Customer Reviews

Clean and Green

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is good. BUT...there are way too many recipes with no explanations for the beginning green cleaner.

I was a little lost in the vast forest of different ways to clean everything. Also, there are no detailed instructions on just how to mix together the ingredients. As Karen Noonan Logan points out in "Clean House, Clean Planet," there are times (especially when mixing baking soda and vinegar) when you must put the ingredients in a specific order for the cleanser to work.

Don't get me wrong, this *is* a very good book! Chemically sensitive people and those who already make their own cleansers will find it a valuable source. But, for the beginner, it would probably be better to get "Clean House, Clean Planet" first because it has detailed instructions, some chemistry lessons and effectiveness ratings.

After you become more familiar with how green cleaning works, this book would be an excellent addition for more recipes and ideas.

Clean and Green by Annie Berthold-Bond

My third choice of the three I purchased. The author uses borax, zeolite, kitty litter, alum, and washing soda not chemicals of choice to use in standard household cleaners. The only one of these are used in the others is washing soda in laundry soap. It is not an easy read not due to content but font choice and the way the recipes are presented. A Little short on instruction and technique. There are tons of them however 485 aprox recipes or suggestions, she numbers them. All this on only 161 pages!! It is a good book to have but the other two would be a better choice to get started. I rated Clean Home Clean Planet first choice and Naturally Clean Home second above this one.

I bought this book a couple months ago and loved it. I showed it to two friends and they want one too! I love making and using my own household cleaners and feel really good about using them. Non-toxic, Earth-friendly cleaners are so easy and inexpensive to make, there's no excuse for anyone to use all those nasty chemicals!

Annie Berthold-Bond's recommendations for cleaning recipes are compact, exact, and varied. Recipes are included for nearly every cleaning situation encountered in households today. The book may seem short and lacking the discussion typical of many "stay green" books. Don't let this fool you. When you just want to choose a good cleaning recipe (they're conveniently ordered by type of cleaning situtation) using ingredients you probably already have in your home, then this book is the one to choose.

[I'm amending my review because I recently read the following in the summer '08 "Wise Traditions" journal: "Beware of suggestions that you keep it simple and natural by using Borax. Never expose yourself to boron-containing solutions repeatedly or for extended periods of time. People have died from overexposure to boric acid..." It should be noted that many of the recipes in this book rely on Borax, and though I have not researched Borax toxicity, it's worth noting; also, I don't recall any suggestions on avoiding skin contact when using the pure 'n natural cleaning solutions, though it's been awhile since I've read the book.]

You need this book, even if-like me-you really don't clean much at all, because you spend all your time with your intense, mess-creating toddler instead. If you're pregnant or have small children at home, this is the book you've been looking for. If you employ a cleaning service, you still need this book. If, like me, you say to yourself-why do I need to make my own cleaning products when I can now buy earth-friendly toilet bowl cleaner at my local discount chain store?-you still need this book.

I love this book. What I like best about the book is Annie Berthold-Bond's aesthetic sensibility; one can tell that (prior to pesticide exposure and her new activist role) she was an artist. She writes lovingly of how using her favorite furniture polish (1/8 cup linseed oil, 1/8 cup vinegar, ¼ cup lemon juice) induces daydreams of favorite 19th century novels. Berthold-Bond's excellent little book makes me daydream of novels, too, the type where the fortunate heroine hires some worthy, stout-hearted local matron to keep house and always returns to a freshly-scrubbed kitchen and a pot of boiling hot tea. Uh-huh.

The other day I had one of those days where the toddler didn't nap and I never got a break, but somehow I managed to mix olive oil, vinegar and a drop of essential oil and polish the kitchen table (lovingly-believe it or not-with a great leopard-print rag made from an old dress), all the while talking to the toddler and her puppets. The polish felt good on my hands. That same day I did a load of laundry in castile soap and strong rosemary tea, which smelled divine. Secret indulgences of the at-home mom! The book tempts me into philosophical reveries about the sacramental possibilities in routine tasks-to a point, and then my feminist ire rises, since house-cleaning has always been one of those knotty war-of-the-sexes issues in my marriage, which we've generally solved by not cleaning at all. But if the lion's share of cleaning is mine, that's OK, because my husband's Calvinist upbringing means he'd not easily relinquish toxic petrochemicals. (Oh the irony of an inherently messy and Dionysian man who inoculates grape juice with yeast for a living but fears microbes like sin.)

Another point: I realized after reading this book that I really never knew how to clean a house. Berthold-Bond discusses procedures that have never occurred to me in ten years of marriage, like washing walls and cleaning metals or routine drain maintenance. I've never been the green "type," which I associate with dreadlocks and ugly shoes and a kill-joy lifestyle, but having a child put me in touch with certain life-giving instincts. I bought the book after seeing it in a Montessori catalogue (all those little kids polishing metal-just shy of exploitation-just kidding) and thought I'd give it a try. It's wonderful.

I only bought this book a couple of weeks ago, and have already put many of the recommendations and recipes into practice. It offers easy to understand and implement alternatives for those who want to use enviromentally-friendly alternatives for their home. Also offers a large resource guide for where to find what you need.

Most of us take our homes and our environment within our homes for granted, when in reality, the polutants found in most homes may be adversely affecting the health of many of us. This book offers a lot of great information on how to rid our homes of the offenders and replace them with products that are safer and as a bonus, much less expensive.

It was almost too much information and didn't get into enough directions on individual uses while offering way too many choices. However, the basics were there and getting a start with many of the cleansers is easy.

Ridding our homes of environmental toxins is extremely important and this book helped me out tremendously.

Andrew Keith, author of, Aging Is NOT An Option!

I've had this book for quite awhile, actually for a year now and find that it is an excellent reference for green cleaning. Annie provides not only home-made recipes but recommendations for ready-made green products that you can find either online or at your health food store; as well as references to ingredients and resources for additional reading. This was actually the first book that I read about green cleaning and it spurred me on to seek more information and change my house-keeping and cleaning products and habits entirely. For the beginner, though, I would recommend "Clean House, Clean Planet" as it is more instructional as to how to properly mix the ingredients to get the best results.

This small book tends to be overwhelming in its amount of information and sometimes the recipes can be hard to find when you're in a hurry and looking for a particular item. But all in all, like her other book "Better Basics For The Home", it is a gem that would be a wonderful addition to anyone's green clean library.

I checked this book out from the library and used many of the recommendations in this book. We just moved into an 1890 farmhouse that, for a few years before us, was inhabited by a macaw (that had free fly of the house for a while) and a metropolis of mice. We cleaned every wall, window, and floor in the house, and then some, using these environmentally-friendly cleaners. What a great feeling!

Unfortunately, the house has REALLY hard water, and the miracle borax toilet bowl cleaner Annie recommended didn't work for us. I agree with another reviewer who said that the book is overwhelming. I tended to just use it as guidelines for making my own imprecise cleaners (almost entirely with borax, water, vinegar, baking soda, Dr. Bronners, and tea tree oil). I didn't try any of the metal cleaners (besides baking soda on the hard water stains in the sink).

This book was a great introduction to some very useful products (i.e. zeolite) and explained the different properties of each. It helped me create my own "green" cleaning supply.

I'm not much interested in housecleaning, but when I read Annie's recipes, I trust her attention to safe and healthy living. Environmental illness,a disease that requires a lot of housecleaning, has forced me to search for safe products, and to use them.I am comforted to find such a reliable and extensive source of information.