Doing the laundry, naturally!

February 20, 2013 · 56 Comments

“The laundry room is highly toxic, containing chemical perfumes in the laundry detergent and especially the dryer sheets. Dryer sheets coat all your clothes with a layer of toxic chemicals. When you wear those clothes, your body moisture causes those chemicals to come into contact with your skin and be absorbed directly into your bloodstream. It’s an easy way to poison your system with cancer-causing chemicals.” Natural News

Yep, that stuff is just nasty. Think how many chemicals that might be hiding in your clothes by the time you have stain treated, soaked, washed, rinsed, dried and ironed! Us mums are usually the ones using the products and inhaling them, so we get the double dose! Let’s not talk about how expensive all those products are too.

This is one area we have been natural in for over ten years as my precious girl has sensitive skin. So I have put together my top picks when it comes to keeping your laundry toxic free and all natural.

Stain Removal. It doesn’t come much simpler than this homemade stain remover. It’s cheap, effective and totally natural.

For stubborn stains (and yes, they are frequent with messy kids!) I like to use Kin Kin Natural’s Oxygen Whitener and soak. It really works well.

Washing. Washing powder can be extremely irritating to sensitive skin and the chemical residue hangs around in your clothes! I have a couple of brands I recommend:

♥ Kin Kin Naturals. Made in Queensland by a family-owned company. Felix used to work for Omo so he has used this knowledge and applied it to totally natural and effective products.

♥ Abode Healthy Home. Developed by leading Australian building biologist, Nicole Bijlsma and author of one of my favourite books, Healthy Home, Healthy Family. You can buy it in bulk online, making it cheaper and more eco-friendly.

♥ Soapnuts are also very eco-friendly as they are simply the seed pod of a berry containing a very high percentage of saponins, a natural surfactants. I find they are good for lightly soiled clothes with the addition of essential oils for a bit of fragrance. Other people swear by them. Try them out and see what you think.

There are a few other natural washing powders on the market, but be aware of ‘green washing‘ and do your research! What brands do you like?

Fabric Softener. I don’t use it. If you want, use vinegar or some drops of essential oils. In fact, once you read this blog post at Care 2, you may never use it again either!

Drying. I try not to use the dryer, but when I have to, these Tumblemonkey wool dryer balls ease my eco-guilt.

If you are hanging out your clothes in the sunshine, use bamboo pegs. They are environmentally friendly, sustainable and will break down in land fill. I hate having bits of broken plastic pegs all over the yard!

Dry cleaning. Dry cleaning uses harsh petrochemicals to clean your clothes. Avoid it if you can or check if you dry cleaner has a Green Earth option, where liquid silicon is used instead.

Ironing. There really is no need for aerosol or chemical ironing sprays. I just use water in a spray bottle and a hot steam setting. There are recipes around to make your own starch, but I haven’t tried them. Has anyone got a good one?

So, can you ditch the chemicals and keep your clothing and linen natural? Is this something you might like to try?

You might also like to read: Washing your dishes, naturally!

♥Thanks to my awesome friend, Jules for the fab pic of her laundry! ♥

Washing your dishes, naturally!

October 17, 2012 · 13 Comments

Whether you have an electric dishwasher or a human dishwasher, the dishes still need to be washed!

Do you love it or hate it?

I am going to share with you, in a series of blog posts, how we do things naturally around our house and what products we use.

First up, is how we wash the dishes, naturally!

We do have a very nice dishwasher which I give thanks for often (when you do lots of cooking and have kids, it’s just about a necessity!). I like to use Kin Kin dishwasher powder.

I have reviewed the Kin Kin Naturals products before on the blog, so I won’t go on about it, suffice to say I love it! Go here for more info. The dishwashing powder is also used in our house for bringing back life to our burnt pots and pans! Go here to see how to do it.

To keep your dishwasher smelling fresh, simply use half a lemon (that has already been squeezed)! It smells amazing!

Unfortunately not everything always fits in the dishwasher, so sometimes we have to do things the old-fashioned way! Actually, I usually get the Natural New Age Dad to do it for me (he’s such a sweetheart)!

I love the Kin Kin Naturals dishwashing liquid for washing dishes. It really works as well, if not better, than the chemical-laden ones. I also use it to make an all-purpose spray, along with some citrus peels. Go here to see how to make it.

The Safix scrub pad is something we have been using for a while. It is made of coconut husks and is completely biodegradable or compostable. I like the fact that it is quite gentle and doesn’t scratch my sink or pans.

I recently purchased the eco store wooden dish scrubber. It’s made of plantation beech and vegetable bristles, so again it’s biodegradable. You can also buy replacement heads for it. Very cool. It feels nice to be using a natural product and not more plastic!

