Photo: rubberglovelover/Flickr

If you should, as I did recently, open the pantry door to find your 3-year-old spraying window cleaner into a cup while her pal swills it down, I hope you remember, as I did, prior to calling poison control, that it’s just vinegar and water.

There are plenty of good reasons to use white vinegar instead of Windex. One compelling reason is that it lessens the chances your child will poison a small guest in your home.

Of all the changes I made when I decided to be more considerate of Mother Earth, switching to nontoxic cleaning products was the most natural fit for my lifestyle. I’m a casual housekeeper at best, and using cleaning products that don’t work very well wasn’t that big of a deal.

Nor was it much of a money-saver. Tilex and Comet were never budget-busters for me. I probably had the same can of Comet since I moved to Atlanta in 1993.

But when my daughter was born in 2006, I vowed to keep the house clean. So I set about finding the gentlest of nontoxic cleaners. I started with Seventh Generation and natural products from health food stores. Then I ordered Better Basics for the Home by Annie Berthold-Bond.

I followed her recipes for cleaning products made from pantry staples — mostly baking soda and vinegar. The author also loves essential oils such as tea tree and lavender. I cleaned the toilet with vinegar and baking soda and mixed up a paste of baking soda, castile soap and lemon juice to scrub the tub.

For my low cleaning standards, a spray bottle with vinegar and water is adequate for most tasks. The vinegar smell dissipates. For heavy-duty cleaning, I get the best results with hot, soapy water and lots of T-shirt rags.

I should note that many moms swear by these natural home cleaning products, insisting they work even better than the harsh stuff. I should also disclose that the summer after my freshman year of college, I was fired from my job as a chambermaid at a motel on Cape Cod for failure to maintain basic standards of cleanliness. This despite the fact that the cleaning products they supplied had chemicals galore.

The paste for scrubbing the bathtub, however, did not work. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn’t remove the brown gunk. Maybe if I had started with a less-filthy tub, I would have had more success.

At least I didn’t use landfill-clogging paper towels or sponges. I used cut-up old T-shirts. Until I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere on the tub, and then I bought some sponges.

I never got around to making my own dish soap out of castile soap and glycerin. I delayed beauty products like shampoo made from soapbark, vodka and glycerin for a future stage of my green journey.

I settled into a groove with my nontoxic, homemade products. I used them on occasion with generally poor results, taking comfort in the theory that germs are good for building a child’s immune system. Then, when we went on vacation, we recruited my mother to dog sit, knowing she would clean the house with her preferred products, such as Comet and Clorox.

Ah, a clean house. It was good to be home. But why couldn’t I achieve it without my mom and Tilex? Aside from my failure to make the time, I accepted that my talents lie elsewhere.

Fortunately, most green-mom dilemmas have a solution. I hired an eco-friendly cleaning service.

Patti Ghezzi lives in Avondale Estates and is founding partner of Greater Good Communication.