Ok. So… I’m going to step on the soapbox for a minute. As a person with asthma, allergies, and chemical sensitivities, you could say I’m a bit paranoid about exposure to chemicals and toxins in the home and work environment. I’m not really into fear mongering, but please give this a read because it’s something that huge corporations don’t want you to know, because if you did you’d no longer spend your hard earned dollar supporting their business.

Many folks are unaware of the dangers posed by the harsh chemicals they come into contact with every day. Advertising puts so much emphasis on “antibacterial” products and ideas of cleanliness. In reality, the ingredients found in many household cleaners, air fresheners, and even bath/personal products can cause a number of problems either short term or over time including disrupting the natural, healthy bacterial flora and hormones in our bodies and even cause diseases such as cancer, reproductive problems, respiratory issues, skin rashes, and hampered immune systems. Even baby products from brands you think you can trust – brands that are given out as free samples from hospitals! I don’t care if you they say they are going to “clean up their act”, how could you trust a company like that? Not to mention, most of these entities torture animals to prove these products are “safe” for you to use in your home around your children and your pets. Their ads are aimed to make you feel inadequate in your own life, especially your hygiene, and to convince you to do anything to fix it, including buy products that could pose risks. In the end are only about making money for large corporations. Several European nations have banned certain ingredients that American companies are STILL permitted to use in personal care products – poisoning the earth it’s inhabitants in the name of big business.

(I’m not even going to touch on the environmental concerns that come from production and use of all of these products. In addition, there are numerous amounts of chemicals and additives in the foods we eat every day that you should be aware of, too, even brands touted as “natural” and “healthy”, but that is a whole ‘nother story.)

What is the best way to keep your family safe? DO YOUR RESEARCH. Most daily cleaning tasks can be accomplished by using simple things like baking soda and vinegar, saving money and saving you from exposure to harmful products. It’s easy to find natural home remedy recipes on the web. The EWG is a good place to start if you are going to search for safe products on the market. They have a large database rating thousands of brands of personal care products from cosmetics to sunscreen to shampoo, as well as home cleaning products.

One of the products we use constantly in our daily routine is hand soap! And often these soaps contain Triclosan, a harmful chemical that is commonly used in antibacterial products. Castile soap is a better option because it is all natural and made of vegetable oils. Dr Bronner’s classic liquid soap is my favorite brand of all purpose castile soap. You know – the one that lists all 18-in-1 of it’s uses on the bottle. It comes in several different scents and sizes, is organic, fair trade certified, and environmentally friendly. And LOOKY HERE, I’ve come up with a way to use it in hand soap dispensers! The company itself will tell you that it’s not a good candidate for dispensers. I experienced this myself when I filled my regular, non-foaming, run-of-the-mill dispenser with straight Dr Bronner’s. It did in fact clog the dispenser and the result was squirting soap all over your clothes. Then I tried using a foaming dispenser and diluted the Bronner’s with water. And it worked!

SAFE CASTILE HAND SOAP

Step 1. Purchase a foaming hand soap dispenser. I don’t currently know where you can buy an empty one, so I purchased method soap from Target. Full Disclosure: I didn’t really want to waste the soap we used it up first.

Step 2. Remove the wrapper. The method dispensers are great b/c once you remove the wrapper, it looks mostly like a plain bottle, aside from a barely noticeable embossed letter “m”.

Step 3. Fill your dispenser about 1/4-1/3 of the way with your choice of Dr Bronner’s depending on how much you want to use. I know a bottle of this stuff might seem expensive, but the fact that you are diluting it makes it last a lot longer.

Step 4. Fill the rest of the dispenser with water.

Step 5. Enjoy washing your hands with Dr. Bronner’s!

Bottom line: it may be difficult to make a lot of changes at once, but little by little, if you think about which products you use (personal care, cleaning products, fertilizers, pesticides) and what is important to you, over time it will be easy to change your daily habits and make your home more green.

P.S. There is even a documentary about Dr. Bronner & Family that I’ve been meaning to see… sounds interesting.