Blog
Baby Steps To Clean Living: natural cleaning products
Happy Friday Beauties!
First things first, we have a winner to announce. Congratulations, Janine! You are the lucky winner of the Luxe De Mer body scrub. Send me an email to claim your prize. 🙂
When it comes to removing toxins from our daily routine, cleaning products are a good place to start.
Remember, we’re taking BABY STEPS to detoxify our lives in 2015.
It’s impossible to avoid exposure to toxic chemicals altogether, but with a few simple swaps we can greatly reduce the toxic chemicals that we allow in our home.
Unfortunately, the household cleaning industry is a largely unregulated industry, which means they can use harmful chemicals in their products if they choose. Most companies are concerned with making products that work rather than products that are safe. So it’s important to become an informed consumer to protect your health, your home and your family.
Thankfully, the Environmental Working Group comes to the rescue again. You can easily search the EWG Guide To Home Cleaning and find out how products rank on their scale of toxicity.
It’s important to use their guide because even though a product appears to be “green” or nontoxic, that may not be the case. For example, Simple Green is one of the worst offenders even though it is marketed to look like a safe product.
Cleaning Products
A good place to start with cleaning out your household cleaners would be tossing out any products that are listed here on the EWG Household Hall Of Shame.
If you’re the DIY type many household cleaners can be made naturally and easily at home.
Here are a few easy recipes for DIY natural cleaning products:
- How To Make Your Own Bathroom Cleaners
- How To Make Your Own Kitchen Cleaners
- How To Clean The Stove Naturally
- DIY Natural All Purpose Cleaner
If you’d rather not mess with making your own, there are a handful of high quality, non toxic cleaning products on the market.
Some of the links below are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, The Balanced Life receives commissions for purchases made through links in this post. Full disclosure.
These 5 all received great scores on the EWG’s database:
- Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds Liquid Cleaner
- Whole Foods Market All Purpose Cleaner, Citrus
- Green Shield Organic Biodegradable Surface Wipes
- Attitude Bathroom Mold and Mildew Cleaner
- The Honest Company’s Cleaning Products (I use these and love that I can have them delivered to my door along with my diapers)
Hand Soap
It can be so frustrating to think we are doing something really good for our health (like washing our hands) only to find out that we may be doing the opposite.
Don’t stress about this (remember, the point is not to go crazy) but keep this in mind when you’re purchasing hand soap or hand sanitizer for your home.
Triclosan, the antibacterial agent found in antibacterial soaps and gels (and toothpaste!), is being studied for potential hormone disruption, asthma, and allergies along with the growing concern of producing antibiotic resistant bacteria.
“Triclosan-resistant bacteria: Since 2000, a number of studies have found microorganisms that are resistant to triclosan, and there is mounting evidence linking the use of triclosan with the promotion of bacteria that are resistant to both antibiotic medications and antibacterial products.” –Campaign For Safe Cosmetics
Since this is about baby steps and simple swaps so I’m going to leave it at that, but if you’d like to learn more about triclosan this article or a simple google search will bring up all kinds of interesting information.
Although we can’t avoid triclosan altogether, we can greatly reduce our exposure by using natural hand soap and antibacterial spray/gel that contains more natural ingredients.
Here are a few non toxic hand soaps and gels:
Laundry
Homemade, non toxic laundry detergent is super easy to make. You can fill a large jar and store it for months. If you’re up for that kind of thing check out Wellness Mama’s Homemade Laundry Detergent or this simple recipe by DIY Natural.
If you’re like me and you love the idea of making your own detergent but it’s probably not gonna happen, try these nontoxic laundry detergent brands:
- The Honest Company Laundry Pods
- Seventh Generation Natural Powder Laundry Detergent
- Planet 2x Ultra Laundry Detergent
I could go on and on, but the point is just to become aware of the toxins that find their way into our home and take steps to live a cleaner life in 2015.
Don’t be overwhelmed, just do the best you can.
