom is essential as well as vacuuming/sweeping the floor and wiping down any surfaces.
• Cleaning with spray cleaners is one of the final steps, focusing on horizontal surfaces, windows and sticky spots.
• Completing these steps should make any room in your home look fresh and clean!

 

There is nothing quite as exciting (or as exhausting) as the last trimester of pregnancy. The baby is coming soon and there are so many tasks to do in those last few months to be ready for your baby's arrival. Even if you are adopting or making use of a surrogate, preparing your house for the changes a new child will bring seems almost overwhelming!

As you head into the last few months before your baby’s arrival, taking the time to prepare your home will help you better handle all the changes that come. Getting your home cleaned and organized before you are juggling the demands of a newborn and your other responsibilities will give peace of mind and help you be prepared to handle any new mess or clutter that crops up. Consider tackling some of these key areas as you clean to better prepare.

 

Kitchen

The kitchen is the center of your home, where food and family meet on a daily basis. Take a few hours to inspect and prioritize these areas in your kitchen.

Refrigerator

Dedicate time to cleaning out your refrigerator and freezer before your baby arrives. Check expiration dates on items and throw away anything past expiration as well as any food or leftovers that have been lurking in the back of your refrigerator. Wipe down the shelves with warm water and vinegar.

Pantry

Just like your refrigerator, dedicate a chunk of time to going through your pantry and throwing away food items that are past expiration. Unopened cans or boxes that are not at expiration can be donated to your local food pantry. Stock up on quick, healthy snacks that you can grab on the go when you are home with your new baby. Keep a shelf stocked with bottles or breast pump supplies and be sure to rearrange a little space for kid’s snacks and food as they grow.

 

Laundry Room

Babies produce an incredible amount of laundry, much of it stained. Be ready to tackle stains and higher volumes of laundry.

Cleaners

Stock up on baby-safe cleaners for your newborn's clothing, sheets, and towels. Take it a step further and purchase laundry cleaners that are both good for the environement and safe for your baby.  

Hampers

Make sure you have adequate hampers with distinct compartments to sort your baby's clothes separately from the rest of the family.

 

Baby’s Room

You’ve probably been in a nesting stage for a while, but now is the time to double-check, dust and clean your baby’s future room.

Changing Table

No nursery room would be complete without one of these. Stock up your table with extra diapers, wipes, power, creams, as well as extra clothes. Organize the drawers in a way that makes sense for you during changing. Or don't use one at all (I never did!). I kept a basket with changing supplies in the room we were in the most and just changed my babies on the floor.

Closet

If you’ve received any baby clothes, sheets, or other future supplies, take time now to organize them in the nursery closet. Clothing that won’t fit right away can be packed away or hung at the back. Extra crib sheets and pillows should be stored on higher shelves.

 

Tackling cleaning and organizing tasks as you prepare for your new baby is a smart way to spend those last few months before they arrive. Do some organization and be sure you have a plan for future cleaning and organization as well.

• Sammy Dolan of Home Clean Expert offers tips to get kids involved in helping with the cleaning.
• Age-appropriate chores should be assigned to each child.
• Use chore charts to organize the tasks and have children check off when completed.
• Incentivize kids by providing rewards for completing consecutive chores.
• Consistent cleaning habits and a good work ethic can be instilled in kids through their involvement in household chores.

Clean out your kitchen

Is it time your Kitchen needs to be cleaned and detoxed? Do you still have cleaning products in the back of your cupboard that you're ashamed of, or maybe you're just not sure if they are safe or not? 

Let's Detox Your Kitchen

1. Get a laundry basket. Put everything you find that doesn't belong in the kitchen in the laundry basket. This helps stop Cleaning A.D.D. You know, when you go to put something away in another room and suddenly start cleaning something in that room? Then a few hours later you realize you started with the kitchen and suddenly ended up cleaning the toy box out in the play room? Yeah, guilty! The laundry basket is how I get myself to not do that. 

2. Clear everything off of your counters. 

3. Start at the top of your Kitchen and work down. Take everything off the top of your cupboards or shelves and refrigerator and wash/clean them off. Vacuum up there. Use MamaSuds® All Purpose Cleaner to clean the grease/grime/dust. 

