America takes on spring cleaning

Nearly 77 percent of Americans will undertake some type of spring cleaning this year, according to a recent survey by the Soap and Detergent Association (SDA), a cleaning-products trade group. Men and women tackle these seasonal chores, though more women (86 percent) than men (68 percent) tidy up behind furniture, wash windows, clean appliances and floors, and tend to bedclothes/linens.

Not surprisingly, many survey respondents admit to not liking the task, which is nowhere near as fun as that other rite of spring: the start of a new baseball season. Indeed, nearly a third of respondents would pay $100 to hire someone to do their cleaning for them.

I’d have thought that more people would give up household cleaning, but it seems that Americans do like this chore: Only 8 percent of respondents to the SDA’s 2004 spring-cleaning survey described house cleaning as a job they dislike, while 88 percent considered cleaning as important to keeping their families happy, healthy and safe; maintaining a presentable home; or providing a sense of satisfaction when finished.

The benefit to spring cleaning? More than 50 percent of respondents feel a thorough cleaning once a year cuts down on their cleanup work the rest of the time.

Seventy-five percent of those surveyed look for product effectiveness as key in the cleaners they buy (they also like multipurpose cleaners), and they also consider cost and convenience when shopping. They’re  increasingly seeking out green or organic cleaning products, like those recently introduced by Clorox and SC Johnson. See our blog on this industry trend.

Consumer Reports, of course, is here to help you get through these annual—and arduous—chores. Refer to our Spring Cleaning Guide for expert advice on keeping your home and your car looking their best. If you’re in the market for a new vacuum cleaner, read our latest report and watch the video buying guide at right. And for any heavier-duty tasks in the garage, basement, or workshop, learn about wet/dry vacuums.—Cyndi Schoenbrun, Senior Research Analyst

Greener cleaners go mainstream

In January, the Clorox Company launched Green Works (shown), a line of what it claims are “natural” cleaners. Days later, SC Johnson announced that a new Greenlist label would appear on its familiar blue Windex glass cleaner. Both products are now being rolled out into retailers nationwide. You know the green bandwagon is getting crowded when two behemoths of the household-cleaning industry climb aboard.

No sooner had the companies launched the products than some in the green blogosphere began questioning the safety of the ingredients used in these cleaners and whether they really are just more examples of greenwashing. So we decided to take a closer look.

Clorox Green Works
Clorox says that its Green Works products, which include all-purpose, bathroom, dilutable, glass-and-surface, and toilet-bowl cleaners, are at least 99 percent “natural.” But without a nationally accepted standard definition for that term, the company is using its own. Natural cleaners, Clorox says, are defined as having ingredients that come from primarily plant and mineral materials and contain less than 1 percent petrochemicals. But keep in mind, natural doesn’t necessarily mean nontoxic or nonirritating.

Unlike with many other cleaners, including some from Clorox, you will find a complete list of ingredients on Green Works packaging. That’s significant, since full disclosure is not required by federal law. At the same time, since it can be difficult to judge the potential harmful effects of ingredients you might be unfamiliar with, if you’re concerned about your health and safety, check for warning labels; they are required when a product contains ingredients that are known to cause harm to humans. Four out of five Green Works products carry “caution” labels, which indicate relatively less hazard than “danger” or “poison” labels would.

Four Green Works products carry the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the Environment, or DfE, label (shown). The presence of the label means that the EPA evaluated the ingredients for health and environmental impacts. But it doesn’t signify that the ingredients are harmless; rather the label indicates that they are considered to be the least harmful in their chemical class. Also, since ingredients are judged individually, there is not one clear standard that all products with a DfE label must meet. Consumer Reports is in the process of evaluating the DfE label.

In April, a Sierra Club label will also appear on all the Green Works products. The label will indicate that the products have been reviewed by the club and are environmentally preferable to conventional products. However, the label is not free from conflict-of-interest, as the Sierra Club will receive financial support from Clorox as part of this partnership.

