Dances to the beet of her own drum

Eco Store December 6, 2008

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!