Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

Fresh as a Pickle

by Sara Peterson-Davis

Who would have thought I’d have what it takes to save our planet from ecological doom?

Unfortunately, this revelation of mine won’t win me the Noble Prize or the million bucks that goes with it. That’s because this earth-saving revelation of mine, according to all the planet-saving literature, is something that is in most everyone’s kitchen cabinets.

“It” is vinegar and baking soda.

Throw a little borax and Castile soap in with it and you might just get a Christmas card from Al and Tipper Gore.

I discovered all this when my nine-year-old volunteered to take on cleaning the bathrooms as one of her weekly chores.

I jumped at the chance to have someone else take on the responsibility of keeping the smallest rooms in our house squeaky clean. But before I passed on the toilet brush to the next generation, I flashed back to the petrochemical fog she had left the last time I let her loose with the scrubbing bubbles.

Unless I was willing to invest in a junior-size Hazmat suit, I realized I needed to find cleaning supplies that were a bit less toxic. So off I went to the cleaning aisle of my local store to find “natural” and “earth-friendly” cleaning products.

Now I have to admit that I’ve wanted to “clean up” my cleaning supplies for some time. I’ve suspected that the products in my cleaning cabinet weren’t doing my family or the environment any favors. Let’s face it any product that’s warning label could be considered just short of a novella should probably be avoided.

But the afternoon I spent in the cleaning aisle mulling over my natural, earth-friendly options, is the afternoon my yearning to be green crashed head-on into my fear of going into the red. Going green ain’t always cheap.

Oh, I know that in the long run… blah, blah, blah. That afternoon I was dealing with a bit of sticker shock. So I did what I always do when I’m faced with a problem. I went to the library.

At the library, I found all sorts of books on making my own eco-friendly cleaning supplies. They had recipes for everything from all-purpose cleaner to automatic dishwasher soap. And the two most popular ingredients listed were distilled white vinegar and baking soda.

Aside from making a nifty substitute for lava in science project volcanoes, according to natural cleaning gurus these two mild-mannered cooking supplies are natural cleaning dynamos.

So I gave it a try. I bought a gallon of vinegar, the biggest box of baking soda I’d ever seen, an equally large box of borax and a tiny bottle of Castile soap that also contained hemp oil. The latter made me wonder if I might get a “thank you” note from Hollywood hemp supporter Woody Harrelson.

Anyway, I went home and got to mixing.

I made window cleaner, shower spray, all-purpose cleaner and a kind of all-natural drain colonic. Then my daughter and I went to town.

When the fog cleared, the house was just as clean as when we cleaned with the old eco-unfriendly stuff. There was just one hitch.

I’ve never heard anyone exclaim in a television commercial, “Mmmm! Everything smells so pickley fresh!”

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