SC Johnson Greenlist
SC Johnson’s Windex Original blue glass cleaner is the first product to carry the company’s Greenlist label. However, the manufacturer claims it has been reformulating several of its products in accordance with the Greenlist process since 2001. Since the company defined the process, it decides what’s green. Basically, with Greenlist, ingredients are ranked on a more-to-less impact scale from 0 to 3. That information is then used to improve the “environmental and health profile” of products by reformulating them with ingredients considered by the company to be less harmful.

For the Windex, SC Johnson says it replaced a 0-rated solvent with a more environmentally responsible material and reduced the levels of volatile organic compounds in the cleaner. VOCs, chemicals found in many household products, can cause dizziness, headaches, and other acute symptoms.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to find a complete list of ingredients on Greenlist products since the company is not required by federal law to disclose all the ingredients used. Without this information, it’s impossible for us to tell whether the green or any other claims are true.

SC Johnson also carries cleaning products with the DfE label, indicating they have gone through the government’s screening process for health and environmental impacts. Those products include Shout Trigger laundry stain remover and Citrus Action, Scrubbing Bubbles Soap Scum Remover with Orange Action, Shower Shine Daily Shower Cleaner, and Fantastik Oxy Power multipurpose cleaner.

In the end, the best way to find eco-friendly cleaners—from Clorox, SC Johnson, or any other manufacturer—is to look for products with labels that have been independently verified as green in the Eco-labels Center on GreenerChoices.org. Also read our report on greener cleaners and use the cleaner recipes there at home.—Kristi Wiedemann, Science and Policy Analyst, GreenerChoices.org

Essential information: For information on Earth Day and greener living, visit our Earth Day Guide.  

Protect Your Investment: Wood Floors

Part of the beauty of wood floors is that they change over time, taking on character and patina. You might even appreciate the squeaks and creaks that sometimes develop—as long as they’re not too loud.

But you still need to manage the aging process of your floors. Severely worn wood floors don’t look good, and when you sell your home, prospective buyers won’t see the “character” of the floors so much as several thousand dollars they’ll have to spend having the surfaces refinished or replaced. Here’s how to keep your wood floors looking their best.

Daily Duty
Sweeping is essential to maintaining the integrity of the finish. Regularly sweep wood floors with a soft-bristle broom. If the floorboards have beveled edges that trap dirt and crumbs, use the bare-floor option on your vacuum instead of a broom. (In our tests, canister vacuums perform better than upright vacuums on wood floors. The trade-off is they can be heavier and pricier than uprights. For more advice on choosing a vacuum, read our latest report and use our expert shopping advice.)

Occasional Tasks
Clean your floors periodically with a wood-cleaning solution. (If you sweep or vacuum diligently, cleaning a few times a year might suffice.) Which cleaner you use will depend on the type of finish you have. To test, apply a few drops of water in an inconspicuous area, says inside a closet. If white spots appear within 10 minutes, the finish is wax. If no white spots show up, it's polyurethane. Another way to identify a polyurethane finish is to scratch the surface (again, in an out-of-the-way area) with a coin or other sharp object. If the finish does not flake, it’s polyurethane.

Clean floors with a polyurethane finish with a solution of 1 cup distilled white vinegar and 3 to 4 gallons of warm water. (Or use a waterborne cleaner designed specifically for urethane finishes, such as Bona.) Damp-mop the floor damp—don’t soak it: Dip a terry-cloth towel into the solution, wringing the towel of excess solution and covering a standard flathead mop with the towel to clean the floor.

Clean wax-finish floors with a solvent-based cleaner and liquid wax designed specifically for wood floors.

Regardless of the finish, never use products intended for vinyl or tile on wood floors, as they can dull the finish and make the floors slippery. Be careful when using a sponge mop; some have hard metal edges that can easily scratch floors.