4. Spray your cupboards and handles/knobs and wipe them down. Use a cotton swab to get in any nooks and crannies. 

5. Take everything out of your refrigerator and wash it out. A bucket of hot water with about a half an ounce of MamaSuds® Castile Soap would work great, or continue using the spray. Put refrigerator contents back.

6. Take items out of cupboards one section at a time. Anything that your don't use or isn't yours put in the laundry basket. Wipe out cupboard and put contents back. Do the same with the drawers too. 

7. Oven. This can be done at night if your oven it particularly filthy. It may need a good wiping down or a scrub. Vacuum or sweep out anything sitting at the bottom. Sprinkle baking soda on the bottom so it creates a thin layer. Spray it with white distilled vinegar and shut the down. Leave it over night then scrub the oven floor and walls. Wipe out. 

8. Spray kitchen surfaces and back splash and appliances. Wipe down.

9. Dispose of any other cleaning products you no longer use. You really can get away with just a few cleaning products! 

10. Take your laundry basket and put items away. 

Now have a cup of something tasty and enjoy your clean kitchen! 

So when was the last time you cleaned those make-up brushes? I have to admit, I do it less than I probably should, however now that my girls are at the "love-to-put-makeup-on" stage, I do it more. Only because I have black eyeshadow on my kabuki brush and blush on my eyeshadow brush. 😳

If you have one MamaSuds product or quite a few, there are multiple products you can use to clean your makeup brushes. Here are your steps:

1.) Rinse your brushes off. Experts say to avoid getting anything but the bristles, but I am not very good at that. 

2.) Get a shallow bowl and put either a small amount of a)  MamaSuds Castile Soap b)  MamaSuds Laundry Soap or c)  MamaSuds All-Purpose Cleaner. Then add enough water to have up to the middle of the brushes submerged. 

3.) You can let your brushes sit in it for about 10 minutes or just start swirling  each of them around in it, working out the makeup.

4.) Rinse and dry carefully. Then put a towel or washcloth down and lean them up against something (like the wall or mirror) so they are leaning with the brushes down. Let them dry overnight. 

That's it! Try it and let me know how it works! 

• Carol Trimmer is a blogger and co-owner of Pure Living Space, who helps people create safe and healthy homes with simple tips, science-based advice and humor.
• Michelle has recently found her internet doppelgänger in Carol due to similar interests.
• To avoid the nasty fumes from self-cleaning an oven, Carol suggests simply using baking soda and vinegar.
• The process is easy; spread an even layer of baking soda on the bottom of the oven and pour white vinegar over it. Close the oven door for 3 to 5 hours, depending on mess size.
• After the time is up, use a towel to wipe off vinegar and baking soda mixture that has formed from mixing the two ingredients together.

Today's post is about ditching your cleaners. People have a lot of cleaners. There is a specific cleaner for every nook and cranny in your home. Not only is that a lot of product that is most likely harmful to your health and to our environment, it's a LOT of plastic.

Do you really need ALL those products? You will quickly learn that you don't.  Do you know what else you will learn? You will learn that after a month or two after ditching your old products and switching to green products, you will have a hard time walking down the cleaning aisle at the grocery store. Seriously. The fumes will overwhelm you. Today you might be skeptical because you LOVE the smell of your products, but after you learn what is in them and your nose adjusts to the actual smell of "CLEAN" and the natural smell of essential oils, you'll be walking past the cleaning aisle holding your breath. 

So how many different cleaners do you have? Seriously, go look. Go under your sink in your kitchen and count how many cleaners you have. 

This is what my cleaning products consisted of before my cleaners went green.

We learn very early on in life to stay away from things that will hurt us. At some point, companies in our country have decided that products that will hurt us are okay if we don't overuse them or if we don't use them very often. I couldn't agree less.  Which leads me into:

How to Switch to Safe Cleaners in 3 Easy Steps

Step 1: Ditch products that have warning labels on them.

