Home sweet Home! We had a great weekend. On Saturday, we took a spontaneous trip to the beach (Judah’s first) and we spent the day there and headed back late that night. I was so ready to get home and get to bed seeing how we had church early Sunday. But when we got home we walked through the door and were greeted with intense heat. Our A/C broke! Judah was exhausted and we decided that I should head over to the our parents house to get Judah to bed. Hubby quickly called a friend who rushed over to discover that it was a broken fuse – they got that fixed well past midnight. So this afternoon after the house had cooled down I came home to get my cleaning for the week done. Last week I posted some non-toxic cleaning mixtures that I use and there is an interesting article in the book I refer to on the History of Housekeeping. I just love being home and I want to do all I can to create a home that is clean, organized and a haven!
Sited from Green Clean by Mason Hunter and Halpin
In the beginning, life wasn’t easy but it was simple. Humans lived in caves and hunted and gathered their food; trash went into a heap. Then the mighty agricultural revolution swept the planet. Shelter changed and families began to live in huts. Housekeeping progressed – floors were swept, cobwebs whisked from the corners and hygiene became more important. In the mid 1600’s, the Western world entered the Industrial Age and houses became larger and housekeeping more complex. By the mid-seventeenth century, spring cleaning was a widely observed ritual – a week long marathon in which housekeepers whitewashed walls, aired mattresses, beat the dust out of rugs and oiled hardwood. The Industrial Revolution caused epic shifts in the way people lived. By the beginning of the last century…at home, indoor plumbing replaced outdoor privies; central heating replaced the wood or coal stove; electricity lengthened the productive hours of the day; and the hand-cranked washing machine, the icebox and the gas oven simplified everyday chores.
Still, housekeeping solutions remained pretty simple. Through the 1930s, homemakers continued to make their own cleaners and stain removers from everyday ingredients – baking soda, distilled white vinegar, salt, lemon juice. WWII changed much of that! Chemicals initially developed for warfare sound their way into America’s cleaners, building materials, cosmetics, pesticides, and hundreds of other products. Advertisements promised to get clothes “whiter than white,” make countertops “cleaner than clean,” and bring “sparkle” to the toilet bowl. It was “better living” through chemistry.
Though most people weren’t aware of it at the time, America’s houses were filling up with fumes from paints, stains, cleaners and other human-made materials. By the 1970s, the term “sick buildings” became part of the lexicon, describing places where people reported an unusually high instance of symptoms like lethargy, fatigue, headaches and nausea – all due to indoor air pollution.
Today, we are far more likely to breathe unhealthy substances inside our homes than outside. A 5 year study revealed that pollution inside the typical American home was two to fives times worse than the air outdoors. We’ve insulated, caulked and weather-stripped to the point where our houses no longer breathe. Unsafe chemicals hang around for days, creating a synthetic brew for us to inhale.
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
I’m a strange girl – I LOVE to clean. Really! I do it for fun! I have always been like this and b/c of my love of cleaning I grew up around cleaning products. Lots of them! I remember cleaning the bathroom or the floors with strong smelling “products” and would literally have to cover my mouth and open a window b/c the smell was horrific and the way it affected my nose and throat was awful! I didn’t know any better at the time nor did my parents, so I exposed myself to thise stuff for years. As I grew into my understanding of living green and non-toxic I went all natural. It’s tough at first because you have to fight the thoughts that things wont really be clean. But now I love to clean and never have to cover my mouth or gag. And I don’t have to worry about exposing my family to things that are harmful to them. And I no longer spend money on needless products! Now I gladly clean green!!!!!
very nice! Whats the name of this book? I would love to read it.
It’s titled Green Clean. It’s neat – the outer cover is water & stain proof!