SIGN-UP FOR DAILY TIPS

BANG FOR THE BITE

Green cleaning comes at an ever-so-slight premium compared to conventional services, but it's safer for your fam, the earth, and the cleaning people.

COCKTAIL FACT

In Jan., a Vietnamese woman who traveled to Taiwan to find her missing dad discovered that she'd worked as his maid for seven months without knowing it was him.

SAVE TO MY BITES

FORWARD TO A FRIEND:

RATE THIS TIP:

How useful is this tip to you?
(5 is the highest)

home › tip library › Cleaning Services

Want a cleaning service specially tailored to Biters?

The Bite

Order in a green maid. It's as easy as phoning up a local service, or asking your current one to use green cleaning products that you provide. Your house'll be lick-the-floor-clean - just the way you like it.

The Benefits

Breathing in fewer pollutants. The EPA says indoor air pollution is usually 2-5 times worse than outdoor air pollution, and harsh cleaning chems contribute.
Fewer eco-hazards. The average janitor uses about 48 lb of hazardous chems per year, which can easily end up in nature.
Safety for the cleaning peeps. The Janitorial Products Pollution Prevention Project says that each year about 6 out of 100 janitors get sick from the products they use.

Personally Speaking

Our new 5-sec rule: The rule applies only if you know the floor was cleaned with a green cleaner.

Wanna Try?

Maid Brigade - green cleaning service with over 400 locations nationwide that use nontoxic cleaning chems and reusable microfiber pads instead of disposable ones (about $110, depending on area and house size), among other eco-friendly fixes.
Yelp - type in your location and "green cleaning" to find a local green maid service.
DIY Bite: Stock your cabinets with our fave eco-cleaning products and ask your cleaning team to use those products instead of conventional ones.

Apr 15,2008

Sponsor

All editorial suggestions in this tip are the result of testing and a preference for the tip topic. No advertiser has paid to have its company referenced in the tip. For more information, please read our Editorial Policy.

SIGN-UP FOR DAILY TIPS

RSS FEED LINKS

Add to My AOL

Add to My Yahoo!

blog RSS feed

RECOMMENDED SITES

Biter Picks:

Founder Faves:

heather

jen

Staff Faves:

toshio

NPR's This American Life

sara

anna

Biter Tee Models

Shower Brush

Meet my maid: Jenifer Morgan. Alas, I've never used a maid service - that's mostly because my house is shoebox-size. But I recently considered calling someone in for advice on scrubbing out the ever-so-revolting grout mold that persists in SF apartments, even if you squeegee after every shower, scrub regularly, or take excessive pains to ventilate.

There's bleach, but, you know, I take baths in there. So my last resort before getting an eco-pro involved: whitening toothpaste. Here I come, Tom's, let's see what that silica can do!

-Jenifer Morgan...off to brush in the shower...

Biter Comments...

The only reason I gave today's tip only a "4" on your 1-5 scale is because of the priciness of some of the products you mentioned. However, baking soda, lemon juice, white vinegar, which you also mentioned, are terrific -- and cheap! -- alternatives, as is isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, which you didn't mention. The absolute BEST glass-and-chrome cleaner I've ever used is my own homemade concoction of a 50-50 mixture of white vinegar and rubbing alcohol. Forget Windex!

Posted by: Linda | April 14, 2008 at 03:28 PM

Here is another great eco-friendly cleaning related product. Instead of using spray deodorants in the bathroom try poo-pouri. They have an adorable website and sell in some stores. Poopouri.net The stuff really works!

Posted by: dawn | April 15, 2008 at 10:48 AM

i think that today's tip needs to be looked at a little bit differently. namely, the social implications of using a 'maid' service, whether green or not, are incredibly skewed towards upper class folks who are able to afford the low-wage labor of migrant workers. i applaud the use of non-toxic products, of course, but the seeming simplicity of a maid service has too many negative social underpinnings to not be looked at critically. if we understand 'sustainable' from multiple perspectives, not just green products, it seems to me that reproducing unequal social relations by requiring other (usually) women to clean houses of the (relatively) wealthy is not quite the ideal of social justice.

Posted by: andrea bertoli | April 15, 2008 at 01:24 PM

Jenifer, it's already been mentioned above, but vinegar is one of the best things for killing most strains of mold. I think the very best natural thing that I have found is tea tree oil. Living in Hawai'i we also get the pesky mold in the bathroom issue, so I have made my own concoction of vinegar, tea tree oil and water (can't really tell you the ratios, but somewhere around 50/50 vinegar to water and then a few drops of tea tree oil) and I just keep it near the shower and spray it down every few days as I am leaving the bathroom. The only real catch to this is that this concoction won't take away the color of mold to begin with, so you will probably have to do some whitening treatment (bleach or hopefully your toothpaste idea) first and then use "the concoction" to follow-up. Just some thoughts.

Posted by: Kathy | April 16, 2008 at 11:17 AM