After my daughter was born, I wanted to get all chemical cleaning products out of my house ASAP. But I needed to replace them with something that would, you know, clean my home. I'm a casual housekeeper at best, but still I do occasionally clean the tub, scrub the toilet, wipe down the kitchen counters etc.

After studying various books on Amazon, I went with "Better Basics for the Home," by Annie Berthold-Bond. I have been studying it ever since, like a text book for an important class. Annie, I feel like I can call her by her first name, has spent years testing all the recipes our great grandmothers used to use for cleaning, recipes that dated back to their great grandmothers and beyond. She notes that companies have been trying to replicate those original, chemical-free cleaners for years using harsh chemicals in an effort, supposedly, to make housecleaning easier. In reality, it's just a marketing gimmick.

A trip to the grocery store (washing soda, baking soda, borax, vinegar), the health food store (tea tree oil, lavendar oil) and the drugstore (glycerine) yielded several of the ingredients needed to get started. I'm now cleaning the tub with a mixture of baking soda and nontoxic liquid soap and cleaning the windows with a mixture of vinegar, water and lavendar oil. There are so many more recipes I can't wait to try. Eventually I want to make my own shampoo and face masks.

This book is an inspiration. Annie's love of the environment and the wisdom of the women who came before us shines through. Yes, switching to homemade cleaning products will save you money in the long run. No doubt about it. But it's mainly about being kind to the planet and to ourselves. Our great grandmothers understood that, why shouldn't we?