On National Love Your Pets Day, remember the importance of choosing green cleaning products for the safety of you and your pets.
This post has been sponsored by Art of Green®.
All thoughts and opinions are my own.
There’s a lot of chatter about eco-friendly, green cleaning products and the importance of them in our homes to ensure toxins aren’t leaching into our body. But if you’re looking for even more of a reason to make the switch to greener product, consider how these toxins impact your pets and how choosing Art of Green® products can help keep your home safe, clean, and smelling great.
Cleaning Chemicals and Pets
The Pet Poison Helpline ranked household cleaning products as the sixth most toxic item for dogs which include products like bleach, laundry detergent pods, and phenol-based disinfectants.
Strong acidic or alkaline cleaners are the most dangerous to pets because of their corrosive nature. This includes things like toilet bowl cleaners, lye, drain cleaners, and bleach (just to name a few!).
Specifically, bleach is a powerful agent that can erode paw pads if pets walk through it and can cause damage to mouths, throats, and stomachs if ingested. It’s also easy for pets to mistake laundry or dishwasher pods as treats, causing stomach irritation, vomiting, or coating their airways which prevent breathing.
Thinking about the damage cleaning products can do to our pets is just plain scary! And, while some of this may seem obvious, you never know where our little friends will end up sticking their nose, tongue, or paws which is why it’s important to choose natural, clean products for use in homes with pets.
Choosing Green is Easy
If you’ve been following my blog a while, you know I’m an obsessed dog-mom to Stella & Persie, our two boxer babies, and two of the main reasons why I consciously choose green cleaning products for our home.
Stella specifically loves licking the outside of our stainless steel dishwasher and Persie loves to lick the floors after a fresh mopping (I know, they’re such weirdos). It worries me to think they could be licking up chemicals or having harmful materials transferred to their fur causing irritation or upset stomachs if ingested if I didn’t choose eco-friendly cleaning products.
Art of Green concentrate makes a great base to safely mop floors with pets in the home.
To ease this worry, I’ve swapped our standard cleaning products for Art of Green, making it the go-to cleaning agent in our house. Art of Green products are safe to use around pets and free of harsh chemicals like parabens, phthalates, glycol solvents, artificial color, and phosphates. It’s also safe for sensitive skin, which is important for my own use as well as our pets, and convenient to pick up while shopping at H-E-B, making it an easy choice.
Green Cleaning in a Pet-Friendly Home
If you’re looking to add some green cleaning solutions to your pet-friendly home, here are a few ways to utilize green products while keeping a tidy, clean house for you and your best friend.
Puppy placemats to make dining tidy (and classy)
Place a mat under your pet’s food and drink bowls when they eat to help catch crumbs and water splatter. Easily wipe it down a few times a week with AOG wipes and wash up their bowls regularly using some AOG concentrate and water. Stella is especially picky about clean dishes at our house, some times refusing to eat or drink until she’s given a freshly washed bowl. AOG makes it easy to meet her demands.
AOG wipes are an easy solution for keeping Stella’s doggy placemat clean and smelling fresh.
Squeaky clean toys
Regularly disinfect your pet’s toys. A little wipe down on hard toys once a week can help keep them clean and remove foul smells. For plush toys, we toss ours in the washer and give them a good spin with an eco-friendly cleaner. Much like the floor, you want to use safe products on anything your pet would or potentially could put in their mouth and Art of Green makes for an easy solution.
Create a doggy cleaning station
Setup a ‘dog cleaning area’ for your pet near the door you frequently use to let your pet in and out. We keep a basket of old towels next to our backdoor to quickly wipe muddy paws or brush dried grass off of Persie’s back after he’s had a good roll in the yard. It helps reduce the amount of dirt tracked into the house and for when those muddy pawprints sneak in, I mop them up with a mixture of Art of Green concentrate and water.
Our doggy cleaning station includes towels, a spray water bottle, and even a pet foot squeegee.
Don’t underestimate your vacuum
This seems basic but if you have a smart vacuum, it takes very little effort to set up a daily cleaning to pick up dog hair, grass carried in on their paws, or pieces of toys chewed off by your buddy. Quick, daily vacuuming helps decrease odor and makes your house feel kept with minimal effort in-between tougher, deep-clean vacuuming days.
Keep their ‘spot’ tidy
Stella and Persie love to snuggle on the couch so to keep our furniture clean, we keep a doggy blanket nearby. Throwing a blanket or even a proper pet couch cover over your pet’s usual nap spots allows you to regularly wash the cover using an eco-friendly detergent to keep your home smelling fresh and free of excess fur. If your pup is crate trained and considers their crate their ‘spot’ be sure to give your pet’s crate a weekly wipe down. Using AOG wipes makes quick clean-ups easy and helps decrease smells.
Do you have any green cleaning tips for keeping a pet-friendly home? Share them below.
