Greensburg Welcomes Green Cleaning Experts

Catherine Hart introduces Richard Haymes and Michael DeJong to the audience

GreenTown had a nice attendance on June 2 for two green cleaning and book signing events featuring our special out-of-town guests. We were pleased to welcome from New Jersey Michael DeJong, author of Clean: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing, and Richard Haymes, founder of the OneCleanWorld Foundation. Michael and Richard have donated 600 copies of the Clean book to the community, which are being distributed free to area folks through GreenTown’s Green Visitors Center. (Read more about their gift and the Foundation here.) The user-friendly tomes are chock-full of tips and recipes for cleaning using just five natural ingredients: baking soda, white vinegar, salt, lemons, and borax.

The presentations in Greensburg were designed to alert the audience to health and safety issues associated with many commercial cleaning products, and to offer healthier, cheaper, more effective solutions. Richard has devoted four years to researching products that have been introduced to the public in the past 50 years, and had some startling statistics to share about their safety. (Richard will be sharing the totality of his research with us at GreenTown, and we will post his findings and recommendations on the website.) After Richard got our attention, Michael then shared some of the most popular green cleaning tips he amassed from his years as a professional house cleaner. At the noon workshop at GreenTown’s Silo House, he demonstrated several recipes on our kitchen sink, stovetop, microwave, countertops and floors. The wonderful aroma of lemon wafted throughout the house as he thoroughly cleaned our surfaces.

The 6 p.m. workshop was hosted by Kari Kyle at the Green Bean Coffee Company. Richard and Michael shared the same information as during the noon presentation, and then Michael got to work in a restroom demonstrating the effectiveness of his recipes. Afterwards, both signed a batch of the Clean books for folks from the audience. Simple, healthy, affordable cleaning is now at the fingertips of hundreds more families and business owners thanks to the generosity of our two friends from New Jersey.

We’re asking people who have been using the book and are pleased with the results of using Michael's formulas to consider writing a book review on Amazon.com. The more favorable reviews the book receives, the more copies they sell, and the more money the OneCleanWorld Foundation raises to fund sustainability projects around the world.

As part of his “My Kind of Clean” series of books, Michael has also authored Clean Cures (with Dr. Anthony Vavasis) and Clean Body. These two other volumes are available through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. We will soon have sample copies of these at GreenTown for those who want take a look at their content before ordering.

We are very grateful for the generosity shown by Michael and Richard toward our community. The invaluable information they shared will be put to good use and will help us maintain our homes and businesses healthfully clean.