We can be clean and be kind
Led by intensive advertising over generations, we spend far too much money trying to keep ourselves and our homes ‘clean.’ Much of the awful, poisonous, petrochemical goop we buy goes on to do further harm, both to us and to our living biosphere.
Water is the best solvent there is. Most of what we consider ‘dirt’ will dissolve in plain water, especially with a bit of agitation, and even better in warm or hot water. Some things won’t, of course. Oils and fats can be made to go into solution with water by the addition of a small amount of soap or detergent. Every molecule of soap or detergent has one end that mixes with oil, while the other dissolves in water, so each molecule forms a tiny — although temporary — bridge between the incompatible materials. Magic. That’s the basis for most washing and cleaning: warm soapy water.
Rinsing is vital. Nothing is clean until the dirt , and all the cleaning chemicals you added to it, are elsewhere, often down the plughole. The droplets inside an empty drink bottle probably amount to about one tenth of a millilitre. If you add a bit of clean water and shake, you have diluted them a hundredfold. If you repeat this with the now-remaining droplets, you have only a ten-thousandth of the original residue left. This will evaporate to virtually nothing.
Some places suffer with limescale, but here in Jersey there are no chalk or limestone rocks, so we do not. Limescale is best shifted with an acid, but in Jersey we don’t need to worry about all the advice you may hear about the wonders of lemon juice and vinegar. For watery residues, use water, for oily ones use soap or detergent; we don’t have many rocky films.
Many expensive cleaning chemicals are sold on the basis of their ability to ‘kill germs,’ but we are not here to decide what lives and what has to die. All the microbial life we come into contact with is water-based, and the residue they may be living in is either watery or oily in nature. Soapy water, some agitation, and good rinsing will move them on perfectly well enough.
Rinsing something like a toilet seat, a table top or a light switch is not the same a bottle. Use a cloth, alternating between fairly wet and well wrung out, turning it over or re-folding it for every wipe, and rinsing it often in lots of fresh water.
It pains me to see people like cafe staff squirt a table with strong germ-killing petrochemicals, smear it all around with a cloth, then walk off to leave the potent mixture to dry hard or sticky.
Some things need special treatment. Alcohol like surgical spirit or vodka may be best to remove the glue that held a label on, but then you need warm soapy water to remove the alcohol, and finally clean water to rinse it all away.
Don’t forget that excellent soaps and detergents can be made from organic, plant-based oils. No petrochemicals are needed for sparkling cleanliness.
A slightly shortened version of this article appeared in the Jersey Evening Post during week ending 22 March 2019
