Household stuff

Cleaning:

A few months ago I was asked my a market reseacher in our town centre if I had 10 minutes to spare. She was lovely, it was raining and I only had the washing up to look forward to at home, so I said yes.

The survey was for Cilit Bang, that purple stuff on the shouty adverts which promises to clean your drains, nuke soap scum, and probably walk the dog too. I can't even remember what the new product was now, but I had to watch a promotional video then answer a series of questions about it and whether or not I would be likely to buy it. I said that I probably wouldn't. The reason: it was PURPLE! Now, I love pink, purple and that whole range of girly colours, but purple toilet cleaner?! How un-natural is that?! And it fizzed in a scary way on the ad...

I told the lovely market research lady that I was an Ecover habitue, and thus unlikely to swap my eucalyptus for purple foam. Despite everything, I landed a Boots gift voucher, she was closer to her day's quota, and off I skipped.

I don't think it's overstating things to say that I LOVE Ecover stuff! Some friends of ours have been using it for a while, and they've recently gone the whole hog with washable nappies for their baby daughter, so we really felt it was time to give Ecover a go.

We broke ourselves in gently with the washing up liquid and cleaning spray. The Ecover website details their full range, as well as information about their environmentally aware production methods:

www.ecover.com

The washing up liquid is made with camomile and smells very fresh and natural - almost a bit minty. It cleans as well as standard washing up liquid, and per litre is not significantly more expensive. It is concentrated, so you don't need much.

The kitchen cleaning spray is likewise fragrant, and is perfectly effective. Building in confidence, we decided to give the toilet cleaning liquid a go. The over-riding scent is eucalyptus, which is refreshing with no chemical overtones which catch in your throat - it's about as far from horrid 'forest pine' as it's possible to get! For best results, you need to use a toilet brush too, but as for limescale, we don't find we need to use a separate limescale remover. We live in a very hard water area, so this is a bonus.

All Ecover bottles and their caps are made of the same type of plastic so the whole lot can be recycled. The products are biodegradable and do no harm acquatic life.

Laundry:

We've also been using Ecover washing powder for a few months now. It is similarly priced to other brands, and cleans everything very well. Like all their products, it has a natural subtle scent, and is meant to be ok if you have skin allergies (luckily, neither myself nor my husband suffer from these).

Our washing machine is Bosch, and rated A in terms of energy efficiency. However, I am trying to wash more at 30 degrees on the 'quick wash' setting to further reduce our energy and water consumption. This is fine for dark loads, but for lighter colours, especially towels, I still prefer a 40 degree wash. I will persevere however, as I'm aware that this may just be due to habit.

I recently bought some dolly washing balls from Lakeland (www.lakeland.co.uk). These are meant to act like old fashioned washing dollies: you put them in the machine with your laundry and the extra agitation they generate is meant to shift dirt so that you can reduce the amount of detergent you use. At £13 for 9, I thought they were worth a go, although I've not objectively tested how effective they are - it's difficult to do so unless you are washing really grubby stuff. Having no pets or children, nothing ever gets that dirty. However, I did a home hair dye yesterday and shoved the red/brown stained pale green towel into the washing machine with the balls and no detergent for a cold rinse and it came out spotless. This may have been helped by the fact that the dye had not had a chance to dry in, but I was pretty pleased.

You can also buy washing balls which ionise the water so that dirt is drawn from your clothes, meaning you can dispense with detergent altogether. The most common ones in the UK seem to be Ecoballs (try a google search). I've not tried these as I don't think you can use them if you also use water softeners (which we do as I don't want liomescale to cause my washing machine to seize up). However, you can also buy magnetised balls which claim to solve the limescale problem, which you can use in conjunction with ionising balls. When I get round to it, I may give these a go, although without opening the back of the washing machine I"m not sure how you would test the level of limescale being deposited.

There are even balls for tumble dryers which claim to fluff up your towels etc without recourse to Bounce. Not having a dryer, however, I've not tested these.

Washing balls are very noisy in your machine, so if possible set the machine to come on when you're out! If I do try the ionising/magnetic balls I'll update the blog...

Bathroom:

Who out there has tried recycled toilet paper? It's amazing how many people seem to think it is actually made from 'reclaimed' used toilet paper!!

Currently, Nouvelle is the only recycled brand available at our local supermarket - and there are NO recycled tissues available at all!! It's not triple-ply-quilted-also-makes-the-tea, but it's more than adequate than you very much. What is the point of recycling your old newspapers and junk mail if you only ever buy 'virgin' paper products? Remember reduce, reuse, as well as recycle!

I've just starting using washable cotton face pads made from towel offcuts and polyester (the middle bit, so your products don't soak into the flannel covering completely). I found them at www.lovetheplanet.co.uk and they're great! They come in little mesh bags of 5 (use this for washing them as otherwise they can get stuck in between the drum and the door of the machine). I've not yet used them for removing nail polish etc, but when I do I plan to keep one specifically for this so as not to spoil the others.

Right, that's your lot for now.