I love you too

From the Green Daily:

Body-washing: Just pour several drops of it full strength onto washcloth.
House-cleaning (floors, kitchens, sinks): Dilute one part soap into forty parts water for light cleaning, cut it half for heavier duty jobs.
Laundry: Use 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup for one regular load. You can also add a dash of baking soda to the load.
Shampoo: Not recommended for most people, but those with short or curly hair seem to be able to use it according to the company.
Pet washing: Lather it up well, but keep it away from their eyes.
Toothbrushing: Apply a drop or two of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap to a wet toothbrush, brush as normal.

Dr. Bronner's version:

Always dilute for Shave-Shampoo-Massage-Dental Soap-Bath!
Peppermint is nature's own unsurpassed fragrant Deodorant!
A drop is best Mint Toothpaste; brushes Dentures Clean!
A dash in water is the ideal Breath Freshener & Mouth Wash!
Peppermint Oil Soap for Dispensers, Uniforms, Baby, Beach!
Dilute for ideal After Shave, Body Rub, Foot Bath, Douche.
Hot Towel-Massage the entire body, always towards your heart.
Pets, silk, wool & body tingles head to toe - keeps cool!
3 dashes in water rinse most Sprays Off fruit & vegetables!
1/4 oz in qt H2O is Pest Spray! Dash, no rash Diaper-Soap!

Paraphrased:

For everyday body-washing: Get wet and pour soap full-strength onto hands-washcloth-loofah. Lather up, scrub down, rinse off, and tingle fresh & clean.
For other uses, dilute from one part soap into 40 parts water for light cleaning, to cutting it in half or using it full strength for heavy-duty grease-cutting jobs.
For shampoo, though we now recommend our new Shikakai soaps for this, many people are fond of using it as such. The method of application is to wet hair and scalp very thoroughly, squirt some soap into hands and work into a lather. Wash hair, then rinse well. Afterwards use our new citrus hair rinse and leave-in conditioners as directed.
For the laundry, use 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup for one regular load; adjust as needed depending on hardness of water. I've been told that adding a dash of baking soda makes it even better.
For toothbrushing, apply a drop or two of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap to a wet toothbrush. Brush as you normally would, rinsing accordingly. Be careful about using more than a couple drops of soap, as you might start foaming at the mouth. Many people with sensitive or softer teeth like to use our soap as a toothpaste because it lacks abrasives.

Dr. Bronners: creepy goodness

I find that it's simply too easy to accumulate cleaning products for every little thing in your house. Why does everything need it's own product? It doesn't make sense to have invested so much money into products that sit in a yucky plastic tub under your sink waiting to be used for it's one purpose. As I am committed to making cleaning more efficient around here, I have been thinking about what kind of product it would take to clean my entire house that is as natural and organic as possible, fairly traded, sold in bulk to reduce waste -and get this- actually works!

I typically sit in the aisle at the store looking at all the products available to me and check the backs. I have heard about Dr. Bronner's magic-ness, and was eager to learn more. Learning that Dr. Bronner's is so good you can even wash yourself and your pets with it, I wanted to give it a try. If it's healthy enough for me to put on my body, it's healthy enough to flush down a toilet into our ecosystem. Claiming 18+ uses, I was intrigued but also disappointed seeing as they pack more Confucius onto the bottle than clear cut directions.

So here comes the creepy goodness. Going to their website didn't exactly give me much more direction, but I did enjoy the weird sciencey Dr. Bronner picture. That's the creepy part. The goodness is in it's gentleness to the planet, our bodies and cleaning sprees. My toilet bowl has never been so white and smelled so delicious. Nothing like peppermint to say, I'm clean-and yet not contaminated with chemicals and perfumes. I have used it in the tub, bathroom and kitchen sinks, the floors and probably more I'm forgetting. My baby-puked-all-over-carpet is next (yes, I have carpet, how sad).

As I continue to use the small bottle I purchased as a test drive, I get excited thinking about the giant gallon bottle I will buy next. Not only is it concentrated which allows for more cleaning per packaging, it's in bulk too!

Cleaning can't be easier than squirting a little Bronner's in a bucket of water to clean your whole house or more Ecofriendly than organic+chemical free+fairly traded+concentrated.

Dr. Bronner, I love you.

simple things like...

switching the laundry out of the washer and into the dryer before it all smells like I live in this house...


Sadly this was not one of my success stories this week and subsequently, our house smells like a rotten trailer out in the woods of the Olympic Peninsula.

Listening to the hum of my hard drive, Alice