Season 34: In this episode Eric G discusses his spring cleaning tips all while Caroline B shares her healthier alternatives. If you are getting ready to clean that winter away this is a must listen to episode. Plus some great lawncare tips to get that lawn the greenest on the block!

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[00:00:06] Caroline Blazovsky: They also make it what's called Oxy ground. It's basically the same. I think they just bark at the same product and just put it under a different name, but, and is this like,

[00:00:19] Intro: but I think it uses sort of the same technology. So

[00:00:29] Intro: but this

[00:00:31] Caroline Blazovsky: It's you can check it out at a company. Pacific sands. You'll like it see Pacific sands. So, um, but it's really great ground cleaner. And so you do what you can mix it up. You can apply it directly as a powder form with a little scrub brush. You know, I like to use a toothbrush or the little tools to kind of get

[00:00:47] Eric Goranson: remodeling and renovating your home.

[00:00:53] Intro: This is

[00:01:08] Caroline Blazovsky: Hi everybody. How are we all doing this a week?

[00:01:13] Eric Goranson: It's a big weekend. It is the birthday 34th birthday of around the house.

[00:01:27] Eric Goranson: Jeez. I think it's eight years now. So it's come a long time. Yeah. Yeah. So it's wild. It's, uh, it's crazy. So at time flies when you're having fun, but, uh, he, it started out years ago here in Portland, Oregon, and, uh, just keeps going and going and going.

[00:01:58] Caroline Blazovsky: So happy birthday to [00:02:00] us.

[00:02:00] Eric Goranson: Happy birthday

[00:02:05] Eric Goranson: Ooh. Do you have an update though? From our previous podcast, did you say news?

[00:02:35] Eric Goranson: And I rebuilt the wheels with this kind of super .

[00:02:48] Eric Goranson: is. So I have an LG cord, zero robot vacs. So this is one of the, kind of the Roomba version, you know, it's like that original I robot kind of thing, but it's the LG version.

[00:03:27] Eric Goranson: It's about 70 bucks aside. Cause you have to buy the motor in the wheel. There wasn't enough room to actually build them out of metal or print up something and still hold up. So I actually just took glue and tried to rebuild them. And, um, so far so good. I got three vacuuming. Without a fall apart. So we'll see what happens.

[00:03:54] Caroline Blazovsky: loop. Eric had me dying and the podcast. This is a reason why all of our audience, if you listened to us on the [00:04:00] radio, check us out, you can find us on any podcast player on your phone.

[00:04:24] Caroline Blazovsky: That's one of my favorite

[00:04:55] Eric Goranson: Scrubbing down the lawn furniture, if it's out any of that stuff. [00:05:00] What I do to clean that up a lot of times, and depending on the product, I'll just get out like 30 seconds outdoor cleaner, which is a product that I use spray down out there when it's dry. Let it do its work and then you could hose it off.

[00:05:23] Caroline Blazovsky: It's in that. Is that a toxic product? I think it might be toxic. I don't know. I haven't. Greener alternative for that.

[00:05:31] Eric Goranson: Let's hear it. I, you're going to have a greener alternative to everything I probably use, which is great. So now we can all learn that all of the cleaners, here we go, you got it. What would you do on the outside? I

[00:05:49] Caroline Blazovsky: You can get it at eco geeks. You can also get it by natural choices makes this product, and it looks almost like a baking powder or baking. And this stuff is great. So if you have a deck [00:06:00] and you have any kind of sludge slime, mold Moss, Um, what else gets out there? Like just debris, dirt, you know, it gets funky wood.

[00:06:26] Caroline Blazovsky: You know, you can use it around your kids, pets, all that kind of good stuff. I like that it's called Oxy boost, but it's not B O S T natural choices makes it good product. I like it. How does

[00:06:38] Caroline Blazovsky: Pretty well. Yeah, it does. It takes about 10 minutes. Like, you know how your product saying you put it on for 30 seconds.

[00:06:46] Eric Goranson: Yeah, they say 32nd outdoor cleaner is it is it is. It starts working in 30 seconds, but really what you do is if it's with 30 seconds outdoor cleaners, you mix it up. It's a concentrate, you spray it on the dry [00:07:00] surfaces. And then if it's on like metal or plastic fiberglass, you should let it sit at least three minutes.

[00:07:17] Caroline Blazovsky: you want to go with Eric's choice, which may not be as environmentally friendly, you've got that. If you want to go with my choice, which is a healthier alternative, same thing, you can use it on cement wood.

