Eco Store December 6, 2008
Posted by Mistress B in Blogging stuff, Health, Housekeeping.Tags: cleaning products, Eco Store, product testing, soap
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A little while ago I received an email asking me if I’d be interested in trying some eco- friendly goodies from Ecostore– “a NZ-based company that produces household cleaning and body products that contain no nasty chemicals”.
They promote their products as being:
•  plant and/or mineral based
•  free of nasty chemicals
•  using safer ingredients from renewable resources
•  formulated with your health in mind
•  safely super concentrated
•  meeting the highest environmental standards
•  having not been tested on animals
•  GE free
•  packaged in recyclable packaging
Sounds pretty good aye?
The products were offered to me to try without any obligation on my part to blog about them, just so you know and who doesn’t like to try new things?
Pretty soon a box of goodies arrived on my doorstep.
I’ve now been using these products for a month and I REALLY, REALLY like them.
First up to be tried out was the Citrus Spray Cleaner –
Tried it out on my stove top. No hassle! And no scrubbing either. Kitchen benchtops? No problem. Dining table? Gentle enough to not disturb the the wooden finish. Shower stall tiles? No problem either. Shower stall glass door? Sparkling clean and again no scrubbing! Simply sprayed on, left for a minute and wiped off with a paper towel.
Best thing besides it working really well? NO chemical smell or residue anywhere. My kitchen and bathroom smell clean and fresh from the citrus based cleaner, but there is no chemical smell lingering in the rooms, nothing to irriate my eyes or my nose or set off anyone’s asthma.
Next up the Laundry Powder.
Again it has that nice fresh smell that the cleaner does and look at this! –
the powder scoop is teeny – it really is half a regular concentrate scoop.
My clothes have no residue or scent when they are dry, I can happily continue to not use a fabric softener and the box is lasting me AGES because I’m using so little. My clothes are just as clean as with any other branded product that I’ve tried. And I must say that I have been using the regular washing powder in my front loader with no problems at all.
I’ve used the Oxygen Whitener
on my kids white sports shirts and school socks. As you can imagine white sports shirts get pretty grotty and need soaking reasonably regularly and they are coming up quite nicely too. I’ve only come up with one or two stains that I’ve needed to take stain remover too and that would have happened if I’d been using my regular one as well.
And lastly the soaps.
I LOVE the soaps. I was sent 4 varieties of soap – Coconut, Manuka Honey and Kelp, Vanilla and Lemon Grass. I’ve only used the Lemon Grass and the Coconut soaps so far and they are just lovely. The Coconut soap contains milk and looks quite milky on your skin as you wash and the Lemon Grass soap smells divine – very refreshing! They don’t lather up as much as regular soaps, but they don’t contain sodium laurel sulfates or any other of the chemicals that make regular soaps do that and I don’t mind one little bit!
I was very pleased when I found the washing powder, both top loader and front loader varieties, and dishwashing detergent in my local Woolworths supermarket last week.
I also found Eco Store Dishwash Detergent which I bought to try seeing as how the other products had impressed me so much –
I don’t do a lot of handwashing as we have a dishwasher, but the little I have done was a lot gentler on my hands than my old detergent. Again it doesn’t froth and bubble like regular detergents, but bubbles aren’t what makes the dishes clean and a little of this stuff goes a long way.
Pricewise I picked up the dishwashing detergent for $3.99 for 500mls. My old dishwashing detergent was around $2 for 1 litre. I only need half as much of the Eco Store detergent so it’s no difference in money at all.
The laundry detergent was $8.99 reduced to $6.99. Considering that I pay up to $5 a box for washing powder normally and the Eco Store washing powder lasting at least twice as long due to the small amount used for each wash, it’s no more expensive either.
One of the big pluses – it’s all safe to run out onto my garden without having to worry about phosphates or other chemicals.
The best thing of all?
I have had no eczma since about a week after I switched soap and washing powder.
Ecostore say that their products are “gentle on the skin and the environment, without compromising on performance or value for money.” and my experience is that their products live up to that statement.
