Here are a few ways to use up your supply of lemons making more than just lemonade from lemons.

Lemon with shrimp

1. Flavoring Your Favorite Dishes and Drinks with Lemons

Lemons make drinking water more palatable, tea even more tasty and add some zing to your favorite smoothies. Lemon juice and the zest of lemons can also make homemade pasta even more amazing, give cookie and bread doughs more character and balance out ultra creamy dishes. And squeeze some lemon juice on seafood, and you’ve got a gourmet seafood dish.

{CC photo courtesy of Chugy on Flickr}

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All around us, signs of Spring are evident.  Early-blooming flowers and plants are starting to show signs of life after a harsh winter.  That must mean it’s time for Spring cleaning!  Here are some tips to keep it eco-friendly:

INSIDE YOUR HOME

Improve Indoor Air Quality by:

• Using natural cleaners and air fresheners (either store-bought or home-made).  They’re non-toxic to both your family and the environment.  See my earlier posts on the merits of vinegar and the scouring power of baking soda.
• Opening your windows on pleasant days to freshen the stale air inside (Also, turn off your heat or air conditioner whenever possible to reduce energy bills).
• Limiting “dry clean only” clothing and choosing machine- or hand-washable items.  If you can’t avoid dry cleaning, opt to patronize an organic cleaner.  If you can’t find one near you, be sure to air your clothing outdoors before bringing it inside to reduce toxic chemical residues from the dry cleaning process.

Tools of the Trade:

• Earth-friendly, plant-based cellulose sponges (by Twist or Scotch-Brite)
• Biodegradable, natural fabric towels, like Skoy multi-use cloths (instead of paper towels.  If you prefer paper towels, opt for those made from recycled paper, like Marcal brand).
• Recycled plastic bucket

Clear the Clutter by:

• Recycling stacked up junk mail and other recyclables.  For proper recycling of computers and electronics, see my earlier post.  For hazardous waste, many municipalities offer drop-off days in the warmer months.
• Removing your name from junk mail lists .
• Donating gently used clothing, shoes and accessories to your local thrift shop or used clothing bin.  Eyeglasses can be donated to the Lions Club or New Eyes for the Needy.  You can find a new home for household items and toys at Freecycle.org, Salvation Army, Goodwill, and Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore.
• Selling your stuff.  Garage sales, community yard sales, Craigslist.org, and Amazon.com are great venues.

OUTSIDE YOUR HOME

Keep it Green by:

• Cleaning windows with a simple mixture of 1/2 cup white vinegar + 1 gallon warm water.
• Cleaning up spent foliage around planting beds which provides great outdoor exercise, as well as new composting material.  Learn how to compost here.
• Planning a vegetable garden which will supply you with fresh produce throughout the summer.
• Opting to use non-polluting tools, such as a rake (instead of a leaf blower) and a reel mower (instead of a gasoline powered model).
• Controlling weeds by applying corn gluten meal in early spring.  This not only helps prevent weeds from coming up, but also fertilizes your lawn with nitrogen which helps your lawn grow thicker to exclude weeds.  With consistent applications each year, you’ll see less and less weeds over time.  If you opt for a professional lawn care service, chose one that utilizes natural methods.
• Waterless car washes not only conserve water, but work very well removing salt, dirt and grime from your car.  Here’s info about one I personally use.

photo by Laura Nolte

To start off the new year right, you may be cleaning out your closets to make room for new holiday gifts of clothing and shoes.  Likely, you have a pile of old pieces that are still useable, but some are probably not wearable any longer.  It’s easy to donate your wearable clothing to local thrift stores, consignment shops and bins put out by non-profit organizations in shopping center parking lots.  But, what do you do with the worn out items?  By donating, you’ll help divert the billions of pounds of textiles clogging our landfills.

One option is to donate non-wearable clothing, blankets, towels, etc., to your local animal shelter where they’ll be used as animal bedding.

Another way to give your old clothes, rags and shoes a new purpose is to find organizations and companies that will recycle these items into new goods.  Here’s a list of a few places that accept these items:

• New York City residents can drop off clothing, shoes, handbags, belts, curtains, linens, and towels at several GreenMarket Farmers Markets.
• Nike’s Re-use-a-shoe program:  bring up to 10 pairs of shoes to any of their collection locations in Nike retail stores, universities, athletic clubs, and at special events.
• The Unique Boutique Thrift Shop in Boone, NC.
• City of Overland Park Community Recycling Center in Overland Park, KS.
• California residents can visit StopWaste.org for locations that accept scrap clothing and remnants.

photo by Fred Hsu

That said, there are several things you can do to make a home car wash as green as possible. Of course there are other factors in considering an eco car wash. If you opt to take your car to an automatic car wash, if it is very far out of your way then the gas used to get there may offset the environmental advantage to using the automatic car wash, so be sure to consider your individual situation.

