Plenty of eco-friendly cleaning alternatives are available that don’t require harmful chemicals. There’s very little that can’t be cleaned with ingredients you probably have already lying around at home. Vinegar, baking soda and lemons are particularly useful, while coffee and olive oil make pretty useful cleaning ingredients too!Vinegar and lemons can be used as a sterilizing agent, to fight lime scale and remove unpleasant smells. Use together for cleaning surfaces and to decalcify mineral deposits (for example in your coffee pot). Just be careful where you use acidic products – for example, some forms of stone could be damaged.Baking soda is excellent for deep cleaning the oven and toilet. For the oven, mix baking soda with a small amount of water to make a paste. Scrub the oven with the paste and let it sit for twenty minutes or so, before washing it off. You can also apply this mixture to other dirty surfaces too, just be sure to avoid coloured ones. For the toilet, mix baking soda with vinegar and pour it down the toilet bowl. Let it sit for twenty minutes, scrub thoroughly then flush. Simple!A couple of drops of olive oil is a really effective solution for polishing steel surfaces and door handles. If your sink is giving off an unpleasant scent, you can mix olive oil with a few drops of essential oil and pour down your sink.Coffee grounds are a really simple and readily available way to fight odours in your kitchen. Place a small bowl of coffee grounds on your kitchen work top and unpleasant odours will dissipate within a few hours.Helpling are a local cleaning company in Australia and around the world. Believe me, we see all kinds of things in people's homes and with our own cleaners. If we all make small changes to our home cleaning routine, the cumulative impact on the environment can be significant. And if you employ your own home cleaner, you can request that they only use eco-friendly products. Or if you provide the cleaning products yourself, you can ensure they only use products that aren’t harmful to the environment.Photo: Helpling / Shutterstock