A green clean with lemon and salt

By Mary Reid Barrow

Correspondent

One half of the bottom of a copper saucepan on display at a recent meeting of the Herb Society of America's Tidewater Unit was stained and dingy like my pans at home. The other half was bright and shiny.

But surprise! The clean part had not been polished with a commercial copper cleaner. It gleamed after an application of a simple mixture of lemon juice and salt.

The process can be as easy as sprinkling salt on an already- squeezed lemon half and flattening-out the lemon to use as your scouring pad, said Billi Parus, Tidewater Unit president. Or, keep bottled lemon juice on hand to use.

This was one of many "Herbally Green Cleaning" tips at the meeting program, led by Parus, husband John Parus and herb society member Corrie Wertz.

For example, Billi Parus uses unbleached muslin scented by two drops of an essential oil, such as tea tree oil, to serve as a dryer sheet. She adds a couple of more drops of oil to the muslin each time she puts it in the dryer and occasionally washes the cloth to use it yet again.

Essential oils are natural oils distilled from plants, not synthetic or chemical fragrances, Billi Parus said.

Many people are allergic to synthetic fragrances, but they can tolerate the aroma of essential oils, such as thyme or tea tree oil. Some essential oils also have an antiseptic quality, she noted. Essential oils often can be found at health food stores.

The program also included a discussion of the toxic ingredients in some commercial cleaning products and of green cleaning products available.

Some of the new products have the "Green Seal" of approval, which is the only way to know for sure that they are an environmentally friendly product, J.J. Parus said.

Some safe products are available that have not been submitted for approval, so read the labels. "Look for the usual suspects like bleach, ammonia and petroleum-based products," Billi Parus said.

She noted that many of today's chemical-based products are so caustic that folks wear rubber gloves when cleaning with them. And they're so strong that they can be the cause of air pollution in an air-tight house, she added.

More green cleaners on the market include old-fashioned products such as Murphy Oil Soap. They also include many household pantry items - baking soda and vinegar, for example - along with a variety of soaps made from vegetable oils.

"These are the things our mothers and grandmothers used to use, " Billi Parus said. "A lot of it we grew up with and just got away from."

Wertz demonstrated how to make some of grandma's products, such as an all-purpose cleaner from borax, water, castile soap, vinegar and essential oil.

After the program folks at the meeting had the opportunity to make small amounts of cleaners to take home.

They also got two pages of information on the do's and don'ts of "Herbally Green Cleaning."

Mary Reid Barrow, barrow1@cox.net