A few natural ingredients provide sparkling-clean surfaces and spaces in your facility
Savvy business owners can create their own nontoxic cleaning products with a handful of common household items
Many commercial home cleaning products emit harmful chemicals into the air or leave residues that pose various health risks identified by the Environmental Protection Agency. Savvy wellness and medical clinic owners can easily create their own nontoxic cleaning products with a handful of common household items. Distilled white vinegar, baking soda, coconut oil cooking spray, rubbing alcohol, Castile soap and essential oils are practically all you need to clean naturally in your health-promoting spaces. Here are a few solutions to assist in your every-day maintenance of your business.
* Windows and Mirrors
After the birth of daughter, I began a quest to remove as many potentially harmful chemicals from our home as possible, primarily through our household cleaning routine. By the time our first son arrived almost five years later, I had countless hours of research and trials with different recipes under my belt. I have since passed many of these ideas on to clients and friends.
For crystal-clear windows and mirrors, you’ll need only two ingredients: distilled white vinegar and water.
Fill a spray bottle with a mixture of vinegar and water at a 1:1 ratio and use a microfiber cloth to clean. Keep a separate cloth handy to wipe dry for a streak-free finish. Keep this solution on hand. It’s a terrific multipurpose cleaner.
If your windows are especially dirty or grimy, let the spray sit on the surface for a minute. Respray and wipe away the grime.
You can use this multipurpose cleaner all over your practice to clean windowsills and woodwork, bathtubs, tiled floors, and walls and to spot-clean wood floors. Just make sure to keep it away from granite, marble and quartz countertops, as well as your stone floors.
* Marble, Granite and Quartz
Marble is a beautiful, ever-popular countertop choice, but it is a soft stone made of calcium carbonate, and it can easily be stained and scratched. You don’t want to leave anything acidic sitting on marble. Vinegar, lemon and tomato sauce are all enemies of marble. Spills should be attended to immediately before they soak into the marble’s surface. The easiest cleaning solution for marble is just plain old soap and water.
For a stronger cleaning option, fill a 24- to 32-ounce spray bottle with water, leaving some room at the top. Add 4 to 5 ounces of rubbing alcohol, six drops of Castile soap and several drops of your favorite essential oil. Tea tree, peppermint, rosemary, eucalyptus, lavender and lemon essential oils are all excellent cleaning oils with antibacterial properties.
Use the same alcohol cleaning solution for granite and quartz countertops. Like marble, granite and quartz are susceptible to damage from vinegar, so make sure to label your cleaners. I use a simple label maker to label my bottles with the cleaning recipe for each, which makes refilling quick and easy.
* Stainless Steel
Commercial stainless steel cleaners are often full of harmful chemicals, have a pungent odor and can leave a slick, oily residue on your appliances and the floor beneath them.
First, clean the surface of the stainless appliance with the distilled white vinegar and water cleaner. Next, spray lightly with coconut oil cooking spray. Yes, the same cooking spray that helps to create a nonstick surface for your pans will give your stainless appliances a beautifully clean and shiny surface. With a clean dish towel or paper towel, rub it into the full surface of the appliance in a circular motion.
Buff the appliance with a clean dish towel or paper towel and you will have a clean finish for a week or two. Anytime you catch a fingerprint, take a clean cloth and buff it right off in a circular motion. Don’t worry if you’re not a fan of coconut — the smell dissipates quickly.What's the problem (besides a dried spill being harder to clean)? Most washer tops are made of porcelain enamel or a synthetic enamel. This finish can be damaged by exposure to solutions like ammonia, chlorine bleach or any abrasive cleaners.
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Health-promoting, detailed cleaning tailored to your professional practice from the TK Team
A freshly-cleaned wellness facility that feels reinvigorating promotes positive impressions that last with your clients. Our team takes care of the day-to-day cleaning tasks that keep your clinics and professional practices looking their best.
In part two we will take a detailed look at the essentials of natural cleaning for Daycares and comunal amenities.
Until next time take care,
TK