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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Adventures in Sanitizing

Until recently, I relied on very hot water and the occasional bleach treatment to disinfect things in my house. I'm a true believer in the saying "God made dirt, so dirt don't hurt", but when it comes to things like raw meat, I don't like to mess around. And my husband isn't quite as strong a believer as I am, so I've looked for more green and more frugal ways to sanitize.


This dark and ominous photo is of my bloody cutting board. No, I didn't just slip in some Queen's English slang, it really is bloody. This is from my beef stew the other night. I love this cutting board, but it's textured and has score marks from my knife as well. How do I make sure it's clean?

As I said earlier, I used to rely on really hot water and a little bleach. But not any more, especially since I've turned the water heater down a few clicks. Now, I use a combination of vinegar, peroxide and a good brush. The brush was $0.99 at Ikea, yes it's plastic, but I'm okay with that. The vinegar and peroxide were purchased in bulk at Sams Club and for two huge bottles of each, I think I spent maybe $10, maybe.


My company just came out with 30% PCR content bottles and all plastic triggers, so I got a bunch of those and made my own cleaners. Left is vinegar, right is peroxide and in the middle is a wonderful concoction of cleaning agents from my mom. I'm not sure what's in it (b/c I don't remember), but it's an all-purpose cleaner with things like tea-tree oil and grapeseed crush in it. It smells wonderful and does a really great job!

For my cutting boards and other contaminated items, I just spray vinegar then spray peroxide, let it sit for about a minute, scrub with the brush and then wash off as usual. The comination of the two is a wonderful disinfectant. Mixing them together in the same bottle doesn't have the same affect and can produce some harmful fumes, so keep them seperate until the last minute!

I got this from a site on this wonderful world wide web, but I can't remember where. I'm sure if you do a quick google search you can learn much more about this though!

1 comment:

  1. I need to find the exact "method" but I know cutting boards can be cleaned up really well (w/ the exception of raw meat) with some coarse sea salt & a half a lemon. I'll see if I can find it.

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