I really like these products, have already bought these products, will continue to buy and use these products and really encourage you to give them a try if you see them in a store in your area.
Now if Woolies would start stocking the Citrus Cleaner I will be one happy, green, housewifey chick!
Screw Up Tuesday December 2, 2008
Posted by Mistress B in Blogging stuff, Family, Funny Stuff.Tags: screw up tuesday
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I could easily give this award to myself this morning for severly underestimating how long it would take us to crawl our way through traffic to pick Miss Lou up from school last Friday. We made good time all the way through the mountains, right up till we hit Parramatta Road from where it then took us THREE FREAKIN HOURS to get to the inner city and Miss Lou’s school. Getting out of there and down to Wollongong wasn’t much better taking us nearly another 3 hours.
I NEVER want to have to drive in traffic like that again! I seriously don’t know how Sydneysiders do it! We were sitting at one set of traffic lights for over 20 minutes. Miss Lou’s boarding coordinator had rang us at one stage to find out where we were and give us directions. She’s asked us if we were at the next turn yet and we were still sitting at the same set of lights as when we started the conversation! (Yes I have hands free mic and speaker for my mobile hardwired into the car). I’m guessing that the rain made things worse too, but jeez! Hopefully I won’t have to make that trip again.
Other contenders for the screwed up prize this week are CJ who was walking around the house in her finished Pink! dress last night shaking her very bright PINK! nailpolish when the lid flew off! We had to then clean nail polish off the tiles, the carpet, her neck, chest, fingers and her damn dress!
Not to be outdone, Miss Lou sent a heap of things home with us from school and accidently also managed to send hom her purse with all her money and keycards in it which I’ll now have to mail back down to her.
TJ wasn’t going to be left out either. While being given a tour of Miss Lou’s school he spotted some likely looking chain strand fencing between posts near the car park and decided to try out his ‘scissor jump’ technique from Little Athletics the other week, missed and splattered himself on the asphalt scraping his arm.
Oh and PSLS left his charger at home last night after forgetting to charge his damn phone the night before and still hasn’t found his old charger that he left in one of the trucks.
So there you have it! A real screwed up family affair this week kiddies.
So what do you have for me? Come on, you know you want to share………..
Simple Pleasures Sunday November 23, 2008
Posted by Mistress B in Blogging stuff, Gardening, Goals.Tags: Gardening, Simple Pleasures Sunday, vege gardening
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Cucumber plant starting to take off
Zucchini’s soon big enough to be picked
Mystery plant taking root
Another mystery plant coming up in amoung my spider plants offshoots
Pea on my hands again – snow pea that is 😉
To join in leave a comment and I’ll add your link. 🙂
Screw Up Tuesday November 18, 2008
Posted by Mistress B in Blogging stuff.Tags: screw up tuesday
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What the hell! It’s Tuesday again? Already?
Sheesh!
I seem to have picked up a saying from my daughter……………
‘What the hell!’
She says it all the time. As a question. As an exclamation. As a statement. As punctuation.
I’m forever pulling her up on it. Telling her it’s not appropriate coming from a 12 year olds mouth constantly.
And now she’s got me doing it.
Still it could be worse………. she could be imitating me.
Screw up of the week prize has to go to the fella that was in his own world at the pool last Friday and made me go ‘What the hell!’
Picture this in your head if you will. Pool full of people swimming while a storm is heading towards town. At the first rumbling of thunder the pool attendants and swimming club coaches start carefully watching the sky. As the storm approaches and the lightening gets close they signal ALL the swimmers to get out of the water which they all do in a hurry.
This one guy who has just arrived at the pool walks over to it and jumps in. I wait for him to wake up to himself and when he settles in decided that I’d better go tell him to get out. He was clueless. Had no idea why everyone had just jumped out and were heading undercover and I know he could hear.
Some people shouldn’t have pool passes! lol
What’s got you shaking your head this week?
Join the Honour Roll….. you know you want to! 😛