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Hydrogen Peroxide - 3 Simple Steps for Home Cleaning
by Becky Mundt

Description: Tips for using hydrogen peroxide for cleaning your home.
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Replacing toxic chemical cleaners with hydrogen peroxide is an important step in reducing toxins and improving air quality in the home. But can hydrogen peroxide really stand up to the tough cleaning jobs around your home?

The answer is a most definite yes, particularly if you know a few simple tricks to make hydrogen peroxide work more effectively for you. It can save you time, energy and elbow grease as well.

Start by recognizing that hydrogen peroxide is a powerful oxidizing agent, which means it works especially well on all organic (food, soil, plant, blood, or other naturally produced) stains and soiling. In its oxidizing role it needs a little time (usually 15 to 20 minutes) to fully oxidize the stained or soiled surface.

Next, remember that in stronger concentrations (anything over around 6% solutions) it is a bleaching agent. So, rather than using stronger concentrations for cleaning, simply allow standard 3% solution to work for a few minutes to achieve cleaning without any bleaching effect.

Finally, if bleaching is the goal, consider using a dry formulation of hydrogen peroxide mixed with warm to hot water for best results. Dry formulation hydrogen peroxide is sold as sodium percarbonate powder or granules. It is the basis for many "oxygen cleaners" such as "OxyClean", "OxoBrite" and others in the marketplace, where it is normally a 70 to 74% sodium percarbonate mix with soda ash, or "sal soda". However, for full strength bleaching, look for pure sodium percarbonate, which can be found for sale on-line at places like thechemicalstore.com and a few others.

Sodium percarbonate is inexpensive, non toxic, and highly effective at cleaning many household surfaces, for laundry and can even be used to clean cement or concrete walkways, flooring and patios.

Not only that, but hydrogen peroxide leaves absolutely no residues, toxins or chemicals in the environment. It breaks down to water and oxygen, even while disinfecting and killing dangerous bacteria and viruses.

Unlike many new "anti-bacterial" cleaners now found to leave up to 70 percent of their active anti-bacterial agents behind, showing up in waterways, on agricultural lands and in forests and other natural environments, hydrogen peroxide truly "disappears without a trace" as a natural consequence of its exposure to the environment.

So, the next time a major (or minor) house cleaning project looms before you, consider swapping out those expensive toxic cleaners with simple, effective and perfectly environmentally friendly hydrogen peroxide -- in wet or dry solutions!

Keeping clean without adding toxins to the environment has been a life long passion of author Becky Mundt. Her new book, 101 Home Uses of Hydrogen Peroxide was created after years of personal experimentation and implementation of environmentally sound living practices. Spurred by her love of nature and a life traveling to such exquisite locations as Hawaii, Alaska and the northwest territories of Canada, she has become a proactive environmentally sound cleaning advocate. For more information on hydrogen peroxide, visit her site: Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide Dot Com.

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