30 Day Toxin-Free Spring Cleaning Challenge
If you landed here because you signed up for the 30 day toxin-free spring cleaning challenge, you’re in the right place!
If you found this page through some other means, and you want to participate in the challenge, you can register for the challenge here.
I’m so excited to do this challenge with you. Not only will we be deep-cleaning our homes over 30 days, we will be doing it 100% toxin-free!
What Is the Toxin-Free Spring Cleaning Challenge?
I don’t know about you, but in the summer months, the last thing I want to be doing is cleaning my house! Doing this deep-cleaning now makes it so that all you have to do is your daily routines, and your quick weekly clean throughout the summer.
That means… more time to spend in the garden! 🌱
The idea behind the challenge is that we will be deep cleaning one area of our home each week.
After 30 days, your home should be deep cleaned and ready to welcome in summer!
We’ll be using Trello to organize our checklists and cleaning recipes.
How does the Spring Cleaning Challenge Work?
Once you register for the challenge, you’ll get a welcome email from me, which includes your link to the free Trello board. (It should already be waiting for you in your inbox! If it landed in your junk folder, drag it to your inbox so you won’t miss any of the weekly challenge emails).
The Trello checklists are completely customizable, so you’ll be able to edit them so they suit your own home.
Each week, on Sunday, you’ll get an additional email from me, explaining that week’s challenge.
If you wish, you can also join the Facebook group, where you can share your progress and have some accountability.
Why Toxin-Free?
There are tons of other spring cleaning challenges out there – what makes this one special is that we will be deep cleaning our homes without using any harmful chemical products.
Indoor air pollution is a huge health risk, and most people don’t realize how much these toxins affect their health.
Most people also don’t realize how many items in their home could be causing them harm.
- Window cleaners
- Surface cleaners
- Dish soap
- Laundry soap
- Fabric softeners & dryer sheets
- Scented candles/room sprays
- Shampoos, lotions, personal care products etc
In this challenge, we’ll not only be deep cleaning our homes, but also learning how to do it without using toxic products.
You’ll learn how to make simple, DIY cleaners out of ingredients you probably already have in your home, that will save you money, and help improve your health.
You don’t have to throw away the cleaners you currently have – just set them aside for now, and try the natural versions for 30 days. By the end of the challenge, I hope that you won’t want to go back to the toxic ones!
Trello Spring Cleaning Board
Trello is the app I use to organize my entire life, and spring cleaning is no exception!
All of our cleaning checklists + recipes are on the Trello board. You’ll simply copy the board to your own Trello account (which is 100% free), and you can customize your checklists to suit your own home!
Since this is a toxin-free spring cleaning challenge, The Trello board also contains tons of all-natural, DIY recipes. You can pick and choose which ones you want to make!
How to access the Spring Cleaning Trello Board:
- Create a free Trello account. You’ll most likely want to do the initial set up on a computer, as it’s a lot easier to do on a larger screen (plus, some features only work in the browser/desktop version, and not the app).
- Once you have your own Trello account, head to the email I sent you when you registered for the spring cleaning challenge, and grab the link to the Spring Cleaning Trello board.
- Open the link and make a copy of the Spring Cleaning Trello Board (you won’t be able to edit the template board – you need to copy it in order to use it). To do this, click the 3 dots on the top right of the board, and select ‘copy board’. If it says ‘About This Board’ at the top, click the arrow to go back to the menu. Click where it says More… You’ll want to select where it says ‘Copy This Board’. Choose a name for your board and hit save!
- Customize your Trello board to your liking. The card at the top of each list is where the room cleaning checklists live. You can edit this checklist to suit your own home! You can also change out the photos, or anything else you’d like. Make this your spring cleaning board. You’ll be able to re-use it year after year!
- (Optional): Download the Trello app. (You can download it to your phone, your iPad/tablet, or your computer – or you can simply use it in a web browser if you wish. I like having it on my phone so that my checklist is with me while I’m cleaning).
Warning: Once you start using Trello, you may start using it to obsessively organize every area of your life (ask me how I know). 😉
Toxin-Free Cleaning Supplies
This isn’t just a regular spring cleaning challenge, this is a toxin-free spring cleaning challenge!
That means if you currently use conventional, store-bought cleaners, we’re going to be doing things a little differently. And for that, you’ll need a few supplies.
The good news is, most of what you’ll need, you probably already have in your pantry! Things like:
- Vinegar
- Baking Soda
- Salt
Some additional supplies you may find helpful:
- Cleaning Spray Bottles (you can also just re-use any empty spray bottle you have)
- Citric acid
- Rubbing alcohol
- Epsom salts
- Cream of tartar
- Witch hazel
- Wool dryer balls
Essential Oils
Once you have the basic items you need, you may wish to add some essential oils & other cleaning products to your green cleaning kit.
Essential oils are a great way to add all natural fragrance to your homemade cleaners, plus they have a ton of health benefits!
If you already have some essential oils, please use what you already have! You aren’t required to purchase essential oils from me in order to participate in the challenge.
However, if you’re going to purchase essential oils, I highly recommend purchasing high quality ones. The reason is that over 90% of ‘essential oils’ on the market are adulterated – meaning they are cut with fragrance enhancers, fillers, or may even be entirely synthetic.
Obviously if you’re looking for truly toxin-free cleaning options, you don’t want to use synthetic essential oils. These can cause health issues similar to those caused by chemical-based cleaners.
Not only that, but they are a waste of money – you often need to use a LOT of cheap essential oil to get the desired effect. With 100% pure essential oils, you need far less, which means a little goes a long way!
The only brand I use and trust in my home is dōTERRA. I’ve been using them for 10 years, not only for cleaning, but for diffusing, for first aid treatment, and as our all-natural medicine cabinet.
