Customer Reviews

The Naturally Clean Home: 150 Super-Easy Herbal Formulas for Green Cleaning

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I love this book. Super helpful without being over the top. Easy to find ingredients and the cleaners really work!! Every recipe that I've followed in this book has worked better than anything I find in the store, and they're a ton cheaper too. I would highly recommened this book to anyone who wants to save money and not give up quality cleaning products.

This book contains recipes for any cleaning product a person could ever want to use around their home, including carpet shampoo, laundry soap, garden and pest control (even deer), potpourri and sachets, tarnish remover, wood cleaners and polishes, computers and office equipment, oven cleaner, BBQ grills, wicker, cars, exterior siding (including stone and brick), and garden tools! And all of the ingredients are completely nontoxic. Not only that, it teaches you HOW to do the jobs and properly care for your home and items you own. It is an excellent all-around instruction book for green housekeeping in every sense.

Having read that the indoor pollution is far worse than the outdoor pollution because of toxic chemicals present in many of household cleaners, I wanted to switch to using more eco-friendly, non-toxic cleaners. I thought this book might teach me how to make effective cleaning formulas other than mixing baking soda and vinegar. The book does have many formulas for cleaning everything in the house, but so far it hasn't worked well.

Here is an example from the book (word for word);

No-Scrub toilet bowl cleaner
Use this one in toilet bowls that have an everlasting ring around them. (Like the kind you find in the bathroom of your vacation cabin after six months of nonuse.) You can employ this recipe just before going to bed; by morning, even the toughest of stains will have disappeared.
1 cup borax
1 cup vinegar
10 drops pine or lavender essential oil
5 drops lemon or lime essential oil
Combine all ingredients in a plastic bowl or bottle and pour all at once into the toilet bowl. Allow to sit overnight. In the morning, just flush!

If this formula works for you, then this book is probably right for you. As for me, I flushed the toilet in the morning and the stains were still there, clear as ever. I ended up cleaning with baking soda and vinegar and it did much better job getting rid of the ring.

I got this book for Christmas and have been putting the recipes in it to use ever since. You really can't beat the cleaning power of items like vinegar, baking soda, borax and castile soap. My house gets really clean with these recipes, and I feel good about using natural cleaning products that are safe for my children and pets. I now feel comfortable letting my 4 year old help me with cleaning - I'm not exposing him to toxic fumes or harmful abrasives. It's also brilliant to only have a few things in the pantry for cleaning everything in the house (laundry included). I bought most of my supplies online (there is a list in the back of the book for online retailers who sell supplies). I began making the recipes in the book exactly as each recipe indicates. After a couple of months, I was able to eye-ball amounts and can mix things quickly on the fly now. I have also had a lot of fun playing with my own essential oil blends. When I finish cleaning, my house smells like the woods or like a citrus orchard instead of smelling of synthetic chemicals. This book is definitely a well-thumbed resource in my house!

This book has a lot of recipes that use essential oils in the mixtures. It is up to date(2008). I will refer to it often to create new cleaning recipes. It also makes a great gift book especially when one becomes aware of all the toxins in cleaning items now on the market.

I purchased this book in order to make my own natural cleaners rather than buying the commercial ones at the healthfood stores in order to save money. Initially you'll have to spend some money on buying essential oils(these cost the most) and so forth.
I have tried several of the recipes. The Tough Dirt & Grease floor cleaner works great. I've also tried a couple of the different copper cleaners on my Revereware pots and both worked great.
The castille based dish soap, I'm not too crazy about for several reasons, 1. the water turns white 2. it doesn't suds up much and 3. if you don't towel dry your glasses they look cloudy. I used Desert Essence castile soap with tea tree oil the first time and the second time I use Dr Bronners and both had the same results. My hands don't dry out but that didn't really balance out having to towel dry every dish. So I guess I'll be using BioKleens' dish soap again.
The overnight toilet bowl cleaner was just the same as adding plain borax, letting it sit for an hour or overnight and scrubing with a brush it just smelled nicer due to the essential oils.
Basically it came down to this: borax, washing soda, baking soda, white vinegar and castile soap, which all of us green cleaners keep on hand this book just tells you what essential oils to add to the mixture.
The author also has a section about drying your own herbs to make scouring powders and such. Baking soda is a fairly good scouring powder on it's own.
It does have very handy tips on how to clean everything in your house except for leather furniture.
You can find almost all of these recipes online on different green sites, but it is nice to have handy in a little book that tucks nicely away in the cleaning cabinet.
The index is rather confusing, if you are looking for say scouring powder it won't be listed under scouring powders, you would have to look under bathroom cleaners for them.
Overall the book is okay, but I guess I was hoping for more than just adding essential oils to everything.

I was so excited to get this book. It has recipes for almost every aspect of the home you can think of. I was particularly excited about the dishwasher and washing machine recipes. Some of the items in this book I could not find locally so I ordered them online. No big deal cause I am all about natural and economical alternatives. I mixed together the recipe for the powder dish washing soap on p.33. I put a little less then the recipe called for and eagerly started my dish washer only to be totally disappointed when I opened it. The residue it left behind was impossible to get off. It even says in the recipe that if you notice a "little" residue to reduce the amount used. I used less then stated in the book to begin with and it was still impossible to get off. I had to literally scrub the dishes to get it off.
I noticed that a lot of the reviews in this book were from people excited about the book, but who hadn't actually used the recipes yet. To my mind you shouldn't review a book before you actually try it. I can also see some of the reviewer's gripes about every recipe using essential oils. I have a background in aromatherapy so I just so happen to have many of them on hand but they are VERY expensive and I can see how that might annoy some people. I will proceed with caution and try the liquid dish washing liquid recipe instead.
UPDATE: It has been over a week since I tried this recipe and still finding the residue on my dishes when I run the dishwasher!! I wiped out the inside of the dishwasher and still isn't enough. I have now realized that the stains on my dishes, plastics and silverware are permanent. Horrible, don't waste your money, this book should be recalled.

This book is perfect because it has a lot of information in a minimal number of pages. The "recipes" for cleaners have many options. I use this book as a cookbook and reference book. It doesn't contain a lot of unusual things that you can only get at a health food store - everything I needed to buy I got at my local Wegmans (grocery store)

This is a very small book, but while it might not look good on a shelf, it is full of really useful stuff. You can probably find everything in this text littered around the internet on green sites and essential oil sites; however, I am not incluned to do all of that and am pleased that the recipes are organized for me. So far, the couple that I have tried appear to work and are not that difficult to put together. It also makes cleaning up a little bit more fun. I particularly liked the shopping lists and product descriptions in the front, so I knew what I was getting into, and found the product location suggestions helpful for those few things that are not readily available at my local markets.

I really like this book, the ingredients are easy to get and put together. I am always looking for better ways to use less chemicals. I have only tried about twenty items in the book but I like the end result and so does my health. I just wish I knew about it sooner. It does take time because it is not instant like going to a grocery store and buying it off the shelf but at least you know what is in the products you are using. I would highly recommend this book.