Preventive Measures
• Place a doormat outside entrances to your home to keep people from tracking dirt and grit indoors.
• Better yet, instate a no-shoes policy, which will preserve the floors. If you can’t ban all footwear indoors, at least ask people to remove high-heel shoes; they can have an impact of 2,000 pounds per square inch, enough to mottle the surface of a wood floor over time.
• Use plastic or felt protectors under furniture legs to prevent scratches. When rearranging furniture, always lift pieces instead of sliding them.
• If you have a wood floor in the kitchen, place a mat in front of the sink and range to prevent steady foot traffic from wearing bare spots into the finish.

Essential information: When you need to install new floors, read our latest report on solid-wood, engineered-wood, and plastic-laminate options.

Stainless-steel cleaners

If you’ve got any stainless-steel appliances in your kitchen, you’ll know that the name of the finish is something of a misnomer. “Stainless” surfaces can definitely get stained and dirty.

Just ask Kristina Murray, who thought the new stainless-steel appliances in her Cornwall, New York, house “looked really cool nestled under mocha-stained cabinets and black granite countertops.” But when her son began to put his hands and mouth on virtually everything in the kitchen she and her husband started to see stainless in a different light. “We realized it takes a lot of work to maintain its shiny finish,” she says.

To see how well some popular stainless-steel cleaners work, we smeared peanut butter, jelly, ketchup, mustard, and tomato sauce on sheets of different types of stainless steel, let the mess sit for at least 24 hours, rinsed off any goo, and used each of the cleaners as directed.

All the products cleaned up all the stains except mustard, which left permanent speckles on the metal sheets. Every cleaner also removed fingerprints easily, though they didn’t stop new prints from appearing. The Weiman spray seemed to be better than others at limiting streaking on a variety of finishes.

The seven cleaners we tested work well, so choose based on price and type. The Method, Pledge, and Weiman sheets are one-step cleaners; with the other four you have to clean and then buff the surface.

The chart (click below) shows cost per use, based on the price of one sheet or the amount of pump or cream cleaner it takes to do about 12 square feet and one sheet of Bounty paper towel.

Essential information: Read "Best home appliances for the holidays" to find top kitchen gear for your home.

 

Greener cleaners for your dishes?

As part of our latest report on dishwashing liquids, we tested four products that make green claims: Earth Friendly Dishmate Ultra, Ecover Ecological Dishwashing, Seventh Generation Free & Clear, and Trader Joe’s Dish Soap. All of these cleaners did at least a very good job cleaning dishes, but are they as green as they appear?

You might think so, since their packaging features words like “biodegradable,” “natural,” “environmentally friendly,” and “nontoxic.” But, as they say, never assume anything. For instance, “biodegradable” means little unless the claim is specific, such as “biodegradable in three days” or “certified biodegradable.”

If you want to buy a cleaner that’s somewhat gentler on the environment—say one that contains a renewable, plant-based cleaning agent instead of a petroleum-based one—be sure the green claim is real. “Certified biodegradable,” for example, is independently verified. Visit our Eco-labels Web site for information on environmental labels on a range of consumer goods, including household cleaners, food, and personal-hygiene products.

Perhaps your concerns are more about how humane a product is than how green it is. To find out whether a dishwashing liquid was tested on animals, look for the Leaping Bunny logo (shown). That independently verified seal of approval indicates a product wasn’t tested on animals during any stage of its development. The Earth Friendly and Seventh Generation liquids we tested both meet the Leaping Bunny standard.

Finally, if you want to avoid the cloying, potentially allergy-inducing scents of some cleaners, look for specific claims, such as “contains no artificial dyes or fragrances,” then check the ingredients list.

Essential information: See which dishwashing liquids topped our Ratings in the January 2008 issue of Consumer Reports or on ConsumerReports.org. If you’re in the market for a new sink or faucet to wash your dishes with, read “Money down the drain?” If you’d prefer to let a machine do the work, read our buying advice for dishwashers and see our Ratings (available to subscribers).