I've been using non-toxic cleaning products for about four years now. They clean just as well as the chemical cleaners with no more work. Some of them smell good, or, if you make it yourself, you can add essential oils to scent them if you like, for instance, Lynn's homemade dishwashing detergent/scouring powder.

If you like a fresh smell after you clean you can always make your own air freshener with some essential oils added to the water of a regular spray bottle. I have a lavender spritz like this that I use to freshen linens, carpets, and such. Be careful if you have cats, tho, essential oils can poison their livers if you use fairly often.

There's an article here on how to replace store bought cleaners with baking soda. There's also a bunch of articles in the Clean and Organized department here at TNH, too. Browsing through there may give you some good ideas.

You can substitute baking soda and vinegar for almost every cleaning product. That's what I and my mother used for everything when I was growing up. Keeping a small container of bleach on hand for serious disinfecting or removing stains has proven necessary but I use VERY sparingly, bleach is soooo bad for you.

What I Use Today:

Bi-O-Kleen products
--laundry powder
--Bac-Out--disinfectant and odor-neutralizer that smells fantastic, I use it a lot!

Homemade Dishwashing Powder with a little Ecover dishwashing powder mixed in

Crystal White dishwashing liquid--it's biodegradable, phosphate-free, available everywhere and super cheap. I use this also as hand soap. I have the foaming hand soap dispensers in every restroom so I fill the container 1/4 full of Crystal White and the rest of the way with water, gently mix and voila, handsoap for pennies.

For the floors I have a Mystic Mop that cleans the floor with just water, no floor cleaners needed. The microfiber invention also means you don't have to use window cleaner anymore, either, just a cloth and some water on your windows, rinse out the cloth when it looks dirty. Cool!

For the toilets I use either the homemade scouring powder or some "natural" stuff I got from the health food store. We don't have hard water or other things to stain our porcelain, so we get by with that.

We do have a mold problem in the bathrooms (we live in Oregon where it is Most Damp) and we do end up using the DuPont Scrubbing Bubbles on the shower once and a while. It's probably horrible for us and cancer-causing, but until I find something better...

So I'm about 90% natural with the cleaning products. It doesn't cost me any more in the long run because the homemade dishwasher/cleaning powder, the microfiber cloths/mop, and the multipurpose Bac-Out cleaner save me enough money that it evens out the little bit more I pay for the Bi-O-Clean laundry detergent, and so on.

Spring Cleaning:

Is what you decide it is.

When I was growing up, spring cleaning was washing the windows, laundering the curtains, moving the large pieces of furniture and cleaning underneath them, dusting above the door jams, and such. I also remember washing down the pantry shelves and the shelves and seals of the fridge. If you keep houseplants, once a year you need to wash the dust off their little leaves.

I now have a haphazard system where everything get deep cleaned about twice a year, and a little extra when company comes.

Spring cleaning can also be when you clean something that normally gets ignored the rest of the year, like our wrought iron security gates. They're painted white (why, oh, why?) so the dirt shows up on them. They're a pain to clean so I do it only once a year.

For a general idea on what could get deep-cleaned once a year or so, go to Good Housekeeping's interactive Spring Cleaning list. It's not half bad, though I disregard their advice for cleaning products and use what I want to.

And then there's the FlyLady system which is a whole other story...

Anhata
www.familynaturally.com
Your Family's General Store, Naturally