It's so easy being green.

I think it was Mark Twain who said, "New England is nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding." You got that right, brother! This time of year, as the walls start closing in on us, we New Englanders entertain in self-defense. The relief of hosting dinner parties is overshadowed only by the towering piles of dirty dishes they produce.

The possibility of having a dishwasher always seemed to me like the height of luxury. Until recently, whenever anyone asked me if I owned a dishwasher I replied that I had two. Their names were Joshua and Rachel. (My kids did not appreciate the humor in that at all.) I can't say either of them were terribly disappointed when we finally moved out of the Dark Ages and filled the dishwasher-shaped space under the cupboard that had previously been home to my collection of mismatched Tupperware.

As I feverishly began planning stupendous dinner parties while contentedly contemplating all the dishes that would magically wash themselves, I was shocked to read an article detailing the toxic substances found in most cleaning products ... products such as dishwasher soap. As my new dishwasher vented merrily into the kitchen I wondered, with horror, if I was slowly poisoning my family.

To my dismay, a survey of my cupboards turned up an additional array of toxic products despite my attempt over the years to "go green." Even the few "natural" commodities I uncovered seemed too potent for my delicate lungs--to say nothing of the environment.

The problem, it seems, comes from our hard water. It makes everything difficult to clean. Soap scum stubbornly clings to our tub and sinks; hard-water deposits line our toilet bowl. I needed a strong arm and equally strong chemicals to get rid of all that. At least, that's what I thought.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner that the plain white vinegar I used to unseat the lime scale on the inside of my favorite tea kettle just might clean other things. But it worked! Armed only with a large jug of white vinegar and a big box of baking soda I set out to make the bathroom sparkle. The only drawback was that it ended up smelling like the inside of a pickle jar for a few hours. At least it was a sparkling pickle jar.

That's when I came across The Naturally Clean Home by Karyn Siegel-Maier (Stoney Publishing), a neat little book with recipes for more than 100 herbal formulas for nontoxic cleansers. Did you know that if you put a few drops of essential oil in a spray bottle filled with vinegar (shake well each time before spraying), you can make it smell like pretty much anything you want? I added cinnamon leaf oil to the bathroom bottle, lemongrass oil for my kitchen container, and lavender oil to a third bottle simply because I like the smell.

The same trick works great with baking soda--another hardworking natural cleaner. A few drops of essential oil (mixed well) makes baking soda smell wonderful. It's a powerful yet gentle scrub for sinks, tubs, and countertops and makes a terrific deodorizer when sprinkled on carpets and then vacuumed up. It may not cure cabin fever, but it beats the smell of wet dog any day.

The only bad news I discovered is that it's virtually impossible to make your own dishwasher soap. But the good news is that several companies do make nontoxic versions (Ecover, Life Tree, and Naturally Yours to name a few). So I guess my kids won't have to come out of early retirement after all.

Now, when the walls start to close in on me this winter at least they'll be clean and environmentally friendly.

Celeste Perrino-Walker and her dishwasher-safe children live in Rutland, Velmont. She's a prolific writer and editor of Listen magazine.