Baby Steps…
1. Go through your home and toss all products that are on listed on the EWG Hall Of Shame.
2. As products run out, replace them one by one with a homemade or natural option.
3. When you find a high-quality, natural brand on sale stock up to save money in the long run.
Question: what is ONE step you will take to detoxify your home cleaning products in 2015?
xo,
PS – you may also enjoy these Baby Steps To Clean Living posts: Clean Eating, Non Toxic Baby Products, and Natural Skin Care and Makeup.
PPS – there is a BIG, long-awaited announcement coming soon! Be sure to get on this list to be the first to know. I’m dying with excitement over here. 🙂
disclaimer: This post was not sponsored. All thoughts are my own. Affiliate links are used which costs the same to you but a small percentage goes to support The Balanced Life.
Robin Long
Robin Long, founder and CEO of Lindywell, certified Pilates instructor, Nutrition Therapy Practitioner, and author of 'Well to the Core,' blends 15 years of expertise with a lifelong commitment to holistic health.
Learn more about Robin Long
share this post
Helping You Break Free!
Get your weekly delivery of inspiration—Pilates, nourishment,
& mindfulness—changing your relationship with food and your body.
13 thoughts on “Baby Steps To Clean Living: natural cleaning products”
Hi Robin! Thank SO much for this series of posts. So incredibly helpful. I am curious as to your thoughts on the Mrs. Meyers products? I have several of their dish detergent and floor cleaner. Now that I have a crawler, I am hypersensitive to what I put on my floors. Any tips? Thanks so much!!
These are great resources and not too overwhelming! Thanks for the graceful reminder!
I am obsessed with Wellness Mama! She is my go-to on all things natural and homeopathic. I made her Chapstick, lotion bar, and body wash recipes for Christmas gifts this year :). DIY laundry detergent is something I’ve always wanted to try, but been nervous to since our water is so hard here. I really need to give it a try because DIY saves so much money! I’ve heard Nelly’s laundry soap is great too, another I want to try. And some DIY all-purpose cleaner for sure. Anyway, thank you so much for all of the info and resources! I admit I don’t research so many of these things as much as I should. Thanks for making it easy ;). (And I’m so so excited for the announcement!)
I have been transitioning cleaning products slowly for years. I have found that one sort of hurdle was convincing my husband that rooms didn’t have to smell toxic to be clean 🙂
Our most recent change was shifting away from antibacterial hand soaps. We hadn’t let our kids use them, but the rest of us were. How silly, if something is better for our kids it is better for us as well!
I know Mrs. Meyers ranks really well for bathroom cleaner and dishwasher pods. You can search the rest of the products on EWG’s website and here is a good list too: http://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners
You MUST try out Molly’s Suds laundry products! All I can say is they have changed my laundry cleaning for the better. I recommended to everyone I can.
Thanks for the tip Karen! I will definitely check it out. 🙂
Have you ever tried Ava Anderson Non-Toxic cleaning products?
I haven’t! Do you like them?
Oh my gosh, thanks for this Robin! I have been thinking about making changes to my laundry detergents/fabric softeners. This really gave me the nudge I needed!! I love the ewg.org site. Thanks so much!! Happy New Year!
So much great information here! Thanks Robin! My cleaning products are running low so after reading this post, I decided to order from the Honest Company. I’m really excited to be making these changes in my life. I think the Soma water filter may be my next step. Hope your 2015 is off to a great start!
Hi Robin! I loved this clean series sooo much (you completely changed my morning routine… no more chemicals in my coffee!) and have been finding myself returning to these posts again and again as I work on transitioning my family to a cleaner life. I just wanted to let you know that when I go to your homepage, the 1 2 3 Next links at the bottom of your most recent posts do not seem to be working (maybe it’s just me??). You have such great posts that its nice to be able to go back through them, thought you should know!
Thank you for letting me know Sky! I think that’s a glitch with the new website. We’ll get on it right away. 🙂
Robin