[00:07:33] Eric Goranson: this one here, I think, uh, you know, you could smell there's some, uh, chlorine product. So, you know, you can smell on the 32nd clean. There is, there's a bunch of other soaps and stuff in that thing too.

[00:07:56] Eric Goranson: And it's a, definitely not as green as yours, but, um, [00:08:00] you know, it doesn't hurt plants and stuff around there either. So it's pretty good. But for cleaning up outside, that works pretty good on that. What do you do Caroline for? Like, you know, you get all that junk from outside on the windows and you're like, all right, it's a sunny spring day.

[00:08:21] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm not totally opposed to Windex, but I usually am a vinegar and water solution person. So I'll go, you know, a 50, 50 combination, or if you take a big bucket and just put a cup of vinegar in it, it works really good at breaking up all that scum.

[00:08:39] Eric Goranson: does it do the same as like streaking in the glass and stuff is at work just as good as like one of these that have the ammonia that kinda shut the water off. It does. Okay. Yep. So vinegar

[00:08:50] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm not going to go, you know, throw you out with the bath water for using

[00:08:59] Caroline Blazovsky: but if you want [00:09:00] greener alternative, go with Chester vinegar and water combination. Alright, but not vinegar. You're not making a sub or. I know sandwich

[00:09:15] Eric Goranson: Ooh, you're going to make me hungry now. So sub hoagie or a grinder, maybe, um, Oh, yeah. And by the way, we are going to have some fun coming up here on another show. And we'll talk more about that. We're at a time on this episode, we come back, we'll be talking more spring cleaning just as soon as around the house returns,

[00:10:07] Eric Goranson: welcome back to the round, the house show a Caroline and I have been sitting here talking about spring cleaning, and one of the things I do this time of year when we get outside. I started getting on the lawn. So I've already kind of hit my lawn with the iron that really tends to kill the Moss and stuff.

[00:10:38] Caroline Blazovsky: Um, I hate to ask is this is this, you know, audience, this is just my pet.

[00:10:54] Eric Goranson: So in the grass, I just used, like we'd begun or I'll use the Wieden feed, [00:11:00] uh, you know, granular fertilizer, you know, go through the, go through that, through the Scott's down on that or whatever brand I can get.

[00:11:31] Eric Goranson: So that way we can put some more natural plants

[00:11:51] Caroline Blazovsky: So if you go out there and chop that stuff up, make sure you're getting it as fertilizer and using it. Cause a lot of people do, at least in our area, we have leaf [00:12:00] cleanup. So people blow all the leaves away from their yard or they pick them up and they don't use them. So getting out there on the tractor or, or even using a push mower just to chop all that stuff up for fertilizer does work.

[00:12:29] Caroline Blazovsky: It's important.

[00:12:47] Eric Goranson: You know, I couldn't, I mean, they're probably, you know, three feet around they're big monsters out there. So those will be. You know, leaves down, but I get those cleaned up and get out of there. Cause that area I [00:13:00] don't mow. That's under them. It's all area that I'm getting ready to improve. So I cleaned those up and they go out with the yard waste and everything else and get out of there.

[00:13:24] Caroline Blazovsky: so I'm going to give you a killer weed now.

[00:13:48] Caroline Blazovsky: So I mix it all in there. And then I stir in one tablespoon of liquid detergent soap, and then you're going to basically spray that directly onto the weeds and let the solution dry on a sunny day. [00:14:00] And guess what happens to the weeds? Help? No,

[00:14:07] Caroline Blazovsky: walkways, but the key to that is that you do need sun. So you want to make sure it gets sun application in combination with those chemical compounds or what we call more natural non-synthetic chemicals to help it, help me, help me

[00:14:24] Eric Goranson: When you're making your own stuff, cause I've made some mistakes with this and we'll kind of wrap this part of the segment up with this. Here are the things you don't want to mix together. Do not mix bleach and vinegar together

[00:14:41] Eric Goranson: bleach and ammonia, unless you're trying to create chlorine gas. That's not what you want to do. Right. So, I mean, we're not trying to get into world war one warfare here, do not meat, meat, let bleach and vinegar. Mix-up and what I mean by that is you don't want to have a, like a mic us mix up a vinegar mix and pour it [00:15:00] into your sprayer that just had some bleach in it.

[00:15:22] Intro: bad.

[00:15:24] Eric Goranson: building.

