toxic cleaning products. YUCK

I am working on removing all toxic chemicals from my household. This is quite a massive undertaking. There are MANY reasons to do this, all of them very good ones. I have been using many "green" products in our home for a couple years. These are mostly store bought items though. I am going to buy a few things and begin to make my own non-toxic cleaners. It is considerably less expensive, and much more environmentally friendly. Not to mention more safe for the children, pets, and people in my home.

We have a plastic shelf in our laundry room for our cleaning supplies. Apparently these toxic chemicals in bottles let off fumes all the time, even with lids on!! A good example is our bleach container. It was sitting on the bottom shelf, barely used and opened almost never. Somehow a residue leaked out and built up around the bottom of the bottle. It looked a bit like baking soda or something. It was very clear that it came from THAT bottle. There were no holes in the bottle, and the lid was on very tight. Somehow the bleach leeched through the plastic to cause this buildup. It was only around the bleach bottle and there were no other chemicals on that shelf. I am not a chemist, so I don't know HOW or WHY this could have happened. I do know that it scared the poop out of me. It made the threat that these toxic cleaning products DO let off byproducts very real. YIKES. So that got me into the frenzy to get the nasties out of our home. The problem is, where do I get rid of the things we already have? I am not going to put them in the trash so they can go into a landfill. If anyone knows the answer to this, please tell me! I would also love any links with more info on toxic cleaners (or green cleaners). If you are using toxic chemicals in your home, please do a little Googling and see how harmful they are. There are a couple great household ingredients you can use to make "safe" cleaning supplies! I will post more on those later.

Happy Cleaning!