Borax For Natural Cleaning

We started out our journey into a healthier, less toxic home cleaning with articles on baking soda for odors and cleaning with vinegar. Now we are going to focus on another product that is popular in the green clean community: borax.

Borax is a natural occurring mineral and has a long and esteemed history as a detergent having first been discovered in the dry lake beds of Tibet and transported along the famous Silk Road (the trade routes from East to West). For us in the USA, borax became a household name under the 20 Mule Team Borax (http://www.20muleteamlaundry.com/) label. If you go to their website, you will see that they market borax as a detergent booster with odor control.

Make Laundry Detergent Better

The main use of borax in the home is as a detergent booster. However, it is also used in many other capacities as well, such as odor  removal, fungicide, disinfectant and a host of others. It is also often mixed with other ingredients to enhance their properties just like to laundry detergent booster. Borax is alkaline and not reactive so it can be safely mixed with other cleaning agents. For instance, mixing borax with bleach increases the effectiveness of bleach. You can use it to kill bugs of all kinds by mixing borax with the bugs favorite foods (sugar!).

Borax Is The Secret Ingredient

Why use borax? Borax for the most part is not used by itself, but mixed in with other natural cleaners because if its ability to enhance the effectiveness of other cleaning agents. It improves other natural cleaning products by performing actions that the other product cannot. For instance, mixing it with washing soda is a popular home-made laundry detergent.  Although borax is not often not the main ingredient in home-made cleaning recipes, it is an essential ingredient. It is inexpensive and will help make your inexpensive home-made cleaners more effective. Basically using borax will make your low cost cleaning products effective.

Handle Borax With Care

Borax is a natural cleaner that you should be careful with. Borax is natural, but also toxic to people in large quantities, so it should be kept away from food, children and pets. However, don’t let this discourage you from using borax. It has been used safely in the home for over 100 years here in the US. It is an essential ingredient that you will use in your home made recipes when you get started making your own low cost home-made cleaning supplies.