[00:15:47] Caroline Blazovsky: toxic.

[00:16:09] Caroline Blazovsky: And it actually works as a really good disinfected. They use that in hospitals. Peracetic acid is a, is a commonly known disinfectant. You just don't want to mix them together so they can be applied on top of

[00:16:25] Eric Goranson: Well,

[00:16:27] Eric Goranson: profession. There we go. Another one bleach and rubbing alcohol. Ooh.

[00:16:32] just

[00:16:35] Intro: put you out little bleach.

[00:16:38] Caroline Blazovsky: For all my fans, I don't recommend bleach anymore. It's really gotten to be. It's very toxic. It's got a lot of unhealthy properties.

[00:16:56] Eric Goranson: bleach and rubbing alcohol basically creates a [00:17:00] rudimentary version of chloroform. You don't want to do that. I was cleaning the bathroom was with bleach and this, and I just woke up hours later.

[00:17:12] Caroline Blazovsky: any kind of, I don't use mode. We're going into the season. We do not use mold on, and this is even EPA recommended. We do not use, hold on. I mean, bleach on mold anymore.

[00:17:23] Caroline Blazovsky: to correct me too. No

[00:17:25] Eric Goranson: That is the biggest one that I see out there on social media.

[00:17:38] Intro: see it. Well, that's exactly

[00:17:47] Caroline Blazovsky: It loses that. But the protein that actually gives you allergens stays behind. So in the beta, glucan is another little science word, beta glucans, and mold stay behind. And those things are the things that cause you to be sensitive or [00:18:00] have allergic condition. So that stays behind with the bleach and it just bleaches it out.

[00:18:24] Eric Goranson: We'll do that just as soon as

[00:18:55] Intro: you guys you're listening to

[00:19:01] Intro: you're building it up.

[00:19:16] Eric Goranson: back to the ground, the house show. And, uh, well, this is where we're talking some spring cleaning and I'm talking about how. And Carolyn's going to correct me on how's the proper way to do it in a healthy kind of way, because I tend to be the guy that grabs the product off the shelf and goes up.

[00:19:36] Caroline Blazovsky: But, but you, but you did tick things that actually work. I mean, it's not like you're pretty picky

[00:19:53] Eric Goranson: And I get that, but man, that stuff is brutal. And the stuff that goes through your [00:20:00] skin, you know, it has its place when you're working on vehicles, but it is not a general cleaner you should be using around the garage. No.

[00:20:16] Eric Goranson: I'm doing better about wearing gloves now. I am good. Thank you. And, and I'm, I'm doing better with that. I am probably wearing gloves 75% of the time compared to decade where I didn't ever wear gloves. So

[00:20:40] Caroline Blazovsky: Oh, you could just put his hand in and just mix it.

[00:21:06] Eric Goranson: Because you are going to add. Yeah, you're going to catch that surface. So if you've got a brand new toilet, you get a little bit of water scum in there, or anything else to not just take bleach in there. And just as importantly, don't grab that magic eraser. A magic eraser, sorry, magic eraser. That is about the it's got about 1600 grit.

[00:21:51] Eric Goranson: Homeowners had had house cleaners come into a kitchen a year after I did it. And the house cleaner went around and started cleaning the cabinets with the magic [00:22:00] eraser and totaled the kitchen because they sanded off the finish of the cab. On their wood cabinets because they sanded it down to the wood and they had to do all new cabinet doors in the kitchen because she literally ruined them.

[00:22:36] Eric Goranson: Faucet stay looking good is to keep that water under controlled minerals, because otherwise you're throwing stuff at it, trying to fight that and make sure that you've got it under control. That's my tip.

[00:22:49] Caroline Blazovsky: think people go like, they feel like they have to do a really their due diligence on cabinets in the kitchen.

[00:23:11] Caroline Blazovsky: Or is it better just to leave it alone? Just do a simple dusting with, you know, something mild.

[00:23:34] Eric Goranson: Put a couple, you know, just a little bit of Dawn in there, or, you know, just something very gentle just to be a surfactant, to clean the grease and stuff off of there. And you're just gonna wop wash it really well. Get a nice terrycloth towel, make sure it's dried quickly. Don't slop any water up on there, but just do a very dry, you know, wring out the water out of it.

[00:24:21] Eric Goranson: And you'll see the finished fall off those areas. We are always touching it with your.

[00:24:39] Eric Goranson: Yeah. That can be the kryptonite on a lot of the newer finishes, especially that ammonia will actually break down that finish.

