Green Cleaning

Green Cleaning is using cleaning products that don’t endanger you, children, pets or the environment. This is especially important for people who have asthma. Standard commercial cleaning products often contain irritants that can trigger an asthma episode. The Green Cleaning Services recommended here offer the green cleaning methods for your home or business.

Cleaning for a Green Lifestyle

Did you know that the EPA has determined that the air inside your home may be two to five more times polluted than the air outside? Dust, pollen, mold, bacteria and toxic chemicals may have your family living in a fog of pollution.

With a few simple tips and minor changes our cleaning products and routines could make a dramatic and positive impact on the health of your home, family and pets.

What is Green Cleaning? Twenty years ago it seemed the environmental movement was just a fad, peaked and disappeared. Unfortunately, increasingly poor indoor environmental quality has had a major impact on business, education and our daily lives. Increases in childhood asthma, falling test scores, student absenteeism, employee sick time and lower productivity all have some basis in poor indoor environmental quality. The choices we make in cleaning products, equipment, systems and procedures affect our economy on our lives.

Green Cleaning is not about simply replacing your current product with a milder cleaner. Green Cleaning is about examining your entire process of cleaning, identifying the areas that can be improved, developing a plan and procedures to implement the plan, executing the plan and measuring the results. A properly designed and implemented plan will have positive impact on the cleanliness of your facility and the health of its occupants. Let V&D Clean & Fix implement that plan for your home in Nevada.

Green Cleaning Tips

The following green cleaning tips will help keep your home clean while keeping it safe for your family. Contact us today to see how we can help implement a green cleaning plan.

Clean your toilet the right way. Sprinkle a little baking soda into the bowl, add vinegar and scrub till you can’t scrub anymore. The baking soda and vinegar will clean and deodorize. For tough stains, use borax and let sit over night. Scrub and flush the next morning and you’ll be good to go! No pun intended.

The weaves of old dryer sheets as well as spare socks are great for dusting wood surfaces. Just use a teaspoon of lemon oil to 1 cup of vegetable oil and you have a great furniture polish. Just apply with a clean dry cloth.

Did you know regular household products are a great way to clean your home green? Here are a few examples ... white vinegar is a great anti-fungal that also kills germs and bacteria. Hydrogen peroxide is a great nontoxic bleach and stain remover as well as a proven disinfectant. Fresh club soda can act as a terrific stain remover and polisher. Lemon juice is a pleasant smelling nontoxic bleach, grease-cutter and stain remover.

Here are a few more examples of household products that clean green ... corn meal works great for picking up carpet spills. Olive oil can make a wonderful furniture polish and try picking up some pure essential oils to add natural wonderful scents after cleaning your house like lavender, peppermint or eucalyptus.

Looking for an all natural, green, all-purpose cleaner? In Clean House, Clean Planet author Karen Logan offers a great solution. Simply add 2 tablespoons of white vinegar and one teaspoon of borax to a 16 ounce spray bottle. Fill with hot water and shake well. After all of the borax has dissolved add 1/4 cup of liquid castile soap. If you’d like to scent your all purpose cleaner, you can also add 10 to 15 drops of an essential oil of your choice and voila! You have what Karen likes to call "Alice’s Wonder Spray."

Try cleaning your house with something called liquid castile soap. It’s an all-purpose cleaner, grease-cutter and disinfectant. What makes it green is that it’s soap that’s vegetable-based, not animal-fat-based. Castile soaps are also sometimes referred to as seafarer’s soap because of its broad range of uses and it’s history dates back to the 1600’s.

One of the hardest things to clean in your home is your refrigerator. Cleaning the fridge with chemicals could lead to an unnatural smell that could be absorbed by your foods. While baking soda is great for absorbing the smells, it’s also great for cleaning it! Before putting the baking soda box in the fridge, try cleaning with it! Baking soda works as a gentle scouring powder perfect for removing that spilled pasta sauce.

Author and editor Annie Bond recommends cleaning bold with hydrogen peroxide or white vinegar. Simple add 1/2 cup of either of these products to one cup of water. Spray on mold, but do not rinse. Before you know it, your mold is gone and you can take a shower again.

Is it a window cleaning day for you? Here’s a great way to make your windows shine. Simply add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice to a spray bottle of fresh club soda. Spray on the window and use a cotton rag to wipe clean.

Here’s some great ways to stay green and save money while you’re at it ... for example why not wash all your clothes in cold water. They out just as clean and you’re not wasting energy heating all that water. Another example is buy some house plants! They are a great way to clean the air and provide a little of that fresh oxygen we all need.

Here’s a great tip for an all natural air freshener for the room that might need it the most: the bathroom! Simply add a drop of two of your favorite essential oils on the inside of the toilet paper roll. With each pull of the T.P. you’ll get a fresh scent of your favorite essential oil.

According to Green This! by Deirdre Imus, peppermint oil and vinegar can combat ants, dust mites and even bed bugs! Combine with distilled water in a bottle and spray where needed ... just remember peppermint oil is very strong, so be sure you dilute it sufficiently.

Here’s a quick tip for cleaning linoleum floors. Simply add a half cup of white vinegar to your bucket and mop as you normally would. If there’s a vinegar smell when you’re done, don’t worry! The odor should go away shortly after the floor dries.

Oven solvents or cleaners are often irritants. Using baking soda and water can be a great green way to clean your oven. Simply add one cup of baking soda to some water until you get a nice paste. Apply the mixture to your oven and let sit. Scrub with a scouring pad if needed and use a spatula to get under large food deposits.

