Her Modern Kitchen

Eating & Living in Austin, Texas

eco-friendly

Green Cleaning for Pet-Friendly Homes with Art of Green

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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.

Dusting the tabletops

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.

Mopping up the floors

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.

Cleaning up the doggy placemat

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.

Love Your Pet Green Cleaning

Do you have any green cleaning tips for keeping a pet-friendly home? Share them below.

 

Eco-Friendly Kitchen Products for Living a Greener Life

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Today I’m sharing my favorite eco-friendly products I use in the kitchen that help me live a greener life.

Over the years, I’ve been ‘green curious’ but in the past year or two being green has become something I truly value and it’s something I strive to practice in my day-to-day. I’m not perfect with it by any means but I try to be conscious of my choices to live a greener life.

I think being green or eco-friendly or sustainable means different things to different people.  I also believe there are different categories of ‘green’ which can lend itself to food, products, daily practices, transportation, and even fashion or makeup.

What being green means to me

Being more conscious of the products I buy and the chemicals in those products that I bring into my home and put in my body.

Purchasing foods that are organic, fair-trade, local, and non-GMO, and choosing free-range and hormone-free animal products as much as possible

It also means prioritizing reusable products and when I’m not, ensuring I’m practicing proper recycling guidelines for my city’s recycling program

Green products I’m loving in my kitchen

If you’re looking to be a little greener in your everyday life, one easy way to start is in your kitchen.  Below I share my favorite green products that make my kitchen more eco-friendly and bring joy to my everyday life!

Reusable Silicone Bags: These bags are biodegradable, leakproof, and come in an assortment of sizes.  We use them for everything from storing snacks to take to work, to packing sandwiches and storing leftover veggies.  They’re thick, durable and easy to clean. You can even bake your food in them since they’re oven proof (my colleague tested this and was pleasantly surprised with the results).  To wash, you simply rinse them and turn them inside out to dry then they’re ready to use again!

Silicon Ziplock Bags

Colony Co. Reusable Mesh & Bulk Bin Bags: I’m sure you’re already bringing reusable bags to the grocery store so why not step it up and bring your own reusable produce and bulk bin bags to use in place of the standard plastic bags provided by the store.  These come in an assortment of sizes and are conveniently machine washable.  And, because they’re not made of thin plastic, your bulky potatoes or pointy vegetable won’t break through the bag so your produce stays damage-free until you get home.

Reusable Bulk & Produce Bags

Bee’s Wrap: If you’re using plastic wrap or aluminum foil to cover bowls, then why not switch to Bee’s Wrap.  (Did you know, plastic wrap lingers in our environment for up to 2,000 years?). Bee’s Wrap is all natural, compostable, and has a lovely beeswax scent to it.  The product molds easily over any size bowl, you simply warm the wrap with your hands and it sticks to itself.  You can wash the wrap with cool water before reuse and each wrap lasts at least a year, depending on how often you’re using it.

Bee's Wrap

On-the-Go Reusable Straws: This is an easy one and something everyone (and most companies) have already switched to using. But if you’re a straw fan like me, you can now easily bring your own straw along for those times when a more eco-friendly straw isn’t available.  These reusable straws are flexible, come an individual cleaner, and each has its own carrying case so it can easily be thrown in your bag and stored away when not in use.

Art of Green & Unpaper Towels

Art of Green: I’ve tried a lot of ‘green’ cleaning products and I’ve found that most of them either smell like vinegar or leave streaks across my counter.  But not Art of Green.  Yes, Art of Green did send me complimentary product but I’m sharing it here because I’m truly impressed with the scent, quality, and results of the products. Art of Green is Austin based and recently launched in H-E-B. The products don’t contain any harsh or toxic chemicals, they’re USDA-Certified Bio-based, made with 100% post-consumer recycled materials, and have a biodegradable formula. Grab a coupon for your own Art of Green purchase at H-E-B.

Unpaper Towels: We used to use a ton of paper towels in our kitchen.  And while we haven’t rid our kitchen of paper towels, we have started using fewer thanks to the Unpaper Towel.  These thin cloth towels help us keep our kitchen tidy and easily wipe up messes with Art of Green cleaner. I keep a tub under the sink to store used Unpaper Towels until the end of the week when we throw them in the washer to be sanitized and reused.

Unpaper Towels

Natural Sponges: These little sponges make me so happy! I love how they come slim in a package then puff up into a soft natural sponge.  I keep these near my kitchen sink to clean up quick messes. Also, unlike synthetic sponges, natural sponges don’t retain odor and have a naturally occurring enzyme that inhibits mold and bacteria growth. Plus, their space-saving size when not in use is an added bonus!

Natural Sponge

Are you already using some of the products I mentioned above? I’d love to add more green products to my kitchen, so tell me, what are some of your favorite, tried-and-true eco-friendly products? And don’t forget to head over to my Instagram for a chance to win your own bundle of Art of Green cleaning products.

Disclosure: While Art of Green did not sponsor this post, they did provide complimentary product and offer to support a giveaway on Instagram for participants located in the USA.