Clean Green Cheap

The author of The Simple Dollar, a great site for common sense budgeting and finance advice (with no selling!) has come up with a series of recipes of cheap and ecologically safe cleaners.

As spring approaches and the weather slowly begins to turn warmer in the northern hemisphere, many people get an itch to clean up their homes after the long winter slumber. I know we have that itch; we’ve spent two weekends recently cleaning like crazy.

The problem is that if you visit a department store and look for cleaning supplies, you’re often inundated with a huge array of options, many of which are ridiculously expensive. Instead of buying $30 worth of cleaning supplies, spend substantially less instead. Here’s your shopping list:

Baking soda (get a big box)
Washing soda (look in the laundry section, near the laundry detergents)
White vinegar (distilled is better)
Liquid dishwashing soap (get your preferred kind - we usually get a big container of Dawn or a generic equivalent)
Tea tree oil (we find this in various places; try asking in a pharmacy)
2 glass jars (only if you want to make a batch and store it)
6 spray bottles (again, only if you want to store it, though it’s good to have a couple for applying window spray and such)
Some rags and sponges

That’s all you’ll need to make any kind of cleaner you can imagine to clean your house. The only thing that’s even remotely expensive is the tea tree oil, and a jar of it will be enough for a very long time. The best part? These things are all nontoxic, so if my kid were to dip his hand in something, it wouldn’t harm him. Here are some recipes for specific cleaning situations:

Soft Scrub: Put a bit of baking soda in a bowl (try 1/8 of a cup for starters), then just enough liquid detergent so that it’s like frosting when you mix it. Then, cover a sponge with it and use it to wash the surface. This is really good for washing bathtubs and any tile you might have. It also works as an oven cleaner, though I would recommend wetting it down a bit with water first, rubbing a layer of the mixture all over the inside of the oven, then letting it sit overnight before you scrub it all off.

Windows: Take one of those spray bottles and in it mix half a teaspoon of the liquid soap, three tablespoons of vinegar, and two cups of water. Shake it up, then spray it on your windows and wipe it off.

Table polish: Mix half a teaspoon of the tea tree oil and a quarter of a cup of vinegar together - this will make any furniture you may want to polish actually gleam!

Air Freshener: You won’t need Glade any more if you regularly spray odor producing spots (like the kitchen sink, the cutting board, and the trash) with a mist of vinegar just before bed.

Tile cleaner: Mix two teaspoons of tea tree oil and two cups of water in a spray bottle, shake it up, and spray it on anything that has mold or mildew on it. Don’t rinse it, just leave it. It will smell strongly at first, but the smell will dissipate, as will the mold and mildew.

Spray Cleaner: Take a spray bottle and in it put half of a teaspoon of washing soda, a squirt of the liquid detergent, and two cups of hot water. This will work great as a general cleaner (the walls, doorknobs, and so forth). I used to use Windex as a general spray cleaner, but this works far better.

With these tools at your disposal, you don’t need to drop any Hamiltons on cleaning supplies; just get the basic ingredients themselves. I especially recommend going this route if you have a toddler who will want to “help” out with the cleaning, as these are all non-toxic - but they all clean quite well.

The Simple Dollar

Drink more Eat (and pay) less

Five Minute Finances is a series of tips on how you can save significant money or reorganize your financial life in just five minutes. These tips appear Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on The Simple Dollar.

This is one of my favorite money saving tips, mostly because it’s so surprising to most people. Drink water? What does that have to do with saving money?

Give this exercise a try for one week. Before you prepare or order or buy any food, drink eight ounces of water (twelve or sixteen ounces if you’re a bigger fellow). It only takes a moment or two and you can do it almost unconsciously, but you’ll find yourself eating a smaller portion. This means a smaller bill at the restaurant, smaller meal preparations at home.

Not only do you directly save money on food bills (I estimate saving several dollars a week for myself alone by doing this), you may also indirectly save money on medical bills. The Cornell University Medical Center found that the majority of Americans are deficient enough in water intake to actually be considered dehydrated. To quote, “Asked to describe their beverage consumption habits, participants report drinking an overall average of only 4.6 8-ounce servings of water per day-most health and nutrition experts recommend at least 8 servings per day.”

In other words, drinking a little water before each meal is a real money saver in more ways than one. Today, when you start thinking about a meal, have a glass of water before you even get started. The end result? You’ll eat less, feel better, and save some money, too.

Five Minute Finances

Save money, think about how you drive

Driving on empty
Pride yourself on getting every last drop of gas out of your gas tank before filling up? Cut it out.
Sediment from gasoline settles at the bottom of every gas tank. When you let your gas level run low, you force your car to use the dirtiest gas in its tank for fuel.
The lower your car's gas level sinks, the more the dirt gets stirred up from the bottom of the tank. There's a good chance your car's fuel filter won't be able to catch all of it, especially if you drive with a barely filled gas tank on a regular basis

Revving the engine
This is never a good idea.
Revving is especially bad for your engine if you do it right after you start the car when the engine is cold and all the oil is still down in the oil pan.
Repeated revving will damage your engine and could cost thousands of dollars to buy a new one.
Quick starts and stops
You might like how it feels to floor your accelerator at a traffic light, but all you're doing is wasting gas and putting more strain on your car.
All those abrupt stops aren't great for your car either, and you'll burn through your brakes in no time.

Coasting into gear
Ever roll out of a parking space and pop your car into drive while your car is still coasting backwards? You're being mighty rough on your car.
You're putting stress on the entire drive train. And your car doesn't like it one bit. The first clue is the clunk you'll hear as you force your car to change directions too rapidly.
Do this enough and you may need to replace your car's universal joints, or U-joints. It's also rough on your transmission, and a new transmission could cost you thousands of dollars. Remember to stop before putting your car in drive or reverse.

\Neglecting the tires
Car tires are critical for braking and steering, and they put up with all kinds of owner neglect.
Driving with underinflated tires is a common mistake. When your tires are underinflated, your car won't handle or respond the way it's designed to. When you drive on underinflated tires, you decrease your gas mileage by up to 15 percent and reduce the life of your tires by 15 percent or more.

Riding the brake
People who drive with two feet, the right foot pressing the accelerator and the left foot pressing the brake, often rest the left foot on the brake as they drive. This is a big mistake. Lots of folks end up driving with the brakes on because the "resting" foot is actually depressing the brake pedal. The result? it will make the brake pads wear prematurely, and it will decrease gas mileage because of the drag you're putting on the engine.

Driving too fast for road and weather conditions
You can't control the weather or the condition of a road, but you can control how you drive. When in doubt, slow down. If you're driving in a storm of rain, sleet, wind or snow, slow down.
Monday's storm gave ample evidence of what happens when you drive too fast for the conditions.

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