Green Resource: Clean House, Clean Planet

Karen Logan was my first green teacher. I found her book, Clean House, Clean Planet, lying around my parents’ house, one of the many we were given because they mention our soap. I’d like to say I read them all with profound contemplation, evaluating the merits of each. But I didn’t. Most got a cursory flip through, wherein I either got lost in excessive explanation or found them too simple. But if I’m being honest, it was the cover of this one that snagged me. It made housecleaning look cute, and it’s fun to pretend every so once in a while.

If you’ve spent any time elsewhere on my blog, you’ve probably come across my referencing this one. When I first contemplated writing my blog, I wondered why anyone would need another blog when they could just get this book. I hope I have since built upon Karen’s foundation, but I want you to know that this is where it began for me.

Who doesn’t love a Top Ten list? Let me give you mine for why I love this book:

1. Karen doesn’t hit you over the head and tell you why you’re wrong about everything you ever thought you knew about anything. I hate books that make me feel stupid for not already knowing what the book is telling me. If I already knew this, I wouldn’t be reading your book! But Karen isn’t like this. She comes alongside the reader like two friends chatting over coffee. Talking about house cleaning. Rather unromantic. But so very real.
2. It is absolutely chock full of recipes. There isn’t a nook of a house that Karen doesn’t speak to. Even creepy-crawly stuff like cockroaches, ants, and mice.
3. She doesn’t only tell you what to do, she tells you why and how much it will cost. That’s the language I speak. Give it to me plain. I’ve got a budget to keep.
4. She compares homemade options to conventional products both in price and efficacy. And she’s honest. There’s an “effectiveness rating” for each solution comparing it to its conventional counterpart. She’ll tell you if the natural equivalent of a toxic chemical is simply elbow-grease. I’m ok with that. But I do like to know. But most of the time the effectiveness rating is very high.
5. She explains which products are most important to replace, giving you some idea of where to start. If you’re new to the green path, and you think every product you’ve been using is a ticking time bomb, and you’re tempted to throw them all out right now, DON’T!!! You’ll get overwhelmed and will end up re-buying everything you just tossed and be mad at the money you wasted. And that’ll be the end of your natural cleaning journey. Instead, she helps you prioritize which products to replace one at a time.
6. It’s no fuss and has a great index. Use it as a reference book to jump right to what you need. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read it straight through cover to cover, although I have read it all many times. It makes sense whether you read it front to back or back to front or middle to front to back… For how many books can you say that?
7. It’s authentic. You can tell she’s tried these out herself. There’s no scent of “designed by committee.” Between the lines, there’s a woman who has cleaned her house with myriad concoctions, some of which have worked and undoubtedly some that haven’t, taking notes all the while. She thanks her two-year old in the acknowledgments for “contributing the numerous cleaning opportunities.” What a positive outlook!
8. It’s delightfully old-school. I mean, it’s a book! It doesn’t reference websites, because we didn’t do that sort of thing yet in 1997. We looked things up in books. It’s kind of fun – in a quaint sort of way.
9. It is very impressive that she compiled all this information in the days of the internet’s infancy, and in the days before green became trendy. She must have felt like a lone soldier! Think of how many phone calls, newspaper articles, books, reference manuals, research abstracts she must have accessed to collect all this information. Plus, this was back when few groups were putting out this sort of research. In 1997, there was no Environmental Working Group, no Organic Consumers Association, no Cleaning Products Disclosure Act. Hats off to you, Karen!
10. She uses Castile Soap (yes, Dr. Bronner’s by name) in a whole lot of her recipes. So full disclosure – if you use her book, you may find yourself buying more Dr. Bronner’s Soap. And yes, that does benefit my camp. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good!!

Before you dismiss this book as “old,” let me remind you that dirt hasn’t changed any in the last 25 years. Further, the ingredients she uses in her recipes are even older still and recent research has only proven further what Karen was saying back then about toxicity of common house cleaners.

You’ll notice the absence of a link to a place to buy this book. That’s not an oversight. I don’t endorse any booksellers. So, again we’re going old-school here – copy “clean house clean planet karen logan” into your search engine and see where it takes you.

Just to take things one step further, since I happened to be contemplating some gifts I need to give, this is a perfect way to translate your crunchy self into a gift for someone else. Get this book, package it with a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Castile Soap, a spray bottle or two, a bottle of tea tree essential oil, and a mason jar of baking soda. Tie it together and off you go. Useful, healthy, consumable, personal – what more could you ask of a gift?

Further reading

• One Step at a Time
• The Low Cost of Green Cleaning
• 13 Essential Green Cleaning Ingredients
• Podcast: How I Am Turning My World Green