In our home, I try to be as careful as I can in selecting the food we eat and how it's prepared. I prefer to use organic ingredients as often as possible and prepare as much of what we eat with my own two hands.
But I had a guilty secret....with all of this cooking and baking, I produce a lot of dirty dishes and messes. The dishwasher runs at least twice a day (thank you for Energy Efficient appliances!) and I often have a sink full of odds and ends that must be washed by hand. Baking ingredients are especially tough to get off and so my only solution in addition to rinsing and more rinsing and using a half cup or more of regular dishwasher detergent for each load made me feel a little guilty. Okay, a LOT guilty when I stopped to think of all those chemicals washing down the drain. Environment friendly products were just too pricey and/or didn't do a good job. Until now.
Eco Store Auto Dishwash Powder! It's a "high performance blend of simple mineral salts and plant-based ingredients" with "no toxic residues and no phosphates or other potentially harmful chemicals" That means:
"No toxic petrochemicals. No phosphates. No nitrates. No ammonia. No enzymes. No chlorine. No EDTA. No synthetic dyes or perfumes."
Those are some great claims aren't they? I bet you are wondering how well it really works with all of those claims.
Let's see how this stuff holds up in the Vanilla Icing kitchen.
Look at these filthy things! Dirty dinner plates, chocolate cookie dough caked all over the inside of a bowl (note that I did NOT turn it inside down and it's upright like the plates), and the gooey bottom of the spring form pan that held the Golden Simplicity Cake the other day. Not pictured are various utensils, mugs and glasses. They weren't dirty enough to make the picture.
A scant tablespoon is all that the directions say to use. I was very concerned about this amount. It seemed so .....
....little. It didn't even fill the basket up half way! I was feeling pretty tense at the thought of the very full load coming out half clean. There was no way I wanted to spend an hour soaking the dishes and washing them by hand.
My fears were unfounded. The Eco Store Auto Dishwash Powder did an amazing job! Look at the bowl! Not a smudge of chocolate. Anywhere. Look at that gleaming spring form pan bottom! Look at those bright white dishes! (The utensils, mugs and glasses were sparkling as well.)
And you know what? I've got another secret...most loads don't even require a full tablespoon. How do I know? I tried this product for a full two weeks before giving it my complete approval.
I also tried this:
Eco Store Naturally Antibacterial Spray Cleaner I like to mist down my kitchen surfaces with it after a long afternoon of cooking and baking. It has a faint scent of citrus from one of its ingredients that leaves everything smelling fresh in addition to putting your fears to rest about nasty bacteria.
I would strongly encourage anyone who was looking for an environmentally safe alternative for their cleaning needs to take a look around the Eco Store. Their products are shipped in recycled/recyclable materials and they arrive very quickly. They are currently having a 15% off sale until the end of August!
