From what stores sell as household cleaners, you would think you need incredibly toxic, industrial chemicals to get the grease and food spills out of your oven. The truth is, you can get a squeaky clean oven with virtually no scrubbing, by simply using baking soda and water.

Completely cover the bottom of your oven with 1/4 inch of baking soda, then spritz with some clean water. Make sure you get the baking soda thoroughly damp, not watery. Leave the oven alone, but come back to re-dampen the baking soda every few hours, then let it to dry over night.

The next day, use a sponge or cloth and wipe the baking soda into a trash can. All the yucky stuff that was stuck to the bottom of your oven will wipe right off. Rinse the residue with water, and you are finished.

For the sides of the inside and outside of your oven, use a pumice stone to rub off those relentless food spots that are baked on. Spraying on vinegar mixed with water will disinfect the oven, and it will help cut the grease as well.

After your oven is clean, minimize future messes by lining your oven racks and bottom with cookie sheets or recycled aluminum foil. You can remove the cookie sheets to clean with baking soda or just toss the soiled aluminum foil away. Wipe as you go as well, cleaning up spills as soon as they are made to keep them from baking on the oven.

In my case, I couldn’t bring myself to just discard those empty cans. It was bad enough to consume a horrendous amount of preservative-laden food; I couldn’t stomach increasing the landfill load as well. Looking around, I realized that the house needed a cleanup. My gaze went from the scattered stationery to the empty cans and back again; I knew what to do.

Stationery – Once the cans are washed and dried, and their labels removed, just slide in all the stationery you have lying around the house.  Presto, easy-access stationery storage! The same goes for the crayons and colored pencils children seem to accumulate by the minute. Just glue magnets to the backs of the cans, attach them to a wall-mounted sheet of stainless steel, and you have your own art supply wall.

Kitchen – You can use empty soup cans to hold cutlery. Personally, I think my cooking area would look incomplete without the cans that hold my cooking utensils. You could also rig your own coffee roaster if you’re handy with power tools. I am not.

Odds and ends – Rather than root through the junk drawer or sift through an entire box of art supplies for a few beads, I’ve found that empty tuna cans are perfect for storing small items. Since they’re shorter, they fit perfectly inside drawers or craft boxes while keeping the contents separate and neatly organized.

Décor – A plain can is the perfect backdrop for a bouquet of bright flowers, whether fresh, dried, or plastic. If the occasion calls for something prettier, you can dress up the cans with fabric, wrapping paper, or wallpaper. You can also use cans as tea light holders, creating dotted designs by punching holes with a hammer and nail. Fill the can with water and freeze it first to prevent it from buckling during hammering.

Garden – Empty cans make the perfect containers for sprouting. I might even use them as actual pots if I could find large-enough specimens! Although I wouldn’t prettify them, drilling a hole in the bottom for drainage is easily done.

Although I’m not a home improvement genius, I did remember to file down the sharp inner edges of the cans. Here’s to the next batch of (canned) soup!

Then, it was a mad scramble to mask the lingering smell of cigarette smoke with fruit scented air freshener. I don’t know about you, but the result always smelled like cigarette smoke overlaid with fruit scented air freshener. I don’t think anyone was ever fooled by the “tactic” either, and I have since discovered there are better ways to deodorize a home than with noxious chemical sprays.

Baking soda

Any would-be domestic goddess knows that baking soda is one of the best things you can use to combat unwelcoming odors in the home. When made into a paste with water and left to sit overnight, baking soda neutralizes food odors that permeate plastic containers.

Similarly, a bowl of baking soda sitting in a bathroom will absorb any smell. It might not do much against the toxins contained in cigarette smoke, but it keeps the place from smelling like a bar. Likewise, a sachet of baking soda left overnight in a shoe will do wonders to neutralize funky foot odors.

Vinegar

Often used in tandem with baking soda, this mild acid is a reliable odor-buster in my household.  It contains anti-bacterial properties, which makes it ideal to freshen up a somewhat malodorous bathroom or kitchen sink.

I’ve also found that vinegar works well to remove the smells left by raw meat, seafood, onions, and garlic. All I need to do is splash a little vinegar on my hands, scrub the skin gently, and rinse. I’ve also done the same with my cutting board when the smell of food has settled in and had excellent results.

A friend of mine also swears by vinegar when it comes to deodorizing her kitty litter box. Although I think she would be better off changing the litter more often, it probably doesn’t hurt to give the litter box a 20 minute rinse with white vinegar, followed by a cold water rinse, every now and then.

Opening the windows to the let the air circulate in your home is a good idea when indoor air smells stale. Another way to hurry the process along without resorting to synthetic scents is by simmering citrus fruit (whole, sliced, or even just the rind) with cinnamon for 30 minutes or an hour. The resulting scent is positively festive, and you can add more dimension to it with apples, nutmeg, or peppermint.

