We passed a great milestone today, our dishwasher ran with the last toxic dishwasher soap cube. This means that the house is almost toxic cleaning products free! We still use conventional dish soap when washing dishes by hand but that is because we still have so much of it. I hate wasting stuff even it will kill you when you eat it. Does natural dishwasher do that? I honestly do not know.
(It's by the way very hard to blog and watch Hope Floats at the same time...)
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| My under the sink cabinet after removing (most) toxic cleaning products |
It was surprisingly easy and quick to get rid of toxic cleaning products. I had already been changing our way of eating and the use of plastic over the course of a few months. This kept me online reading almost every day and then my in-laws told me there was a documentary on about products that are hurting our unborn babies.
It talked a lot about hormone disrupting substances that are found in a lot of the cleaning products (whether for personal use or for house cleaning). It enhances the chance of our kids becoming infertile among other things and while Denmark thinks it is serious enough to ban this stuff from all baby products, the Dutch government says there is not enough evidence. (Scientists strongly disagreed with that opinion by the way.) So I thought I would just get them out of our house on my own.
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| The before picture... |
If you were wondering right now: we are not rich. After the new laws past in January we are anything but, financially that is. The rest of our life is very rich indeed :)
My point is that going organic and natural generally just takes a little more commitment, not cash.
I found a wonderful site: wellnessmama.com It has a lot of recipes for making your own bodylotion, shampoo, soaps etc. It also talks about natural cleaning, healthy eating and has lots of recipes for those as well. I have come to the point where I think she overdoes it for me. For instance I cannot take all grains out of my life. That means all yummy baked goods are off limits... that is not going to happen. Ever.
It did help me find a great natural bodylotion that is easy to make, as well as some lotion bars, also easy to make and to use! And it got me using Dr Bronners Magic Soap (castille soap) which is good for almost every type of cleaning. The great thing about these recipes is they have great results, feel and smell wonderful, are super easy and quick (seriously!) to make, and last really long!
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| Now my most beloved cleaning products including my old fashioned household soap and microfibre cloths |
I had also spend quite a lot of time trying to find a non-toxic product for washing clothes. I already used Neutral but I found that it left my clothes stinky... which made me miss the perfume so much more! Eventually I bought an all natural soap but it was really expensive so I kept searching. Then I found soap nuts (I use ecozone). I LOVE THEM! And I wonder often why we have laundry detergents at all if we have these wonderful things (even my natural soap stands unused under the sink). People say the clothes smell a bit like apple but I just think they smell clean.
The ecozone nuts are cheap, organic, and the packet says you can get 330 washes out of them. I use 5 soap nuts at a time, the bag to put them in is included, and you can use them about 5-7 times.
I put most everything in the dryer and the fresh smell gets lost a bit in there. Therefor I used one of the cotton soap nuts bags and put a handful of fresh lavender in. I put it in along with the clothes and everything smells flowery, but not too much. I have been using the same bag for over a month now. Yay cheap!
Anyway I do not want to push anyone towards making their own soaps but it is pretty wonderful and frankly a lot nicer than the stuff I used to buy. My skin is clearer, my hair does not get oily for days, I do not need as much deodorant as I did (oh that is another thing that I am not making myself yet, I just do not want to stink!)...
And it did not take much work, time or money at all!
Oh and microfibre cloths, yay! They clean really, really well and for light cleaning you do not need any cleaning product at all.
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