the days are . . . shiny

Here you will find my reviews of environmentally friendly cleaners as well as various green ideas. I’ll update this as I review new products and stumble on anything I think you might find useful, so check in periodically.

greentoys.com Tea Set. This tea set is adorable, kid friendly (none of the nasty BPA, etc), and made from 100% recycled plastic! It was recently marked down on Amazon.com to only $15, and even if you buy it at full price, considering it’s sturdiness and positive environmental impact, it’s worth the $25. If you’re looking for a gift for girls or boys, you can give a gift to the earth as well by choosing this toy. The packaging is also made of recycled cardboard, which you can recycle. It’s a gift that keeps on giving! They also sell a cooking set. Don’t forget to check out their website!

J.R. Watkins Dishsoap. In the line of dishsoaps we’ve tried out, this one ranks #2. #1 is the Clorox Green. The J.R. Watkins is pretty solid, but it’s thinner than the Clorox, so you find yourself using a lot more to do less. However, that does not mean you need more to do less. Also, the bottle is a larger size than a typical dishsoap bottle, so the pricing, while still more, is comparable to your standard, non-environmentally friendly dishsoap.

A few more things on this: I love it for cleaning my counters during the week.

J.R. Watkins has been around for a LONG time. They were green before we knew what “green” was. They have a well-established line of products.

I’ve found with the testing I’ve been doing of environmentally friendly options, that scent seems to be the most difficult thing to conquer. J.R. Watkins really has that in the bag. The scentss of the J.R. Watkins products really can’t be beat. We picked lemon-scented dishsoap.

You can pick J.R. Watkins products up at Target for very reasonable pricing.

J.R. Watkins Aloe and Green Tea All-Purpose Wipes. These are amazing. Better than Clorox or any other all-purpose wipes I’ve tried. We had this problem in our bathroom. I hesitate to mention it because it’s kind of horrifying, but for the sake of these wipes, I’m going to tell you about it. The problem was that our toilet, when it flushes, sprays the toilet lid with dirty water. Eww, right? Well, I didn’t realize that it was happening because it was a fine mist and I don’t often stare at toilets after flushing. But one day I noticed that mold was growing on the inner lid of the seat. I put it all together and tried Comet as well as other industrial cleaners. It kept coming back in a day or so. Finally, I hit it with the Watkins wipes. Aside from their amazing smell (see above), their gentleness on my hands, and their durability, they also wiped out the mold and it hasn’t come back. Now I use them once a week over the entire bathroom and wipe down the toilet as needed (as in, before anyone who doesn’t live in our house enters it).

One thing about this: you can wipe down an entire powder room/half bath with one wipe, and a full bath with two.

You can pick J.R. Watkins products up at Target for very reasonable pricing.

Stuff Happens. Bill Nye (the Science Guy) is back on TV with a show dedicated to helping the layman make greener living choices. If you have Planet Green, you can watch his show there, or check out the Planet Green website for more info on the show and listings. A note: Nye says it’s a toss up between cloth and disposable diapers as far as impact on the environment. Depending on how you do it, though, it can certainly make a difference in your wallet.

Vinegar. Handy and inexpensive. Pour half a gallon or a gallon down into the dishwasher when it’s clogged up, wait a couple hours, run the diswasher with soap, and you’ll find the clog gone. Vinegar is great for defeating lime build-up, other build-up, and is what you should use mixed with equal parts dishsoap, warm water and a spoon of bleach to wipe down windowsills, shower tiles or other areas you want to de-mold.

Clorox Green Works Dishwashing Liquid. We really like this dishsoap. It’s our favorite so far. It bubbles the most of the dishsoaps made from renewable resources that we’ve tried. Pricing is comparable to regular dishsoap, and it has that reliable cleaning smell (we got a scented version). You know the smell I mean, right?

Ecos Laundry Detergent. This was supposed to last 100 loads for the same price as the Seventh Generation detergent we’ve tried and loved. It didn’t. Mainly because it didn’t get clothes clean or even clean-smelling unless we used at least double the recommended amount and washed on  a vigorous cycle. We won’t buy it again. With that said, I will note here that it was tested on clothes soaked with spit-up, toddler drawings, dirt and blowouts of various proportions. I think it might work

Baking Soda. This is my all-time favorite cleaning product. It gets the gunk off with very little energy spent on my part, and it’s a great item to use as a skin softener. You can use it as a laundry detergent, baking ingredient and deodorizer in addition to a tub scrubber that has no harsh smell or chemicals. I put half a cup of baking soda in the bathtub with Noah when he has diaper rash. It not only soothes and mostly eliminates his rash, it also cleans the tub. So after I rinse him off and take him out of the bath, I can just use his dirty towel to gently wipe out soap scum and leave my tub white and shiny. Wiping in small circles helps if your tub, toilet or sink is more dirty than you’d like to admit. It even gets off spaghetti sauce residue.

Planet Dishsoap. We’ve tried the Seventh Generation dishsoap and found it to be far less than useful. We couldn’t get suds and it just didn’t get the dirt off. Also, it was pretty expensive. But Planet dishsoap has a price comparable to regular dishsoaps, a pleasant, muted scent, it bubbles and it gets things clean. It’s also not hard on your hands. I love it for washing my counters as well during the week. I find that I can get my eating surfaces very clean with little energy. I recommend giving it a try.

Seventh Generation laundry detergent. I’ve posted on this before. This detergent gets everything clean, including poopy cloth diapers, and you don’t have to use much of it to get the job done. The scent varieties are pleasant, though we stick with unscented around here. If you can afford it, give it a shot.

Corn starch. This works as a powder in place of baby powders in a diaper. Just put it in a powder bottle. It’s safer for baby’s lungs, edible if he gets into it, inexpensive, keeps baby’s bottom dry, and it keeps poop from sticking. We’ve been using this with Noah for the last week and have seen lots of rash improvement, and I can dump the waste from his diapers directly into the toilet, then drop the dirty cloth into a bucket to soak. Having the poop come off really eliminates unpleasant odors. The trick it to make sure to spread some on the diaper under baby’s bottom as well as powdering his bottom.

Cloth diapers. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, and Noah’s extreme sensitivity to all things synthetic has given me more than enough reason to just go for it. And you know what? It’s not nearly as difficult as I expected. Sure I get more poop on my hands, but I’m still learning. I do one load of cloth diapers each night. During the day, I keep the dirty diapers in a Rubbermaid file container with lid. I drop them in the washer in the evening, put it on a heavily soiled cycle with a pre-soak in just water, stick them in the dryer when they’re done, and the only waste I have to worry about is the wipes. By the way, most wipes can be washed and re-used, say, as a diaper liner. Also good in place of cotton balls.

Compact Fluorescent Lamps (lightbulbs). The light is good. They last forever. And I really like the twisty shape. Learn more about these not-lightbulbs here.