Day 112 of our Green Year: Cleaning The Oven

One of the worst things you can do to your body, apart from drug-using, is cleaning the oven. Cleaning the oven uses harmful chemicals, dangerous aromas and a multitude of other things that can severely damage your health.
Two years ago, when Layla was cleaning the oven before a move, she ended up with her skin peeling off her fingers and severe cracking of the skin for a few weeks after. This was while she wore gloves as well.

As a result, finding a green solution to cleaning the oven is very important. We have looked around for several 'organic' oven cleaners but they have not been found, at least by us. However, in a previous blog we mentioned that vinegar could be used to clean ovens, and one of our long-time readers, Eryn (who has provided many tips herself), decided to try it out and this is what she had to say:

"For the record, vinegar worked like a charm! It isn't absolutely perfect (my husband did it and I don't think he used as much elbow grease as I would have) but it only took about 10 minutes and the blackened yuckiness just wiped off."

Naturally, vinegar is not going to work as good as chemical cleaners that could eat their way through cement if you left them long enough, but they will do a good job as long as your oven is not caked in old and cooked food.

There are plenty of cleaning tips we have mentioned in this blog over the past 112 days, including using vinegar and baking soda to unclog drains, using lemon juice as a disinfectant and more, so be sure to check them out.

Do you have some cleaning tips we may not have thought of? Let us know and we will try it out and do a blog about it. E-mail us at crwbaird@gmail.com

Day 31 of our Green Year: Lovin' Lemons

We now enter our second month of Our Green Year and things are going strong. We have had some wonderful feedback from our readers, who have suggested some great ideas that we will be incorporating into our future blogs. As well, today we were interviewed by our local paper, The Trail Daily Times, who are doing a story on Our Green Year.

For today, we have decided to show the great environmental side of lemons, much like we did with vinegar, to show some of the great things it can do and to help prevent chemicals and other harmful substances from getting into our air, water and earth. It is important to note that when you use chemical cleaners, you are breathing the fumes into your body and it can stay there. Going natural is the best way. Here are some great tips:

• Take equal parts lemon and water and you have a great air freshener.
• Pour lemon juice on places where you have ants and they will stay away.
• Forget about cleaners with harmful chemicals in them, just mix equal parts lemon juice and water and you have an all-purpose cleaner. You can also mix it with vinegar and the lemon juice will mask the smell of the vinegar.
• If you need to clean chrome or copper, just mix lemon juice with baking soda and wipe away the blemishes on the copper or chrome with a towel.
• Use hot lemon juice with baking soda to clean drains.
• If you want to kill the germs on your chopping board, sprinkle lemon juice on it and wash it off.
• Lemon juice works great for cleaning glass and mirrors, as well as serving as a great furniture polish.
• On top of this, if you mix it with equal parts water, then you have a natural mouth wash, and it can also be used to disinfect wounds.

There are many uses for lemon juice in your home, and we are only scratching the surface. However, it is important to use natural products like this instead of chemicals because then you are not contributing to waste or putting chemicals into the environment.

As well, if you implement any of the solutions we have offered in Our Green Year, from the solar cooking to this, send us some photos. We will put them up on our website. Remember, this is not just our green year, it is everyone's green year and we are all in this together. E-mail pictures to crwbaird@gmail.com

Also, today I baked some dandelion leaves in the solar cooker and made some coffee out of it and I gotta say...mmmmm it is surprisingly good, and healthy. See how we made it in our tutorial section later this week.