Oliver’s bungalow is about 80% wood floors. Oak and pine floors as far as the eye can see, nearly all original. So finding a good cleaning product for all this wood was pretty important.
After Oli arrived on the scene I began to worry about what kind of floor cleaner I was using.
Let’s be honest here. Up to this point I really hadn’t thought too much about cleaning the floors, other than with the vacuum. The house was still somewhat under construction, and the real, livable rooms of the house were on the second floor. 
But now with a 2 month old golden retriever puppy, who eats everything off the floor, walks on the floor with his sweet, still soft puppy pads, then licks them… I started reading labels.
All the floor cleaners I was accustomed to, or could find on the shelves of the local grocery store, had directions like this: squirt some cleaner on the floor, push it around with a mop, let it dry. What? No rinse? You just let the chemicals there on the floor? But the puppy licks this floor. He would be ingesting these chemicals. No way. There has got to be something better.
At first, I was just using Simple Green diluted with warm water. And cleaning up puppy puddles and other puppy messes with Nature’s Miracle.
Eventually I found myself in the cleaning products section of our local natural/organic grocery store. What’s this? Natural ingredients, nothing toxic, pretty inexpensive, just use a little… We’ll give it a try.
Well, it worked great. The wood floors have never felt cleaner. One of my mom’s friends cleans houses for a living, and she told me that was the best wood floor cleaner she had ever used. She kept sliding her bare feet over the floor, going on about how clean it felt. That just made me laugh, because she is one to reach for the chemical cleaners, and she usually thinks I’m a bit crazy.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m through with harsh toxic chemical cleaners. I’m reformed. I’ll slowly work through the bottles of things that are here from before, but I won’t buy any more. Already, I don’t automatically reach for the old stuff. But there it sits, in my cleaning bucket. I’d kind of like to de-clutter and just get rid of them, but somehow that seems wrong. I hate to be wasteful, and they are already here…
What’s a girl to do?
We swapped radiators. This one, which is a more suitable size for the room, was one of two in the dining room. The small one that used to be in the living room was the exact same size as the second one in the dining room. This falls under the category of: what were they thinking?
Don’t you just love that orange plaid recliner? It was my grandmother’s and it is very comfy, but it doesn’t really go with the carpet. Some day we’ll have a nice recliner and loveseat in this room.
As you can see, Oli believes that all chairs in the house are there for his comfort.
Green Bungalow Craftworks 