How to Green up a Home Car Wash

Detergent

Use only natural detergents. You may be surprised what some eco-friendly liquid soap and a big sponge can tackle when it comes to car dirt. For tougher areas like grills and wheels, try using borax. The extra grit can do wonders for scrubbing away gritty dirt. A great combination eco wash solution is to mix 1 cup of green liquid soap with 3/4 cup borax or natural powder laundry detergent. If you’re looking for a ready-to-apply eco-friendly car wash detergent, check out Simple Green’s Car Wash.

Wash on the Grass

So long as you’re using a minimal amount of detergent (and natural, eco-friendly detergent at that), it’s a great idea to save water by sharing it with the grass. Carefully drive your car onto the lawn before you wash it so that the grass can soak up the water after it washes/rinses your car clean.

Use a Bucket

While a garden hose is a super convenient way to rinse, using a bucket and sponge is a much more efficient way to wash your car. Try to use the hose as little as possible and only for a final rinse.

Wash Less

Washing a car more often than every few months is usually unnecessary. If you can decrease the frequency of car washes this is another great way to conserve water.

Waterless Car Wash

Another way to conserve water when it comes to home car washing is to use one of the newer waterless wash products. There are several all natural versions of these waterless car wash solutions that are made from vegetable extracts. These can be especially useful and practical for touch ups and more frequent wipe downs. For a handy eco-friendly waterless car wash spray take a look at Eco Touch Waterless Car Wash and Polish.

A look at conventional air fresheners

Some of these chemicals have even been banned by the FDA, but these bans are unenforceable due to trade secret laws that protect the chemical fragrance company.

• Formaldehyde – known carcinogen
• Phenol – skin and nervous system irritant
• Limonene – skin, throat, eye irritant
• Methylene Chloride -Prolonged skin contact can result in the dichloromethane dissolving some of the fatty tissues in skin, resulting in skin irritation or chemical burns. It may be carcinogenic, as it has been linked to cancer of the lungs, liver, and pancreas in laboratory animals.
• Acetone -Acts as a central nervous system depressant
• Terpinolene – Highly irritating to mucous membranes, has been known to cause hypothermia, CNS and respiratory depression, and headache
• Methoxybenzaldehyde
• Butanoic acid
• and the list goes on…

The thing about conventional air fresheners is that these chemicals tend to build up over time, mostly on carpets and surfaces where kids play and other areas that we come into regular contact with. We track them outside where they end up contaminating the soil. They don’t even work for getting rid of odors and cleaning up the air. Conventional air fresheners just cover up odors for a short period of time, while leaving all their unknown chemicals laying around.

Natural air fresheners not only make the air smell good and fresh, but actually kill germs without killing friendly bacteria. What’s more, putting together your own unique scent combinations can be a lot of fun. There are hundreds of fruits, trees and herbs essential oils from which to choose. Below we’ll look at some of the most well known essential oils for natural freshening and anti-bacterial traits.

More recently there have been more conventional air fresheners marketed as being natural room fresheners. While many of these products are improvements on conventional air freshener, such as soy candles or truly natural non-aerosol sprays, yet in most of these ‘natural’ air fresheners are still scented with chemical fragrances rather than essential oils and other natural plant materials.

The Benefits of Natural Air Fresheners

As we talked about above, the disadvantages and risks of using conventional room fresheners are many, but can natural air fresheners really measure up in terms of ease of use like the popular automatic air fresheners sold in many stores -what exactly are the benefits of using natural air fresheners?

One of the very unique aspects of natural air deodorizers is that you’re not just covering up an unpleasant smell, but you can actually deodorize and clean the air this way, by dealing with the source -and add a pleasant natural aroma while you’re at it. I’m particularly fond of eucalyptus and cedar combinations for neutralizing odors and freshening a room.

One general purpose spray recipe that I love because it can be used on counter tops or as an air freshener:

For some households you may decide to avoid sprays for freshening the air. I like to use eucalyptus, pine, lavender and/or cedar in sprays because these can also be effective in inhalation therapy for asthma or cold related nose and chest congestion. If you want to have more exotic aromas without spraying them into the air, there are several natural diffuser options.