I also recently found the If You Care 100% natural sponge cloths. I love the fact that it is made of cellulose and cotton – both renewable resources. You can wash and dry them multiple times, so we are aiming to cut down our paper towel usage now.

I found most of these products at my favourite online store, Organics on a Budget, in the household section.

Do you have any other natural products you use to wash the dishes? Who does the dishes in your house?

How to rescue your burnt pans, naturally!

June 21, 2012 · 14 Comments

How to rescue your burnt pans, naturally!

I may or may not have burnt the bejesus out of one of my good stainless steel Scanpan saucepans while I was chatting on Facebook one day.

It got scrubbed. It went through the dishwasher several times. Still black. Still very baked-on.

Then, I remembered a little tip I heard at the kitchen store I used to work at and decided to give it a go!

So, this is how you do it:

Get your pan with the burnt bum. Chuck it on the stove and fill about a quarter of the way with water.

Add three to four teaspoons (or more depending on how big your pot is) of Kin Kin Naturals dishwasher powder.

Allow to simmer on a low heat for a few hours or however long it takes. The burnt stuff will magically lift off ! No scrubbing! Just wash and rinse as normal.

Now, I wouldn’t go trying this with a normal dishwasher powder, because the toxic fumes they will give off are going to be very nasty. But, Kin Kin Naturals products are all natural.

You could try bicarbonate of soda if you don’t have the dishwasher powder, but I have tried this before with limited success.

I was so impressed with how effortless and easy this was, all of my pans got a new lease of life!

Okay, so you no longer have to throw out those saucepans, pots and frypans (or hide them down the back garden like Mumma Jae from Learning, Living, Loving), just revive them instead.

No-one will ever know you were chatting on Facebook and burnt the dinner!

PS check out what pans I recommend as the safest here

Kin Kin Naturals cleaning products giveaway!

May 10, 2012 · 68 Comments

I will admit that I picked up my first bottle of Kin Kin Naturals dishwash liquid because I liked the pretty label! And the fact that it said Kin Kin (a little town in the Noosa hinterland, Queensland, near where I spent some time as a child).

Turns out, my instincts were right, because this company make the best natural cleaning products I have come across. All the products contain beautiful essential oils (which you know I love!)

Did you know that 8 out of 10 detergents that claim to be eco-friendly contain ‘alcohol ethoxylate’ which is classified as ‘very toxic to aquatic organisms’, as their first or second ingredient? I didn’t !! Kin Kin naturals use a coconut & sugar based surfactants instead.

You might remember that I use the Kin Kin Naturals dishwash liquid in my citrus cleaning spray.

Anyhow, because of that blog post, I got talking to Felix from Kin Kin Naturals. Turns out he is a PhD-qualified formulator, who used to work for OMO. Right – so that’s how he makes the products work so well! Combining his knowledge and experience with a passion for natural, local, environmentally friendly ingredients, the result is Kin Kin Naturals.

Felix sent me the other products in the range to try as well – my health food store only stocks the dishwashing detergent.

I absolutely love the laundry liquid. It leaves our clothes with a faint hint of essential oils not that sickly overpowering fragrance left behind by other detergents. The oxygen whitener has been getting quite a work out too with the kids’ grotty sports wear!

I will admit I was skeptical about the dishwasher powder though. I had used natural ones before and they just haven’t cut it – I would have to run the dishwasher a second time to get them clean!! But no, Felix has come up trumps again – I can honestly say that his natural dishwashing powder is equal in cleaning power to the top brand on the market.

I am really so happy to have found these products. Is it weird to get so excited about cleaning products? I am happy because we are eliminating chemicals and toxins from our home, helping the planet at the same time and there is no compromise on quality!

To find out why the products are so safe and so environmentally friendly, take a look at the website.

Felix says: If we don’t trust an ingredient with our own children’s skin or our own backyard, then we don’t use it.

Kin Kin Naturals are a family owned and run company. They are local as well – all products are made at Kin Kin, in Queensland! They are available at a lot of healthy stores around Australia and online as well. Take a look at the stockists page.

Felix has kindly offered to let one of you try out the full range of his products too.

This giveaway has now closed. Thank you for entering.

All you need to do is answer the following three questions as a comment on this blog post.

Question 1: Which essential oils would you choose for an all natural hand wash? (for example: lemon myrtle + cypress)

Question 2: Which essential oils would you choose for an all natural all-purpose spray cleaner?

Question 3: On a scale of 1-10, how often do you buy all natural products? (10 meaning very regularly)

Please note that this giveaway is only available for Australian residents. Entries close on the 17th of May, 2012 at midnite. A winner will be chosen using random.org and notified via the comment section of this blog post. Please check back to see if it was you! I will remind you on Facebook as well!

Good Luck!

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