[00:24:58] Intro: Ouch.

[00:25:05] Caroline Blazovsky: I have a brush that I get in there and I've tried all different kinds. Silicone. They make them like nylon brush and trying to scrub the bowl. Is there anything that works the best and getting up under the lip, trying to get. Kind of serious about my toilet

[00:25:24] Eric Goranson: There's a lot of different bull shapes and everything else like that. Um, you know, and there's a lot of good toilet bowl cleaners out there. I'm sure there's stuff that's healthier than others, but to me, I want it to be clean. Do not use anything that you put in the toilet tank, you know how sometimes you can drop.

[00:25:58] Eric Goranson: So don't use any of those [00:26:00] in, in tank, toilet, cleaner parts as well. That will ruin a toilet fairly quick. I

[00:26:15] Actually,

[00:26:18] Eric Goranson: Toto has some that have that micro layer on top. So you have a normal porcelain layer and they put another coating over the top of it that fills in all those little pores. Cause it's like the surface of the moon. There's all these little visuals in there. And so really with those toilets, If you have to only clean them like that, clean the bowl, maybe once or twice.

[00:26:45] Caroline Blazovsky: No, no toilet. And my new bathroom. And you said Fisher, what a big word. I love that word. Got

[00:27:03] Eric Goranson: And of course. You know, I want you with grout and stuff. I have to go about to break here in a second, but with anything in your bathroom, you know, that grout is the weak point of any shower system or our wall system and a tub, shower combination. Make sure you're keeping that cleaned. And if it's an older grout that doesn't need to be sealed, make sure you're spending time every year, every year, it's sealing that.

[00:27:42] Eric Goranson: And sometimes you can rent those from a home improvement store and go in there and get that clean, then let it dry and do that. So I'd much rather see that than some of the chemicals. So we come back, let's talk Carolyn about what you do. For coming up with a good cleaner for that, because you know, for me, there's one thing that I don't [00:28:00] like, and that's white grout, because it always seems to get nasty.

[00:28:04] Caroline Blazovsky: good clean. So when we come back, before

[00:28:26] Eric Goranson: We'll be back with more cleaning tips just as soon as around the house returns.[00:29:00]

[00:29:08] Eric Goranson: Eric command from Eva. Novelas bam. And you're listening to

[00:29:19] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the, around the house show. Caroline and I been talking about doing spring cleaning and some of those, well, like my stuff, not so healthy and maybe your.

[00:29:44] Caroline Blazovsky: And I like a product again in the Oxyboost family. So we talked about the deck and patio cleaner early. They also make it what's called Oxy ground. It's basically the same product. I think they just mark it the same product and just put it under a different name. But I just like

[00:30:00] Eric Goranson: It's really Amaziah for OxiClean.

[00:30:04] Intro: same technology,

[00:30:13] Caroline Blazovsky: but this is Oxy grout. It's you can check it out at a company. Pacific sands. You'll like, it seems Pacific sands. So, um, but it's really great ground cleaner. And so you do what you can mix it up. You can apply it directly as a powder form with a little scrub brush.

[00:30:40] Eric Goranson: It's behind the walls. It's one behind the walls too.

[00:31:01] Eric Goranson: And then we had a, another to discussion with, uh, that tile chick about and stuff in that as well. So we've had a bunch of different discussions. So make sure you go back and check out some of those 700 plus episodes that are up there on the web over

[00:31:22] Caroline Blazovsky: You can also do a little. Pinhole. If you want to find out what's happening behind the walls in your shower, and you necessarily don't want to tear your shower apart, you could put a little pinhole, like the size of a pencil, do an air sample right inside the wall. And we can see if there's mold back there.

[00:31:38] Eric Goranson: behind the wall right there. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah, that's the thing. And one thing you can do too, and, you know, we had Armada on a few, a few weeks ago and we talked about, you know, keeping that shower dry, really make sure that you're running that bath fan in there.

[00:32:09] Caroline Blazovsky: stuff that you recommend

[00:32:13] Eric Goranson: You know, I tend to oversize my shower, bath fans, you know, they size them per the space, but you know, a big, a big bathroom with a lot of steam. Like mine's a medium sized bathroom. I've got the biggest fan I can go in there. So I'm pushing almost 120 CFM on that. I've got it cranked up, but you have to remember to make sure that you've got plenty of intake air coming in.

