More Green Products

I want to start this post off by saying that I do not work for 7th Generation nor do they compensate me in any way for these blog posts. Their products are easy for me to get and I want to share my experiences with anyone who is interested. So anonymous emailer, stick your finger up your left nostril and leave me alone! I won't go into details but I received an anonymous email about my green posts and it was lets just say not nice. Basically I was accused of posting about these products because I was getting paid to. The only thing that irritated me about the email was the person didn't have the guts to sign their name to the email. If you're going to bad mouth me you can at least have the guts to put your name down in the email. If I find a product that sucks you all will be the first to know about it. I don't sugar coat things and I also have no problem if some one posts a comment or sends an email saying that they don't believe me or hate the products I'm talking about. I'm a big girl and can handle criticism. I am mature enough to know that not everyone is going to agree with me and my opinions. Nuff said!

I left off in my last post with the liquid dish soap. It wowed me when I first used it and it's still wowing me. My hands have never looked so good. They have been rash free since I started using the soap. This is definitely a product I will continue to use. If you have sensitive hands I highly recommend this product.

I've been using the All Purpose Cleaner and the Dishwasher detergent. Both of these products I have are free and clear although the All Purpose Cleaner comes in a Green Mandarin & leaf scent. It's just not available in my area. If you want a scented dishwasher detergent you'll have to get the gel because the powder only comes in Free & Clear. I'm going to start out with the All Purpose Cleaner first.

I'm comparing the 7th Generation All Purpose Cleaner to Formula 409 since 409 is what I normally use. The 7th Gen cleaner holds up great to 409. They both cut grease very well but there are few differences I've found. The first is that 409 is very hard on my hands. After using it my hands rash out and hurt. The 7th Gen cleaner didn't bother my hands at all. The 7th Gen cleaner got the grease off my stove and range hood with less scrubbing. The other thing I noticed is that the 7th Gen cleaner did better cleaning up sticky residue left from stickers. You won't believe the stuff they stick stickers on now a days. I found that spraying the cleaner on a rag and rubbing on the resin (a few times depending on how much resin was left behind after the sticker was removed) took it right off. This stuff works better then most of the goo removers I've tried that are suppose to work like magic....(insert sarcasm) sure they do! I use it mostly on the stove and counters around the stove to cut the grease. It works great in the microwave too. We all know how fun the microwave can be to clean up. We Shawn also mopped the floors with the 7th Gen cleaner. It did a really good job cleaning up the floors but honestly my floors never get very dirty. The girls aren't allowed to run around the house with food and I wipe up spills in the kitchen right away so truthfully hot water would make my floors look clean. I do believe that it would work great on really messy floors too. The thing I liked most about mopping with this cleaner was that I didn't have to go back over the floors with water to rinse and it didn't leave my floors feeling sticky. I have linoleum floors so this stuff worked great, however it states that this product is not for use on wood floors.

The other product that we are trying out is 7th Generations Powder Dishwasher Detergent. I'm comparing it with the last two dishwasher detergents I've used: Cascade 2in1 ActionPacs and the Palmolive Eco+. Lets first start off by saying that the Palmolive Eco+ sucks!!! It leaves a nasty film on your dishes, specially plastics. So I had to go back and wipe all the dishes down with a clean cloth to get the film off. Ah, I don't know about you all but the less work I have to do in the kitchen the better my life is. I give it a -10 for usability. Don't waste your money on it.

The Cascade works great. The only drawbacks are that it's not eco friendly and you can't pick them up with wet hands because the water melts the protective gel holding everything together....don't ask me how I know this....gotta learn things the hard way. The Cascade cuts the grease and makes my dishes clean and shiny. I'm wanting an eco friendly product to wash my dishes thus the reason I picked the Palmolive up. Now it's not 100% eco friendly but it's phosphate free so I thought I'd try it out. Yup it stinks, not getting it again. Thankfully Alberstsons is now starting to stock some of the 7th Generations products and they were stocking the dishwasher detergent the other day when Shawn was there so he picked some up. This is the first time I've used a plain powdered dishwasher detergent in years. We've been buying gel packs for several years now and before that we used gel.

The 7th Gen detergent is much more comparable to the Cascade that I was using. They both cleaned the dishes very well and left all of the dishes shiny. (Side note: I still use Jet Dry in my dishwasher). When the Jet Dry runs out I'm going to try the 7th Gen detergent to see how it does without the Jet Dry. There was no nasty film on the dishes. I'll post about my findings of how the 7th Gen detergent works after the Jet Dry is used up. We just put some in a week or so ago so it will be awhile before it's empty. It normally last about a month.

We are now up to 6 eco friendly products: Blue Eucalyptus & Lavender Landry Soap, Lavender & Floral Mint dish washing soap, Free & Clear All Purpose Cleaner, Free & Clear Dishwasher Powder, 100% recycled TP (100% recycled paper), and 100% recycled paper towels (also made out of 100% recycled paper). The toilet paper and paper towels cost a little bit more but they are made with recycled paper instead of having to chop down trees to make it. The TP isn't as super soft as Charmin but it's not as rough as government issue TP. If you've never used government TP count your blessings and hope you never do. That stuff still gives me nightmares **shudder**. The 7th gen TP is a happy medium between really soft and horribly rough. We don't use paper plates anymore and a roll of paper towels last us forever because I use bar mops & dish rags to clean up most messes. Sams Club and Costco both sell bar mops in a big pack. They work great for drying and for cleaning up messes. I can see why bartenders use them. I think I paid about $8 for 20-25 bar mops....very cheap.

I'll leave you with a shot of the new tree they planted in my back yard.

It's a Patmore Ash. It's a nice size tree but it still has lots more growing to do. I'll take pics again later this year.