It’s clear that the chemicals used to keep the winter’s ice at bay which we have grown to love over the last few decades do not benefit the environment. While keeping ice off of your driveways and sidewalks is one thing, it’s another thing to keep it off of your car without damaging your paint job.

Try these simple, non-toxic methods for both preventing ice and deicing your vehicle:

• Pour lukewarm (NOT HOT) water over your windshield before you scrape (only good if the temperature is not too much below 32 degrees F.)
• Plan ahead – if you know an ice storm is pending, place a rug or towel over your windshield to keep the ice off.
• Use 1part vinegar to 2parts water on your windshield to help repel the ice. It may help make it easier to scrape as well.

While it may not be fun or what you really wanted to hear, the most environmentally friendly and effective method of removing ice from your car actually is simply and carefully scraping it off.

To Warm or Not to Warm

Many of you may have grown up hearing that if the weather is cold, you should start your car and let it idle for a few minutes before you drive away. This used to be fairly truthful years ago, before cars evolved to have fuel injected engines.

Everyone should take the time to read what their owner’s manual says about warming up your car, especially if you drive a hybrid vehicle. Today’s cars generally do not need time to idle before driving when the weather is cold because they have computers and fuel injected systems which carefully monitor the amount of fuel needed. Small tweaks are made by the system to accommodate for the temperature.

When cars idle, they operate at their most inefficient levels, increasing the amount of emissions (pollution) they emit. The engine, because it is most inefficient when not moving, wastes more fuel than if you were driving.

So, moral of the story is that you should never leave your car idling both for your health and the car’s.

Have another natural deicing method you think works? Share it with us below in the comments!

Two trends definitely seem to be catching on right now, going green and saving some green — and it’s not that hard to do both at the same time.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to do a series of posts detailing the different and inexpensive ways you can go green.

Did you know that a bottle of distilled white vinegar can practically erase your need for any other household cleaners? This humble bottle can be used to clean counters, microwaves, ovens, dishwashers, mirrors, windows, coffee pots, and carpets. It can be used to get rid of odors and even be used as a fabric softener!

Since there are so many ways to clean with distilled white vinegar, I’m going to highlight some of the super-easy ways I clean with white vinegar and supply links to dozens of other uses for this miracle cleaner.

I regularly use distilled white vinegar to:

1. Clean windows and mirrors. The key to leaving no streaks or trails of paper towel bits is to use newspaper or those brown paper towels supplied at some gas station bathrooms. It’s easiest to put the vinegar into a spray bottle and use as you would any glass cleaner.
2. Clean countertops, stoves, sinks — just about any household surface. Use white vinegar in place of your regular countertop cleaner with paper towel or dish towel. Again, it’s easiest if you put the white vinegar in a spray bottle.
3. Clean tile, linoleum or vinyl floor. Just use as you would your normal floor cleaner.
4. Clean a coffee pot. Pour white vinegar into the water reservoir and run it without coffee. You will need to run it once more with water before making a new pot of coffee.
5. Freshen the air. We left dirty water in our steam cleaner once, and managed to make a lot of mildew. After a deep cleaning of the steam cleaner (and a very thorough drying) we couldn’t get the smell to budge from our closet. I put a bowl of undiluted white vinegar on the floor of the closet and after a few days, the smell was gone!

Here are some links to other suggestions for white vinegar. Some of these are new to me, and I can’t wait to try them out!

· Vinegartips.com — This list is very thorough! I plan to use their suggestion to clean up messes made by our pets. They recommend using a vinegar/water solution instead of straight vinegar. Straight vinegar works fine for me, but if you want to stretch your vinegar or can’t stand the smell, then I suggest mixing it with water.
· 25 Ways to Clean with Vinegar – A lot of her tips have to do with laundry and stains. This is a great resource for those of us who are messy!

And just for fun, you can use a solution of white vinegar and salt to clean pennies. This was very entertaining to me when I was a child. I would put the yuckiest, green and white corroded pennies in the bowl, and they would come out shiny and new looking.