You might be getting old when the highlight of your weekend is clean floors.

I learned a lot about healthy food in yoga school and through yoga friends and workshops. We've been fooled by advertising of big businesses to eat terrible food that isn't even actually food. I've cleaned up my pantry and eaten a lot of organic fruits and vegetables. I don't even look at Oreos, Cheetos, or Doritos as edible. I'm not perfect. I still splurge on stuff full of sugar and white flour, but I know better and I've made a lot of progress.

Then I started reading Clean House Clean Planet yesterday. I also finished it yesterday. Cover to cover. I joked that it was a real page turner, but to me it really was. Just like with food, it wasn't really that shocking. Giant companies with expensive commercials have been getting me to do stuff that's bad for me, but profitable to them. I grew up watching Scrubbing Bubbles commercials. That kind of stuff is what my mom used. It was everyone I've ever seen cleaning use.

It turns the old fashioned cleaning ways aren't so bad after all. The magic foaming spray that tears through soap scum and mildew never really worked that well for me. It didn't seem to make the job any easier. I just had to wear gloves, turn on the vent, and still got a headache and felt like crap after breathing in that stuff.

The book goes into detail about what each cleaning product contains and how bad it is, then offered alternatives. This means the recipes are scattered all over the book and harder to find than they should be (the editor in me is bothered by this, I'll type them up and make neat labels with the recipes for my bottles), but the information is really useful and just the push I needed to stop using "conventional" cleaning products.

I scrubbed my tile floors with baking soda and rinsed them with a scented vinegar rinse (half vinegar, half water, and 15 drops of peppermint oil for a 16 oz. bottle). It smelled very minty. I barely noticed the vinegar and I don't really mind the smell of vinegar anyway, but Brad appreciated the peppermint over the vinegar. I thought it was neat that I didn't need gloves and that my cleaning product was almost edible (I don't think it was food grade peppermint). One of my dogs really loves licking the floors and having it cleaned with vinegar and baking soda made me feel better about that. Also, the scrubbing was a good workout. I used hand sponge so I could work on my squats and lunges, and I made a point to use my left hand at least as much as my right.

Then I was on a roll, and I hadn't really cleaned my carpet in a long time. I got Brad to vacuum thoroughly while I worked on the tile, then I pulled out the carpet shampooer and rinsed all the carpet with really hot water, a little bit of carpet shampoo, and baking soda. That machine is heavy to move around, so it's a good workout. About halfway through Brad volunteered to take over so I could rest. What a sweetie. :)