I’ve put together a list of essential oils & natural products you may want to add to your all natural cleaning kit.
*Note that these links are for the US – if you live in another country, just reply to the email I sent you and let me know what products you’d like to order – I can put together a custom link for just about any country!
Essential Oils for Green Cleaning
Choose whether you want to start with a kit, or just purchase individual products.
When you order through one of my links, you get:
- A free wholesale account for 1 year, which gets you 25% off anything you order
- Access to my educational email series, which walks you through how to use your essential oils, essential oil safety, etc.
- Free shipping on orders of 100 PV or more
- A free essential oil diffuser when you order 150 PV or more
Green Cleaning Bundles
The easiest way to get started with toxin-free cleaning, is with a starter kit.
These bundles are offered at a discounted price, and will have everything you need to begin transitioning to natural cleaning.
Healthy Start Kit with Pebble Diffuser
This kit is perfect for beginners, because it contains the top 10 essential oils, plus a diffuser.
The essential oils are 5 ml size, which contains 85 drops of essential oil - plenty for you to make lots of homemade cleaners, use in your new diffuser, and learn how to use them for health benefits.
These 5 ml bottles are not available to purchase individually, you can only get them when you purchase them as a kit - so it’s a perfect opportunity to try multiple essential oils at a lower cost.
The Healthy Start Kit includes:
- Lemon
- Lavender
- Peppermint
- Tea Tree
- Frankincense
- Oregano
- Deep Blue
- Breathe
- OnGuard
- DigestZen
- Pebble Diffuser
Home Essentials Kit
The Home Essentials Kit has all the same wonderful oils as the Healthy Start Kit, except with full-sized (15 ml) bottles (except the Deep Blue, which only comes in 5 ml), and a larger diffuser.
As a bonus gift, you’ll also get a 2nd diffuser for free!
Individual Essential Oils & Products
If you aren’t ready for a starter kit, and you just want to grab 1 or 2 items to start learning to make your own cleaners, here are some options for you!
Lemon Essential Oil
If you can only afford to buy one thing to start your green cleaning journey, let this be it!
Lemon essential oil is so versatile, you’ll love all the things you can do with it. And it’s one of the least expensive essential oils!
- Add Lemon essential oil to a spray bottle with water to clean tables, countertops, and other surfaces.
- Place a few drops on a rag to help remove stubborn, sticky residues from labels or adhesives.
- Place a few drops on a cloth to clean and polish wood finishes.
- Diffuse Lemon oil to create an uplifting environment.
A 15 ml bottle of lemon essential oil contains 250 drops, enough to make 25 bottles of homemade all-purpose cleaning spray.
It's also my go-to for removing grease, marks, smudges, and anything else you can think of.
Lemon oil is the holy grail of toxin-free cleaning.
OnGuard Cleaner Concentrate
Next to lemon oil, this is the most-used product when it comes to cleaning my home.
It’s all natural, and extremely concentrated. One bottle of OnGuard cleaner concentrate will make 16 bottles of all-purpose cleaning spray!
OnGuard is our anti-bacterial blend, so it’s perfect for cleaning your bathroom, or any other surface in your home.
OnGuard Laundry Detergent
This laundry detergent is all we use in our home. (I used to make my own, but the OnGuard works so well, and smells amazing).
One of the most toxic things people use is synthetic laundry products - detergents, fabric softeners, etc.
As you’re doing your spring cleaning laundry, you’ll want to swap out your regular laundry products for something safe & natural.
Purify Essential Oil Blend
- a blend of citrus, fir, and herb essential oils
- Helps to eradicate unwanted odors from your home
- Great for cleaning your washing machine, or adding to a load of smelly laundry
Wild Orange Essential Oil
Citrus oils are renowned for their cleansing properties, and Wild Orange smells amazing! It’s perfect for adding to your DIY all-purpose cleaner, or to diffuse for its mood-uplifting properties.
Grapefruit Essential Oil
Another citrus oil to add to your collection - grapefruit essential oil has all the powerhouse cleaning properties of other citrus oils.
Spring Cleaning Challenge Facebook Group
Completely optional, but if you’d like some accountability, and somewhere to share your wins, feel free to join the Facebook group I’ve set up for this challenge!
Toxin-Free Spring Cleaning Challenge FAQ
The spring cleaning challenge is 100% free! (Including the Trello board). Most of the items we’ll be cleaning with will be made with ingredients you likely already have in your home. If not, they are inexpensive to buy! You may wish to add essential oils to your cleaning products – if so, I would love if you would purchase through the links I shared above. I do earn a small amount of commission when you make a purchase, but ordering through me actually gets you a 25% discount!
Yes! Since the checklists are based on a weekly challenge, you can spread out the tasks however you’d like. You can knock out a few tasks each evening, or tackle them all on the weekend or your days off – the choice is yours!
You absolutely can. Although this is intended to be a 30 day challenge, once you have the Trello board, you can do it however you’d like! If it’s more manageable for you, you can spread it out all year, and tackle one room or area per month.
No, you don’t have to, but I would encourage you to try! Even if you’re not a DIY person, these are so easy to make, you’ll wonder why you ever bought cleaning products at a store. You can stick with just 1-2 simple all-purpose cleaners, and then just use things like baking soda and vinegar.
If you are already using natural cleaners in your home, then by all means, use what you have! If you’re still using store-bought, chemical-based cleaners, I encourage you to use this challenge as an opportunity to try something different. I promise you, once you stop using harmful chemicals in your home, you will feel so much better, you will never want to use them again.
I purposely did not put a start date on this challenge, because I don’t want anyone to feel behind! Regardless of when you join, you will get a weekly email every Sunday, explaining the challenge for the week. Plus you’ll have your Trello board right away, so you can get started whenever you’d like.