Kitchen

- Substitute towels/rags for paper towels. Think of all the money you’ll save from buying less paper towels. Use kitchen towels to wipe the counters, sinks, floors, stove, etc. Be sure to keep it sanitary, though. Don’t use the same towel you used on the counters on the floor or vice versa.

- If you absolutely have to use paper towels, try to by recycled paper towel or at least earth-friendly products. Avoid buying the thin ones because you end up using more and creating more waste.

- When it comes to food, think of the packaging, too. Anything in cans, plastic packaging or paper is good because they can be recycled. Food stored in bottles or plastic containers are also good because containers can be reused. Consider leveling up and buying food in bulk to limit the amount of packaging used to store food. Better yet, when buying at the grocery, if the store allows it, put the products in your own container or plastic.

Doors/Entryways

- Make sure all openings are sealed, especially during winter, to keep heating costs down. Use a draft guard for doors. An old towel will also work. Do the same thing for windows.

Bathroom

- Change your shower head if it blasts out too much water. And make sure to clean it regularly to keep the water flowing.

Bedroom

- Use energy-saving lights, especially if you use a night-light when sleeping.

- Use a ceiling fan instead of an AC unit.

These are just some green ideas that you can do  everyday. What other new green ideas do you recommend?

There are, of course, alternatives to Windex and bleach. Vinegar, for example, is an excellent natural cleaner. Seriously!  Due to its level of acidity, white distilled vinegar is effective in killing most mold, bacteria, and germs. To make a very effective all-purpose cleaner, just simply mix some sea salt with your vinegar.  You can also use vinegar mixed with baking soda when cleaning a stained oven. Speaking of ovens, when you first use a new oven, it can reek. You can avoid that smell by using a sponge soaked in diluted white distilled vinegar for the final rinse!

To replace that Windex of yours, mix water and vinegar! I promise that you will see the same results as if you were using harmful chemicals. You can also use this “recipe” to get the tough grease spots out of your dishes and for washing stainless steel surfaces. Furthermore, you know how those Glade air fresheners can cost you so much money? Well, try using vinegar as a deodorizer for the kitchen or the bathroom.

Start helping out the environment by using “natural” cleaners!

The best ones to reuse are the non-synthetic ones, but for the crafty things, any cork will do.

To start, a great way to get those corks out of the house is to burn them. No, do not just randomly set them on fire, but instead, store them in a sealed jar with rubbing alcohol. After being soaked in alcohol, corks become a really good way to start a fire. All you need to do is place a cork or two under kindling and newspaper and your fire will be well on its way to burning nice and cozily.

Something else you could do to get rid of the corks would be to put the corks through a blender to chop them up. After they have been chopped, toss them into your yard; they will really help in retaining the moisture that your plants need. It is imperative that you use corks made out of real cork material instead of plastic or rubber ones– those corks will not break down and will only harm the environment.

In terms of arts and crafts and being able to still see the cork after some time, there are many different projects for you to try out. The obvious one would be to make a cork board! Cork is a really good material to use to pin items up, to hold your earrings, and more. Another idea is that you could make a cork trivet by buying a picture frame and gluing the corks to it. You could make cork wall art, a cork bird house, a miniature house, and so much more.

Another way to use them around the household would be to place them under the lid handles of pots so that you can pick them up more easily. They are heat resistant and to make things even better, they are dishwater safe!

If you have some corks laying around the house, maybe it’s time that you do something with them!

I was reading a recent post on this site titled More Veggies in Your Food and I thought it was very interesting to see the suggestion that you could make your own ketchup! I guess I am not too surprised, and it does make sense, but I would have never thought to make  my own ketchup and I think that it is a really good idea.

You may be wondering to yourself, what does this have to do with being green? Well, think about all of the production that goes into producing only one bottle of ketchup. Think of all the processed foods and sugars that get put into that bottle. Think about how much pollution that one bottle could be creating or about how much waste is associated with that one bottle. Now multiply that by billions. Maybe even “zillions”; I don’t know how much ketchup we produce every day.

So, I decided to look into how to make your own ketchup and I thought that it would be a worthwhile thing to share with you all.

The first step is to gather about 25 pounds of tomatoes; yes, I know that’s a lot, but you’ll need them! The best type of tomato to use is the Roma, or paste tomato. You should really get these tomatoes from your own garden or a nearby farm and not from a grocery store. The next step is to remove the tomato skins. It helps to put them in boiling water for a minute or so and then “shock” them by putting them in ice. Then, take out all of the seeds and the water and drain the tomatoes. Now it’s time to put the tomatoes in a large pot to start simmering. You can then add seasonings like onions, garlic, pepper, sugar, etc. Prior to this you would have prepared a season vinegar. This is when you would add  the vinegar to the tomatoes and then cook down the mixture to thicken it.

