The one thing that really gave me inferiority complexes when I arrived in Denmark was my abilities as housewife. I suspect this isn't quite as much of a problem for the younger generation as it was for us. First of all, my mother had always had a cleaning woman, as she hated cleaning herself, so I never really had much experience myself. But most important, the Danish housewife organizations had been working hard with cleanliness campaigns to teach housewives how to do things efficiently and effectively. Many cleaning activities were to be done every day, some once a week, and then there was spring housecleaning, where the whole house got turned upside down to get at the dirt behind the piano, under the stove and on top of the books on the shelves.

I'm afraid my ambitions have been much lower. I'll never forget overhearing 3 year old Hanne talking to her best friend Sanne one Saturday morning. "We're going to have visitors," she said. "You can smell it!" And she wasn't talking about delicious smells from the kitchen. It was cleaning agents. I must admit even now our housecleaning efforts are mostly pre-guest activities. Hanne's comment made absolutely no sense to Sanne. Her mother suffered from "rengøringsvanvid", which meant that she cleaned the bathroom every day, as well vacuuming and dusting. She not only ironed jeans, but also underwear and towels! She never really understood that our kids were no more sick than hers. I think that she did learn from us, so that the standard of cleaning relaxed by the time we moved. "Spring cleaning" is something I have done every time I've moved, on the average of every three years, I think. Since we have no plans on moving from here, where we have lived for 3½ years, I think maybe we ought to consider trying it out for a change! Windows are something else again. They get washed when we no longer can enjoy the view through them, which is usually in the Spring and Fall, when the sun comes in at a blinding angle. I can see that the time is coming! The Spring washing usually comes about the time I also go crazy looking for signs of spring, like tips of bulbs peeking through the soil. And then there's vacuuming. I HATE vacuuming. The noise is atrocious, and I hate dragging that big thing after me, hate moving furniture around, hate the smell of dust whirled up and hate empting the bag. I'd much rather do floors the old fashioned way - sweeping and washing - and when you consider that I only do this once a month or so, it's no big deal. I leave the vacuuming to Gudmund who seems to enjoy being followed around by a noisy electric doggy.

So obviously my cleaning has not had too great an effect on the environment, if you consider effect as toxicity times frequency! Nevertheless I have discovered that there are certain things to be aware of while shopping for cleaning agents, which are the basis for most of the big chemical companies, along with pesticides and fertilizers. The best way to avoid ruining the environment while trying to keep clean is "KISS: keep it simple, stupid"! That is, you can probably manage with three basic cleaning agents for almost everything: Hand dishwashing liquid for most cleaning problems, a stronger "Universal" type (the one Hanne was smelling) for stubborn stuff and vinegar or acetic acid for the calcium deposits. The new micro-cloths are really good for cleaning. You really don't need more than water and a little dishwashing liquid. I must admit that I have a bottle of chlorine to take really bad stains - like the toilet bowl, but I use it very infrequently - as all else, so I don't imagine the environment suffers too much there. And I use soap flakes (good old Ivory?) to wash the floor.

In the old days soap was made from lye produced by soaking wood ashes from the stove. This was mixed up with bacon fat to make soap. I remember Mom taking bacon fat to the drug store to be used for making soap even 5 years after World War II, and we often drove through Booton, NJ, where there was a vile-smelling soap factory. When visiting the Faroe Islands we saw a big barrel in an old house (now a museum). This was for collecting urine, which they used to wash their hair with, we were told. I suspect that they made lye out of it, but I'm not a chemist, so I don't know. Interesting enough, the word "soap" is of Northern European origin, not southern.

Nowadays the chemical factories keep inventing new ways to fight dirt - and earn money. The chemicals they produce have such long names that they have to call them things like LAS (linear alkylbezensulfonate) or EDTA. These two and phosphates are considered very dangerous for the water environment. LAS plays havoc with methods at the sewage treatment plant, too, so it generally ends in the sludge, which makes this undesirable as fertilizer on fields, and some passes through to the recipient water after treatment. Recently a number of bisexual animals were found in a couple of Danish fjords. Phosphates can be removed by sewage treatment, but that requires other chemicals, and ends up in sludge. It would be best to avoid them. Some soaps and cosmetics still contain estrogen-like chemicals - in particular nonoxynol - which are suspected of being one of the causes of lowered male sperm count. In Maine enzymes are also forbidden from soap powders, but no one talks about that problem here, since they are made by Novo Nordisk, one of Denmark's largest companies, that also works with environmental management.

So how do you find the best products? You are not expected to make soap of ash from the wood stove and bacon fat; nor does anyone expect you to wash your hair in urine! The easiest is to look for the following symbols, that ensure that environmental considerations have been taken. This does not even have to mean that the cleansing quality is lesser. Brugsen's Blue Care washing powder was considered the best cleansing agent of all the ones tested recently - much better than Arial and Omo, that contain among other things LAS! Blue Care has most of the products you need, including dishwasher chemicals.