Rites of Spring (Cleaning)

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Jodi Hesse reads labels and says she likes Seventh Generation and Shaklee because these companies will provide complete ingredients lists. "If they don't disclose it, you just wonder what they're hiding," Jodi says. Whether you're shopping for laundry or dish soap or for all-purpose cleaners, look out for the general term "fragrance," a catchword for synthetic perfumes that use toxic, asthma-provoking phthalates as dispersing agents. Because phthalates collect in our bodies and have been found throughout the U.S. population in tests by the Centers for Disease Control, you may not want them wafting around your household. Check that labels specify plant essential oils rather than "fragrance."

That said, scents of any kind are common allergens, and even detergents that use natural oils can irritate, as I learned after buying a new laundry soap with organic lavender. After washing, my formerly soft cotton T-shirts suddenly chafed my skin. And when my husband took a load to the laundry service down the street, the owner refused to use our lavender detergent. She didn't like the strong fragrance, she said, and customers complained. The alternative? "I prefer non-fragrance, and hopefully it does a good job," Brenda says.

If pure plant oil can sometimes be too rough, who needs caustic, industrial-strength cleaners? "I clean the sink with baking soda," Julie says. Salt mixed with flour is a great scrubber for pots and pans. If you need something more, as I did last New Year's after roasting a fat duckling in the oven, mix one part baking soda and one part washing soda or borax with water to make a thick paste, add a little white vinegar for fizz and coat surfaces. Next morning the grease came away easily (with a little elbow grease) and without provoking my asthma the way that commercial oven cleaners do. (Always wear gloves, though, to protect your skin.) If the Chinese kitchen god had made its annual inspection at that moment, I would surely have received joy and luck.

In the end, cleaning boils down to a personal choice: Although some don't care for soaps that don't lather, Kristen Geiger, an employee at Commodities Health Foods in New York City, prefers soaps like Ecover precisely because it lacks problematic foaming agents such as sodium lauryl sulfate. And once in a while, when bathroom tile gets moldy or vinegar and water can't get "burnt stuff" off her glass-top stove, Brenda Jaffe uses commercial cleaners made specifically for those purposes. "But aside from that, I don't see any other real need for any of those products," Brenda says. Sometimes, a little compromise strengthens the resolve to continue cleaning green.

Resources

For complete green product listings and home remedies for every cleaning task, see the freshly updated Household Cleaners Product Report at www.thegreenguide.com/reports.

-- With additional reporting by Emily Main