If you are a cottager then you must enjoy something about the natural environment. So to help preserve that natural environment it makes sense that you should try to be as gentle as possible on the environment as you can especially while at the cottage. We’ve compiled a list of the green cleaners we use around our houses that would be useful at the cottage. This is one of the answers to the question “What can I do to help the environment”. If you switched one of your ordinary cleaning products to one of these, you would be making a difference.

Bleach alternative
Ingredients:
1 part hydrogen peroxide
8 parts water

Mix the hydrogen peroxide and water. Soak stain for 5 to 30 minutes. Launder as usual.

Get out Oily Stains from Clothes

Ingredients:
Baby powder or cornstarch

Pour enough baby power or cornstarch on the area of the stain to soak up oil. Wait a few minutes. Launder as directed on instruction tag.

A Better Glass Cleaner

Ingredients:
2 to 3 ounces vinegar
1/2 tsp dishwashing liquid

Pour vinegar and dishwashing liquid into a spray bottle.

Ant repellent

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon boric acid (available at any drugstore)
6 tablespoons sugar
2 cups water

Thoroughly dissolve the boric acid and sugar in the water. Do this in a clear jar so you can see when all the boric acid crystals are dissolved. Then soak some cotton balls in the bait solution.

Make bait dispensers out of some old plastic cartons with lids. Punch holes in them so the ants can get inside, then put the soaked cotton balls into the containers and cover them with lids so the bait won’t dry out.

Place the bait containers wherever you see ant trails, in and/or outside the house.

Clean the containers and use fresh bait solution at least once a week.

Be patient! The key to effective control is to get worker ants to continually carry low doses of boric acid back to feed the ants in their nest. After a few weeks of using the solution, reduce the boric acid content even further, to 1/2 teaspoon, and use this weaker solution for long-term control. Boric acid is mildly repellent to ants, and using a very low dose makes it more likely that surviving ants will continue eating the bait and taking it back to the nest.