Were you surprised when you found out that coca cola (dearly known as coke) can be used to clean the toilet!? Yuck! I know! The good news though, is that we can use easy to find ingredients to clean toilet bowls without the use of store-bought bleaches, and clean them just as thoroughly, if not better. Below is the lowdown on why more and more people are turning towards natural cleaning options, and an easy to make homemade recipe for your toilet cleaning needs.
The Dangers of Common Toilet Bowl Cleaners:
A lot of chemicals are inside most of the toiler bowl cleaners, as well as other cleaning products we can find in the store. You may have heard the horror stories of the people cleaning their bathrooms one sunny day, only to be taken to the hospital due to serious chemical reactions from mixing products.
That’s a serious danger with the amount and variety of chemicals mixed in these products. According to Philip Dickey of the Washington Toxics Coalition, acidic toilet bowl cleaners are amongst the top three most dangerous cleaning products in a home!
most dangerous cleaning products in a home!
Toilet bowl cleaners have a serious job to do , but they are filled with chemicals we now know are harmful to us. Chlorine bleach is very common in toilet bowl cleaners, and in itself is a lung and eye irritant. To make this worse, if it somehow mixes with ammonia,we get highly toxic chloramine gas! Chloramine gas causes reactions ranging from coughing and irritation, to severe lung damage and pneumonia.
Ammonia is very common in a lot of the other products you probably use in the bathroom. It can be in drain cleaners, bathroom cleaners and all-purpose cleaners. As you can see, it can be so easy for them to mix with each other without us even trying!
Another highly dangerous gas toilet bowl cleaners can lead to is chlorine gas. This happens if chlorine bleach mixes with an acidic toilet bowl cleaner. Chlorine gas is very dangerous. It’s effects range from coughing, watery eyes and nose, all the way to major breathing problems, water in lungs, pneumonia, and even death!
A lot of them are corrosive! That means they can burn a person’s skin or eyes, as well as burn inside the body if they get in there! Different chemicals in toilet bowl cleaners can have this effect. For example, this intense chemical called sodium dichloroisocyanurate dihydrate is corrosive.
Not only is that chemical corrosive, it can severely irritate the eyes, skin, the respiratory tract, and even form a dangerous gas. Sodium Hydroxide, another chemical in some toilet bowl cleaners also has similar effects, and is also highlycorrosive.
The list isn’t done yet! Other chemicals in the cleaner are harmful too. For example, a fragrance mixture inside a cleaner can contain up to 3000 different chemicals! They can cause allergic reactions, terrible headaches, difficulty breathing and even disrupt our hormonal system.
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Cleaners leave their traces, which makes it very hard to get completely get rid of them. They also mix into the air, so its easy for for people to inhale the chemicals, or for their skin to absorb them. If there are any small kids in the home, they could end up drinking them. The cleaners can also spill, which is also dangerous.
An Effective and Easy DIY Toilet Bowl Cleaner:
Ingredients:
1/2 Cup of Baking Soda
1/2 Cup of Citric Acid
1/2 Cup of Cornstarch
Water in a Spray Bottle
1 Gallon Sized Zip-top Bag
25 Drops Each of 3 Essential Oils*
*It’s best to include either the lemon or orange version as one of the three oils due to their cleaning properties, alongside two others with your favorite scents.
Materials:
A mold of your choice (I love the idea on the recipe using muffin tins with liners)
A Giant Ziploc bag
Steps:
Throw all of the ingredients (except for the essential oils and the bottle of water) into the bag and shake them well.
Open the bag up and add two-three spritz of water.
Close the bag and knead.
Repeat steps 2-3 about 5-7 times. If the bag gets puffy, let some air out (nothing to worry about) and continue.
When the mixture becomes like dough, take some into a fist and see if it sticks together. If it does, we are good to go (to make it like this, we don’t want to add too much water).
Drop in those essential oils drops and knead again.
Press the mixture into your molds (we want them in tightly).
Let them dry for two days, then remove them out of the molds.
Place them somewhere high, and let them dry for another two days
Store them in a sealed container until you need to use them.
“Using these is easy. Just drop them into your bowl until they stop fizzing. You can use a scrubby brush to clean off anything else and then flush. Good for you, good for the environment.” Yep, will do. Now off I am to make them.
From: 1krecipes.com