Maybe I’m late on this but have you all heard that indoor air fresheners are toxic?! (sources here, here, here)

That is shocking news to me but not all that surprising when I actually SMELL the smell.

It really SMELLS like a bunch of chemicals.

Being Earth Week and being on a year-long Spending Diet means this information is of great interest to me.

I’ve found that the ABSOLUTE best way to lessen my environmental impact is to consume less.

You can measure your own ecological footprint here. The 21 question quiz measures your impact in different categories and then let’s you know how many “Earths” it would take if everyone lived the way you did. I took the test twice. Once as my pre-spending fast self and once as my current spending diet/post-spending fast self. My rating was 6.85 Earths before and now it is 1.87 Earths. The quiz is a tangible way to see that consuming less means good things for the world.

I decided that I needed to do without all the expensive, highly-marketed chemical cleaners. That meant making the things I need to clean my house and office from inexpensive, easily accessible ingredients.

All-Purpose Cleaning Spray

Ingredients needed: white distilled vinegar, tap water

Pull an old spray bottle from the recycling bin. Combine 3 parts water to 1 part white vinegar. Spray, swipe and the germs are gone. The germs can’t stand up to vinegars acidity. (the smell was hard to get used to at first but dissipates quickly)

Next up: make a house/bathroom air freshener that’s not toxic.

Bathroom/House Air Freshener

Ingredients needed: Essential oil, tap water, a smaller sized old spray bottle (approximately 79¢ at the grocery store if you decide to buy it new, of course re-using something that would have gone into the trash is better but I try to remind myself, it’s about progress not perfection)

Fill the spray bottle almost to the top with tap water and since moderation isn’t my thing I put 40 drops of essential oil in there so it could REALLY smell good. (I found a large bottle of Lemon Myrtle essential oil at the natural food store for $7).  Then shake it all up and spritz it around.

It worked!

Now, when the air is “freshened” up it doesn’t smell like a big fat chemical bomb. It smells like lemon and I feel a lot better about it. Also, there is plenty of vinegar and essential oil left to make more cleaning supplies and room spray in the future.

It’s amazing how little the cleaning spray and the air freshener cost compared to what I used to spend on the stuff. It cost pennies to create those two items where it would have cost quite a bit more in the past to buy the items outright. It also feels good to know that I’m not creating additional waste that comes along with buying the packaged items.

Happy Earth Week!