Now it’s time to put it in sanitized jar!  I realize that you probably can’t make the ketchup based on these directions, but it does show how it is pretty easy to make your own! There are plenty of more detailed recipes/directions on the Web.

Bread

Bake your own bread. It doesn’t matter what kind: wheat, whole wheat, or white. But the best bread to hit two birds with one stone is a fruit and/or veggie bread. You can put in carrots, zucchini, corn, potatoes, apples, berries (any kind), oranges, pineapples–the list is endless. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Muffins

Muffins, not cupcakes. Muffins are more similar to bread while cupcakes are basically mini-cakes that can be too sweet. And with muffins, you can add fruits or vegetables, too. See Bread above for a list of fruits and vegetables you can put in there.

Vietnamese Rice Paper Rolls

All you need are the wrappers, an array of veggies and peanut sauce for dipping. You can use carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, bean sprouts, mushrooms, spinach, lettuce, kale and lots of other green, leafy vegetable.

Pasta

Cook some pasta, white sauce (or red, if you prefer) and add in different kinds of vegetables, like mushrooms, peas, broccoli and other veggies you’d like to cook in there.

Homemade Ketchup

Kids (and adults, too) like ketchup. But the amount of corn syrup and sugar in it makes it impossible to love. So why not make your own? This way, you get to add more tomatoes and lessen the sugar and corn syrup, making it healthier for you and everyone in your household.

What do you think?

*tips courtesy of Yahoo! Shine.

1. Salt

Salt can be used for a lot of things in the home, including yourself. You can use it to test an egg’s freshness, extend cheese life and shell nuts easily. You can treat mosquito bites and ease sore throat using salt. You can keep ants away, repair walls and tame barbecue flames. You can clean sink drains, clean greasy pans, refrigerators and glass coffee pots. Feel free to share your other uses for salt at home.

2. Moving Homes

Moving homes can be such a hassle. Trying to figure out which goes and which stays, packing the ones staying in boxes and hauling them from the old to the new house. When you’ve figured out which ones are not coming with you, consider placing an ad on Craigslist, Freecycle or eBay. Or just have a good old-fashioned garage sale. Pack the stuff you’re bringing in reused boxes you can purchase for a small price or for free. Pay it back by offering it up for the other movers. Lastly, use one large moving van and make sure everything is done in one trip.

3.  Baking Soda

Like salt, baking soda can also be used in numerous ways around the house. You can use it to freshen your mouth and use it as a facial scrub and body exfoliant. You can use baking soda to freshen sponges, clean the microwave, oven, floors, furniture and shower curtains. Use it to deodorize your refrigerator, sink drains, trash cans, lunch boxes and dish washers. You can also use baking soda to extinguish fires and scrubs fruits and vegetables.

4. Vegetable Garden

Gardening is hard work and if you don’t pay attention, your plants will die. But there are some vegetables that you can easily grow in your garden that even the laziest or clueless gardener can do. Asparagus needs a full sun and non-soggy, and a little sandy oil. Kale will grow in many climates. And bunching onions will grow even in cold climates.

5. Bathroom

There are a million ways to “prolong the life” of your bathroom products. For shampoo, just use a small amount for your hair. Short lengths only need to use a nickel-sized amount. Longer lengths will need a little more. For toothpaste, only a pea-sized amount is needed, the most important thing is how you brush your teeth anyway.

What other green tips can you recommend to our readers? Share them in the comments below!

Kitchen

Stock up your fridge with organic food. Buy from the farmer’s market or natural and organic grocery stores. Replace your old dishes and bakeware with eco-friendly products. Replace your dishwasher with an energy-efficient machine that uses less water and energy. Use teflon pans for cooking environmentally friendly recipes.

Living Room

Paint your living room with a vibrant color using non-toxic paint. Use environmentally-friendly glass cleaners to clean the glass in your house. Buy environmentally-friendly furniture. If you can’t afford to buy it all yet, start buying it one at a time. Buy furniture with reclaimed wood. Or choose one with unfinished wood and just finish it yourself.

Bedroom

When choosing wood from your bedroom, be sure to choose from the following materials:

• Bamboo
• Cork
• Concrete
• Forest Stewardship Council Certified Hardwood, Softwood, Laminates and Reclaimed/Salvaged Lumber
• Linoleum
• Recycled Tile and Stone

Bathroom

Use green cleaners to clean the air in your bathroom. Be aware of the chemicals in your cosmetic and beauty products. Use environmentally friendly paper products and bath towels. Use water-saving toilets or properly maintain the one that you have.

Office

Try to invest in solar chargers. Charging with the sun lowers your electricity bill by eliminating plug-in chargers. Balance your time and try to work from home sometimes. It lessens the amount of carbon footprint you create by traveling to work. Don’t just discard your old papers. Reuse and recycle them.

What other ideas do you have to practice a green lifestyle starting at home? Let us know all your ideas!