When my kids were babies, so much stuff aimed at moms had to do with protecting the kids from poisonous, even deadly, cleaning products in the home: the kitchen sprays, the bathroom cleaners, the windows cleaners... You had to keep them in out-of-reach spaces or put baby locks on everything. This didn’t make sense to me. Why would I want dangerous, even deadly, products in my home? Why would I even want to clean with dangerous products?

So, I embarked on a journey to try to use safe-for-my-kids products. This led me to environmentally friendly cleaning approaches. Well, of course! If it’s safe for the environment, it’s safe for inside my home and vice versa! I bought a book with tons of ideas and recipes and did use some of them. When I first started using essential oils, I thought, “What a great idea! I can mix the two!”

But, you know, motherhood, and then homeschooling, take up time, so those ideas didn’t get followed through on and those safe products didn’t get made. Aaaand… certain cleaning products stayed in the home, although I did make sure that there was no skull and crossbones symbols on any of them.

Things changed when I finally found a safe cleaner that was not only safe for our home and the environment, but could also basically replace ALL of the other cleaners in the home. Safe + saves space + saves time? Win! I didn’t realize at the time how much of a win it was. Walking down the cleaning aisle at the grocery store these days, maybe looking for sponges or what have you, I find it shocking that there are so many different possible cleaners being sold when a good all-purpose cleaner can do the bulk of it (and without the heavy, synthetic scents—that’s another thing that I find shocking walking down that aisle! cough cough cough)

I’m so glad I no longer have all the different bottles of cleaners and certainly don’t have all the harmful ingredients in my home. My kids may be adults now, but it’s still important that our home be safe for me and my husband—and our little fur balls, too.