Cleaning up the laundry room

The key words in the Materials and Resources section of  LEED are:

Recycled Content

VOC/ Chemical free

Reduce construction/ living waste

So, we are taking these elements and applying them to our life style as well as our house renovations.  

This week we are replacing our traditional laundry soap with a new, homemade, simple ingredient and environmentally friendly laundry soap.  

• 1 bar of soap or one cup of pure soap flake
• 1 cup of Borax
• 1 cup of washing soda
• a big pot ( that holds more than 2 gallons) 
• a grater
• a funnel
• a long spoon
• 2 empty gallon jugs/containers

1. Grate your bar of soap into your pot.
2. Full one gallon jug and pour water into pot with grated soap.  
3. Heat until the grated soap dissolves
4. Add the Borax and washing soda.
5. Bring to a boil. It will coagulate.
6. Turn off the heat.  Add 1 gallon of cold water.
7. Stir well.
8. Pour 1 gallon of your detergent into each container.

Use half a cup per load.

 

Recycled Content:

The boxes the ingredients come in are recyclable

We are reusing containers that would otherwise go to be recycled

VOC/ Chemical free:
The ingredients for this recipe are chemicals, yes, but they are natural to the environment and biodegradable.  These chemicals are not man made and have a natural place on the planet.  Eco-pioneer products are even packaged in recyclable or compostable packaging and printed with vegetable inks.  We buy ours through well.ca, free delivery.

Reduce construction and living waste:
The containers for the ingredients coming into the house are recyclable or compostable so there is no waste being created.  The storage containers are old detergent bottles which are being reused. 

Over all I think we did really well with this excises.  I love the how clean the cloths have turned out.  They smell great and it is only costing us pennies a load, with a daughter in cloth diapers, this is a real bonus.  If you lift the lid to your washing machine you wont see any suds, though the water will be dark with dirt. 

Inspiration for the first step.

While I was on maternity leave my husband and I decided that we wanted to be able to stay home with our daughter.  To do this he works 3 nights a week at the local pub and I have started my own Interior Design business focusing on residential design in my area of Wakefield, Quebec, Canada.  Having determined that the mission statement of my business would be making "environmentally responsible" design accessible to those in my community, it seamed only responsible to exercises this mission in our home life as well.  I feel that the LEED program is a very well thought out list of criteria for ERD (environmentally responsible design) and have decided to use it as our guide through this process.  So follow us through the process of creating a LEED Platinum home and lifestyle.

The documents we are using as guidelines:
LEED Canada for homes 2009
Additional info
xls checklist

Visit www.yourperfectspace.ca for more info on my business.