Small quantities of hazardous substances can accumulate over time to reach dangerous levels and contaminate the air, our water and soil. Others can have a more immediate effect- like poisoning, if discovered by our kids or pets. If the label says, CORROSIVE, FLAMMABLE, or TOXIC/POISON it is considered household hazardous waste and should be disposed of (properly). 

This is the warning label on bleach. 

You will most likely find these warnings on oven cleaners and products that unclog drains. These labels and symbols warn us about acute health hazards associated with a single or short-term exposure to chemicals in the product. What about the long term? What if we are exposed to cleaning products and their residues at low levels on a daily basis? 

 

*side note: all products will have a caution statement on them. These are okay. They are legally required to be on all products. 

Step 2:  Ditch products that have ingredients with numbers attached to them. 

Why? Theses are typically artificial chemicals that have been added to change the product's appearance or shelf-life. This is bad news for our planet. The more an ingredient is processed the more damage it does. Our water supply gets increasing polluted when these toxic chemicals get flushed out of our homes and into our ecosystem. It is a vicious chain of events that affects our water, animals, plants and people.  Not all ingredients with numbers are necessarily a health concern, but what should bother you is the fact that it synthetic and is an environmental concern.  

 

Step 3: Ditch products that say 'fragrance' or 'parfum'

The products in your home that list fragrance or parfum as an ingredient are most likely synthetic fragrances that contain phthalates. (If a company is using phthalate-free fragrance they will definitely tell you). Most phthalates (actually pronounced thal-ates) are a group of chemicals in a gajillion of products in your home.

Concerns have been raised about phthalates because studies have found a link between phthalates and thyroid hormone levels in humans, and between phthalates and male reproductive health.  Phthalates can be found all over your house because they are in almost every product AND THEY ARE NOT REQUIRED TO BE LISTED ON THE INGREDIENT LIST. Phthalates are disguised under the word "fragrance". They are so widely used it's nearly impossible to eliminate them from your life, but there are some steps to reduce your exposure by eliminating products from your life. No doubt, this is difficult and daunting at first but if you do it slowly you can gradually take this toxin out of your home. I took the time to look at the labels and eliminate the products that said the word "fragrance" on them. If there wasn't a full ingredient list, I searched for it.  Here is another article I wrote about fragrance and air fresheners.

There you have it. Three easy steps. It's just a start, but once you start you'll create momentum and soon your household cleaners will be healthy and eco-friendly! Are you interested in learning more about how to read labels and become a ingredient ninja? Have more confidence when you go to the store and buy cleaning products? Learn how not to be duped by companies that act like "green" companies (aka green washers)? Want to know which products work (not just my products!)? I can totally help you... I am just finishing up creating my 10 Day class called EcoCleaners 101. If you're interested in being notified when you can sign up for this class opt-in below. Just for opting in, I will send you my Top 5 Most Important Products for SAFE & ECO-FRIENDLY CLEANING!

• Replacing All-Purpose Cleaners with bleach with a safe, non-bleach alternative has been recommended by Breast Cancer Options.
• 43,518 calls concerning bleach were reported to the National Poison Control Center in 2012.
• Sodium hypochlorite can cause asthma and respiratory concerns, skin allergies and irritation, cancer, and environmental risks.
• MamaSuds developed an all natural All Purpose Cleaner with its own Germs Away essential oil blend that is effective yet safe.
• The mixture includes castile soap, organic Aloe Vera Gel juice, distilled water and the Germs Away essential oil blend of clove bud, cinnamon leaf, lemon, eucalyptus and rosemary oils for disinfecting and fighting germs.

• People on various sites and forums debate the safety of Borax, also known as sodium borate or tetraborate.
• The Environmental Working Group rates Borax-containing products as a D due to a rat study done by Price et al. (1996a).
• Reproductive toxicity was found only when it was administered orally.
• Borax is recommended for cleaning anything not directly applied to skin, rinsing off completely with no residue left behind.
• Borax increases the effectiveness of soap by making water stable and releasing hydrogen peroxide to act as bleach.
• It is safe to use as a cleaner, not an ingredient in body wash, shampoo or skincare.