Here’s a quick green tip for a clogged drain. Simply pour a half cup of baking soda down the drain. Then add a half cup of vinegar and let it fizzle for a few minutes. Top it off by emptying a full kettle of boiling water down the drain. This will help keep your pipes clean and help prevent future clogs.

Tea tree can be expensive, but a small amount can last you a long time. Try mixing two tablespoons of tea tree extract with two cups of water and use the moisture on any moldy surface. The mixture has an indefinite shelf life, so you can it for years to come!

If you are buying toxic products to clean your home try buying the least toxic products. Chemicals which contain a "poison" or "danger label" are the most toxic products on the market. Products that bear a "caution" or "warning" label are moderately toxic. Finally be cautious of mixing toxic products together, such as chlorine and ammonia.

Are you a "morning joe" type of person? Clean your coffee maker the all-natural way. Simply run a pot of half vinegar, half water through your coffee maker. Be sure to follow that up with two pots of just water or you’re in for a rude awakening the following morning.

If you’re in the market for a vacuum, check out vacuum’s with a HEPA seal. HEPA vacuums have a patented filtration system that captures 99.97% of all particles that pass through it. This is a great way to keep your home clean of dust and mold particles.

Use a paste of baking soda and water to get rid of black heel marks on your floor. If you have a little tike who tikes to write on the walls, use toothpaste to get rid of crayon marks on the walls. Note that this method will not work well on wallpaper or on porous surfaces.

Remove grease from wood floors by immediately placing an ice cube or very cold water on the spot. The grease will harden and you simply scrape it off with a knife. Then simply iron a piece of cloth over the grease spot.

Why We Should All Be Green

We are green because we are concerned about your health and well-being.

Did You Know ?

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FDA) has found that airborne chemical levels in homes were as much as 70% higher inside than outside.

Did you know ?

That doctors have concluded that there is a definite connection between our health and the use of everyday common household cleaning chemicals. 

Did you know ?

That childhood asthma has nearly doubled in the last 20 years and some cleaners may be triggers to asthma attacks. ( American Lung Association )

Alexandra Rome the co-director of the Sustainable Futures Group at Commonweal. "In 1998 industries reported manufacturing 6.5 trillion pounds of 9,000 different chemicals, and in 2,000, major American companies- not even counting the smaller ones- dumped 7.1 billion pounds of 650 different industrial chemicals into our air and water. We can seldom link health problems to specific exposures, the science is not yet available for that. But the prevalance of many illnesses and diseases- including cancers, birth defects and reproductive system defects asthma and attention deficit disorder is on the rise, and environmental factors may play a significient role in these increases. More than 50 of the chemicals,that I tested were positive and known to have harmful effects on the immune and cardiac systems" And she goes on.

Green cleaning is effective cleaning which protects health without harming the environment.

Green cleaning can play a key role in facilities maintenance, where a clean, attractive, healthy work environment is essential in attracting and retaining customers and occupants.

Green Cleaning Overview Program

Being environmentally responsible means using the least toxic products, equipment and procedures available.

Your V&D Clean & Fix Team will clean and maintain your facility with these considerations in mind - every day, every time, every job.

We believe that when it comes to facility maintenance, one size does not fit all. First, your V&D Clean & Fix cleaning team will provide a free evaluation of your home and determine the most appropriate green products and services to address your particular situation.

Our services incorporate the most current environmentally preferred tools available:

•    Green Cleaning Products

•    Microfiber Mops

•    Vacuums

•    Green Cleaning Training

Green cleaning can improve indoor air quality and provide many healthy benefits:

•    Airborne dust inside the building decreased by 52%*

•    Volatile organic chemical (VOC) concentrations decreased by 49%*

•    Bacteria decreased by 40%*

•    Fungi colony-forming units deceased by 61%*

•    Illness reduced by 24%**

•    Doctor visits decreased by 34%**

•    Antibiotic treatment decreased by 24%**

•    Days absent decreased by 46%

* Indoor Environment Characterization of a Non-Problem Building: Assessment of Cleaning Effectiveness, US Environmental Protection Agency, March 1994. (conducted at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, Chapel Hill, NC)

**Economic Impact of an Infection Control Education Program in a Specialized Preschool Setting, PEDIATRICS Vol. 108 No. 6 December 2001, pp. e102

For more information:

National Safety Council:
http://www.nsc.org/resources/Factsheets/environment/indoor_air_quality.aspx

Pediatrics Online:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/108/6/e102

Clean Homes. Clean Earth.

V&D Clean & Fix is committed to providing your home with top quality cleaning while doing our part to protect the world we live in. With Green Seal Certified® housecleaning chemicals, HEPA vacuums, and microfibers, V&D Clean & Fix wants you to feel good about the cleanliness of your home and about choosing an environmentally responsible company.* You can trust V&D Clean & Fix to clean and maintain your home. We offer:

•    Satisfaction guaranteed

•    An Exclusive Detail-Clean Rotation System that has proven effective with over 4 million cleans

•    Professionally trained employees

•    Affordable, reliable, and thorough service

V&D Clean & Fix pays attention to the details, cleaning your home the way you would, if you had the time. Plus you can relax, knowing that all of our cleaning professionals have undergone extensive training and are fully bonded and insured. Receive your free cleaning estimate today!

We utilize earth friendly products to help make our world safer for you and your family members . Some of the products we use are microfiber cloths, to help cut down on the over use of trees, certified green chemicals to help with the indoor air quality in your building and vacuums with hepa filters.