Whistle While You Work - A Safer Solution to Clean

Cleaning takes on a whole new perspective to the first-time mommy, especially if she's health conscious about the products she uses. I've always been an advocate of chemical-free living, but waiting for the birth of our son, I saw even more cleaning products in our home I'd like to replace.

I was going through that big cleaning spurt that happens when you're in the last trimester and hardly able to move. I was scrubbing every square inch of anything sitting still and half the things that didn't. (Ah, the poor dogs.) Any fumes wafting from cleansers became even more of a nuisance to me than before pregnancy. When it came to polishing all the wood in the baby's room (and yes, I mean the picture frames too - it was a serious frenzy in there), I didn't want to use any old spray-on furniture polish filled with pretend lemon and something that smelled a little too close to airplane fuel. After doing a little digging, I found a very nice recipe for furniture polish that sent me into whole new ecstasies of dirt purging.

Here's what I use now: 1/4 cup vinegar, 2 Tbs. olive oil, 3 - 4 drops lemon oil or sweet orange oil. Put these in a container with a lid and shake until they're blended. Use a dry cotton cloth to apply and buff off. (After the baby's born, you can use some old cotton diapers if you have any. No lint!)

The vinegar in this solution is a nice cleansing agent, and the oils nourish the wood and leave a nice glow, as well as a fresh scent. Now that my son is old enough to pull himself up on everything and he finds my carved Asian rosewood chairs to be appetizing chewies, I'm glad he won't be ingesting any jet fuel-scented polish. All bite marks aside, my furniture glows! Now, wouldn't Donna Reed be envious?