Where to Get Natural Air Freshener Supplies

There are plenty of great natural herbal and essential oil supply stores online. After doing a lot of research, comparing prices and trying a handful of other herbal stores online, I found Liberty Natural. I’ve just been so happy with the selection of items and low prices I have to pass along the info. They have a minimum order of $50 and their site is a little old fashioned, but the quality, selection and prices cannot be beat, so it’s easy to meet  the minimum. You can get very small sizes of essential oils and great discounts on every size upgrade. Oh, and check out the cosmetic bases section (it’s under ‘botanical ingredients‘). You can get bases for natural lotion, shampoo, conditioner, etc, that you can combine with the essential oils you’re getting to create your own natural beauty/bathing items. My favorite is, coincidentally enough, the same oils listed above (eucalyptus, cedar and grapefruit) added to their all-purpose body gel / shampoo base.

How to Diffuse Natural Air Fresheners

We talked about sprays above. These can be fast ways to neutralize odors and add a nice aroma, but what are the other ways to diffuse natural scents?

Candle Diffusers

These can be a nice effect for night time or parties, or daily air freshening. Use essential oils, but be sure to fill the oil warmer with water and then drop the essential oils onto the water. Start with 10-20 drops and adjust.

Electric Diffusers

There are several high-end aromatherapy diffusers, but there are also very basic and small diffusers that you can plug into a wall outlet or car lighter/power. You can get these for about $6 each from Liberty Natural . Be sure to get replacement pads (look for refill items under aromatherapy).

Wand Diffusers

You can use regular wand diffusers if you add some alcohol or witch hazel to your essential oil blend. You’ll want about 1 part essential oil to 4-6 parts vodka or witch hazel. this will allow the essential oil aroma to be carried up and diffused by the wands.

Stay tuned for more on natural fragrance and personal care using essential oils in coming articles…

Prevention

You’ve probably heard this before, but it’s worth mentioning as a key element to any roach control plan: keep your kitchen as clean as possible (free of loose food and crumbs. Also fix any leaks and dry any damp areas as well as possible. The goal, naturally, is not to attract roaches by giving them free food and water. It might take a little while to get in the habit of washing and drying plates and or scraping them and putting them in the dishwasher as soon as you’re done eating, but all these little things add up. For my family, besides not leaving dishes stacked in the sink with standing water, daily maintenance amounts to vacuuming the kitchen floor every two or three days and washing counter tops after every use, so it really doesn’t take a lot of time.

“that’s great and everything, but I’ve got a serious roach problem on my hands. I just want them gone”

This happened to me just a few weeks ago. Over a couple of days I noticed a few roaches showing up in the kitchen and thought to myself, “guess I’ll make some roach balls this weekend”. By the time the weekend came around I realized roaches were trying to take over the appliances! In a sudden population explosion there seemed to be scouts sent to check out every corner of the kitchen. This might sound gross, and it is, but even the cleanest homes can have a roach outbreak like this, especially in warm/hot climates. In any case, there are eco-friendly solutions that will work just as well as toxic extermination chemicals.

Even if you’ve got an emergency on your hands, the first place to start is cleaning the kitchen (and wherever else there’s food debris). This will probably mean taking everything out of food pantries and off of countertops.

Dealing with Pet Food

If you can pick up pet food dishes except during feeding times, great. If you’re like me and don’t want to be constantly picking up and putting down food bowls, why not try the ‘moat’ method or isolating your let’s food from roaches. Choose a larger flat container that your cat or dog’s food and water dishes can fit into without touching the edges. There should be about an inch gap. Fill the larger container with soapy water. Roaches will either not try to cross, or will die in the soapy water. If you choose the right size/shape containers this moat solution doesn’t have to take up much more space than your pet’s food area already does.

1. Clean Surfaces and Floor, 2. Wipe with Eucalyptus or Pine Oil

All surfaces (including pantry/cupboard shelves) should be washed with soapy water. While you’re at it, wipe surfaces with eucalyptus, pine or cedar oil (pine cleaner will do in a pinch, but oils last longer). You can mix essential oil (eucalyptus, pine or cedar) with some rubbing alcohol in a  spray bottle.

Do this same routine all around where you’ve seen roaches.

Green Emergency Roach Control

OK, you’ve got two options:

Purchase lizards.
OR
Make natural poison baits.

You can do one or the other, but not both -poisoning geckos is not on the list. If the lizard option doesn’t sound too appealing (I wasn’t sure about it at first either) perhaps hearing about my experiences with house geckos will add some perspective (or skip to natural roach poison baits).

House Geckos- the greenest roach control system

I’ve seen house geckos deployed in a few different homes. The one with the worst roach problem was an older house in south Texas. The little buggers just came in from outside through all the cracks in their house, but trying to seal the cracks on their own and the usual roach solutions weren’t really fixing the situation, so they went online and bought 3 house geckos. Two days later a medium sized box appeared with a bunch of natural fiber stuffing and what appeared to be an empty box. After a few minutes three little (4-inch) lizards zipped out and away from the box. The roaches disappeared over a period of several days and continued to decline until they were just gone. The lizards were only spotted a couple of times, and pretty much kept to themselves.

