Question of the week: How do you disinfect and clean without using chemicals? Answer from our expert Marie Beaupré, co-owner of Mauvaises Herbes, a boutique specializing in ingredients and accessories for making homemade household products and cosmetics.
“We need to disinfect places where we potentially have pathogenic microorganisms, but it’s not everywhere in the house,” she notes. “It’s mainly in the kitchen and the bathroom.”
What ingredients does she recommend for disinfecting surfaces? 70% isopropyl rubbing alcohol or peroxide. Don’t dilute the product; you want “the raw ingredient,” advises the expert. Dab your cloth or fill a spray bottle to apply the disinfectant. “For people who like to have a smell when they clean, you could soak lemon peels in rubbing alcohol for a while,” she suggests.
When you don’t need to disinfect surfaces, but only clean them, you can turn to soapy water, explains the co-owner of Mauvaises Herbes, who published the book in 2021 Housework: Homemade Household Products. “We can just fill a boiler or our sink with water, then add a drop of our dish soap that we already have.”
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, ARCHIVES SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Marie Beaupré, co-owner of Mauvaises Herbes
Do you use an all-purpose cleaner for just about everything? You can make your own by mixing boiled water, rubbing alcohol, and liquid castile soap. Make sure the final concentration of isopropyl alcohol is 20 to 30 percent, and the product will last for six months.
When we think of natural cleaning ingredients, we often think of the combination of vinegar and baking soda, which is not very effective, says Marie Beaupré. It is better to use them separately.
Vinegar will be effective in removing limescale and soap stains, which are often very present in the bathroom. Citric acid can also be used as “an acid to eat limescale,” she illustrates. Baking soda, abrasive and basic, is interesting for scouring and removing grease stains. “It’s a super good degreaser, we love mixing it with dish soap or Castile soap; we make a little paste like a scouring cream,” says Mme Bowsprit.
The expert suggests another homemade recipe: a window cleaner. “It takes a little bit of rubbing alcohol, vinegar, water, and then the secret ingredient in our recipe, cornstarch.” Cornstarch absorbs oily stains and “will do a fine polish.”
Why turn to homemade recipes for cleaning your home? “It’s mostly about taking back control over what we use and what we put in our home,” explains Marie Beaupré. Indeed, cleaning products can sometimes exceed the recommended thresholds for volatile organic compounds, which can cause irritation to the mucous membranes, as well as dizziness and breathing difficulties.
Our expert’s final piece of advice: we don’t have to dive headfirst into preparing a bunch of homemade cleaning products. We integrate the recipes one at a time, according to what works for us, so that it becomes a sustainable practice, reminds Marie Beaupré. “It becomes automatic over time.”
Check out the all-purpose cleaner recipe
Check out the window cleaner recipe
Ingredients needed
Water, soap, rubbing alcohol, vinegar, baking soda and cornstarch
Source: Weeds shop