Eco-confessions: Sarah Cleans House on Waste

I'm really good at cleaning the house. I get it all nice and sparkly and I feel incredibly triumphant when I'm finished. There was a time when I decided that "housekeeper" was my perfect career choice. And get this, I LIKE cleaning bathrooms.

Over the past two years working at ReusableBags.com, my fiance, Steve, and I have made some huge life changes that I never thought we could. We legitimately use reusable bags every time we go to the store. It took a while to make it stick, but now it's second nature. We drink water out of our SIGG bottles. We're composting in our backyard, riding bikes most everywhere we go instead of driving and encouraging our friends and relatives to make these changes too.

My Shameful Confession: I clean my house with LOTS of chemicals, use TONS of paper towels and feel REALLY bad about it. Since it's a new year and we've somehow overcome all these other eco-flails over the years, I decided to try to make another change. Armed with a selection of products from our site, I cleaned the house!

I used the Mu microfiber cleaning cloth with the scrubber and hot water to get rid of soap scum in the sink & the crusty stuff on the stove. The Mu bamboo cleaning cloth worked great and caused zero streaking when I cleaned the mirrors (in place of Windex, I made a solution from 4 parts water, 1 part vinegar). A Skoy cloth and Seventh Generation Natural All Purpose Cleaner made wiping down the fridge and kitchen counters easy. (Of course we also carry a kit for making your own all-purpose cleaner!)

In full disclosure, we also had some hiccups. Steve kindly offered to help out before he headed out for yoga, but just couldn't part with the Pledge spray for wrestling with the cat hair on the floor and furniture. The hardest part for me was the bathroom. When I approached the toilet, I thought, "I HAVE to use paper towels." After my brief freak-out, I picked up a Skoy and got to work. I definitely had to put a little more elbow grease into cleaning since there was nothing eating away the dirtiness (though nothing was eating away my skin either!)

When I was all finished, I threw the towels and cloths in the washing machine and guess what? The house was just as sparkly, my lungs didn't hurt, I didn't have a mountain of dirty paper towel trash and I felt really good.