I had a similar experience to the first one above when I bought some skunk geckos from a local reptile store. These are a tiny bit bigger than house geckos and do the same thing: keep to themselves and eat roaches. Be sure to ask the sales person about care specifics in case they run out of roaches to eat. I’ve heard that if they run out of natural food, they will start wandering out into sight more often, but in my experiences, this has never happened -the South always has roaches… and sometimes geckos will decide they like it better outside. Where I live many people go and buy 3 or 4 geckos for their 2-3 bedroom house every Spring. Anyway, geckos are awesome eco-friendly roach devourers, so consider this as a green option that also gets you out of having to deal with roach baits (and the roach carcasses once the poison kills them -ew).

Natural Roach Poison Baits

The following are 2 types of recipes, one for ‘roach balls’ (poisoned roach baits) and one for a dry mixture (dry roach poison mixture). The roach ball version tends to be more attractive to roaches because of the moisture, but you might have different results, so I’m including the dry recipe too in case that works better for you.

Roach Balls

16 oz. powdered boric acid
1 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
1 sm. onion, chopped
1/2 c. shortening

Combine ingredients, then add small amounts of water until it becomes doughy, but not too wet or it will be difficult to work with. Separate into little balls. You can place these in plastic baggies and put them around the kitchen, including floor, counter top and pantry (and wherever else you’ve seen roaches). If you want to use old containers instead of plastic baggies, that would make it an even greener solution. The baggies tend to keep in some moisture which attracts the roaches, but that’s just me experience. If you’re worried about animals getting into these, you can put the roach balls into old soda cans.

Dry Roach Bait

2 parts cornmeal
1 part sugar
1 part boric acid

Put this mixture into little open containers where you have seen roaches.

What next?

So, the kitchen is cleaned up and wiped with eucalyptus oil. The roach balls are in place, now what? Keep wiping up crumbs and not leaving any food out in the open. Regular maintenance / prevention is key to staying on top of roach control. It will take a few days for the majority of roaches to die, so in the meantime, put some additional deterrents in place. Clean up the roach bodies when they start droppin’ -Follow up with the soapy water, then eucalyptus/cedar/pine oil routine.

Natural Roach Deterrents

Dried bay leaves and catnip work great as roach deterrents. You can place bay leaves directly into your cupboards and pantry, or empty large tea bags and fill with dried herbs, closing them with a bit of string or stapler. There are also iron-sealed tea bags.

Diatomaceous Earth -kills and deters roaches

Diatomaceous Earth (or DE) is comprised of very finely ground fossilized shells of tiny organisms called diatoms. The sharp edges of these tiny particles cut holes in roaches exoskeletons, which kills roaches by dehydration within hours -the same way that borax works. Though this stuff is deadly to roaches, it’s perfectly safe to use around children and pets, and at a price of $3-$7 dollars per pound it’s affordable too. This is technically a poison and not a deterrent, but given that it’s even safer than borax powder, DE is safe to dust all along floors and countertops -even around small children or pet areas. Use something like borax for roach balls to take are of a roach problem, but for sprinkling either borax or DE around in the kitchen I would opt for DE. You can use an old makeup brush or large soft paintbrush to lightly ‘dust’ DE all around under appliances, as well as on floors and countertops. Here are some eBay auctions for DE.

Barrier Protection

Using cedar, pine or eucalyptus oil around the thresholds and windows of your home will deter new roaches from coming inside. Use the same oil and rubbing alcohol spray idea as above, or for outside you can use straight oil. You can also place cedar chips around these areas.

To boost your barrier protection you can place a few concealed soda cans with roach balls squished into them around the edges of your barrier to lure roaches away. Putting roach balls into old soda cans will keep small critters from getting to the poison.

Seal Cracks

Another step you can take is sealing cracks with caulking. If you have very large cracks, canned spray insulation is the quickest way to fill these. Just insert the straw into the crack and push the button until you see foam poking back out. Wipe off excess.

Targeted Roach Control

Use a spray bottle filled with soapy water to spray rogue roaches. They will usually die within a couple of minutes.

That pretty much covers my experiences with green roach control: A combination of prevention through keeping food areas clean, and environmentally-friendly deterrents, as well as ‘green’ poison baits –or just a few hungry geckos– will take care of any roach problem. If you ever decide to go with a professional exterminator, there are green extermination companies who use green pest control products, so ask about the eco-friendliness of a prospective exterminator’s treatments.

If you have some solutions of your own, please share them below…