[00:32:55] Eric Goranson: And when I'm running that 120 CFM, it's cooling the tile floor. [00:33:00] So the tile is cold in front of the door because it's all rushing air into there. So it's almost like an air conditioner on that. So I don't want to bring in all that there. I want to go in on the other side of the bathroom. So I'm not bringing in so much air across the tile floor and making it.

[00:33:16] Caroline Blazovsky: agree with you about the fan. I think 1 25 is good. I think a 50 is not good

[00:33:28] Caroline Blazovsky: that? I think for all your surfaces and you may disagree. Um, but for bathroom, anything that's not going to take color out.

[00:33:51] Caroline Blazovsky: You will get a little tushy burn if you forget that it was there and sit back down, but it doesn't do any harm. And I find when you use it in the shower once a week or [00:34:00] twice a week, and just spray that shower down with hydrogen peroxide and let it sit, it helps to deter.

[00:34:08] Caroline Blazovsky: It doesn't like, I think you're oxygenating it and it just doesn't like, you know, it doesn't like that kind of environment. So it deters it from growing there. And it seems to deter mold from just returning to the shower or presenting there in the first.

[00:34:29] Caroline Blazovsky: you know, it'll it'll bleach color.

[00:34:37] Eric Goranson: You're going to have some problems, gonna have some problems. So be a little careful with that. I know one of your pet peeves, Caroline is those, uh, those wipes that come out of the plastic container.

[00:34:48] Intro: oh, like a baby

[00:34:55] Caroline Blazovsky: with all of those is that they put off high vault organic. So if I'm testing your air [00:35:00] quality and you're using a lot of these Clorox wipes on the counter, Plus you don't, you're putting food there. You don't want to add these chemicals to your foods and everything else.

[00:35:18] Eric Goranson: you know, we, we trained so many people. I mean, there was a run on those things over the.

[00:35:26] Caroline Blazovsky: such bad indoor air quality on your, on your countertops. You guys just a little bit surfactant and water works. Fantastic. Open water works. Great.

[00:35:48] Eric Goranson: Dustin. If you go to a, using a day, it stops all of that, about that

[00:36:02] Eric Goranson: reasons. So that's a, that's a good one there. And they do make self-cleaning but days to do a lot of, a lot of the cleaning, they don't get gunky.

[00:36:13] Caroline Blazovsky: fan too. So they dry you, they wet you and they dry

[00:36:23] Eric Goranson: It comes out of it. I like that. He did see,

[00:36:27] Caroline Blazovsky: though. We can impact the environment, you know, do our, do our due diligence and not throw a lot of this stuff back in for waste. There's alternatives to everything.

[00:36:47] Eric Goranson: But it's amazing even with all the high-tech filtration I have in my house, how much dust actually sticks to those walls and how much kind of lemon Lin to all that stuff from inside the house ends up sticking on the [00:37:00] walls. If you don't. Dustin down that's that

[00:37:03] Caroline Blazovsky: you know, back in the day, our elders used to do.

[00:37:21] Caroline Blazovsky: But the problem with painting is that then you add a lot of volatile organics and those things take about two years to go away. So doing an eight that's so key, it's such a good thing to bring up wall wipe downs yearly should be done.

[00:37:37] Eric Goranson: Open up all the windows and doors in the house and below the walls and ceiling

[00:37:45] Eric Goranson: I'm just blowing out with dust off of it. I mean, you've got, I mean, it's horrible air quality for the next half hour 45 minutes, but I'm turning the bath fans on everything else. I go,

[00:38:01] Eric Goranson: if Julie caught me doing, it'd be the death of me, but it was just, it was, it was how I used to do it. Cause I'm like, ah, I'm going to do this. And it worked really well. I mean, it got stuff off the walls. There were no cobwebs anywhere, you know,

[00:38:21] Eric Goranson: It's huge. Well, and the problem is, is when you go turn the AC on and that's on high volume, you know, cause usually the high, the AC uses a higher fan speed, many times with systems and the heat does. So when you do that, um, all of a sudden you kick up all that dust that hasn't been. All year long waiting after AC season's over with, if you're in the Northern climates.

[00:38:56] Caroline Blazovsky: is any dander control. We shed 500 [00:39:00] million skin cells a day. So just think about that. People, we always talk about dander with pets, but we're shedding constantly into our beds.

[00:39:13] Eric Goranson: day. Gross. That's gross. Know what time it is? Time to go. It's that time? Caroline. I'm Eric G and I'm Caroline B. And you've been listening to