Review: Crunchy Clean Diaper Detergent

I've been using cloth diapers for nine months now and have used Crunchy Clean's cloth diaper detergent the whole time. I bought three bags at $13 each, and only opened the third bag a couple weeks ago. I figured it would take about a year for me to go through three bags, so my friend and I each got three bags to take advantage of the free shipping offer for orders over $75.

I chose the hard water unscented version in particular because I have hard water, and I wanted to be careful with possible skin sensitivities regarding the scent.

I use one tablespoon per wash, which is for about two dozen inserts and a few covers. I haven't had to strip my diapers ever! Thus, this stuff seems to work great!

Here's the back label too:

Crunchy Clean also makes detergents for regular laundry as well as other household cleaners, including pure oxygen stain remover. They're a family-owned business that's been making cleaners for five years now. I will definitely continue ordering diaper detergent from them and may check out their other cleaning products when I place my next order in a few months. If you "like" them on Facebook, you'll receive periodic discount codes and sale notices in your news feed, but they won't inundate your news feed.

Personal Care Items from Sprouts

I have been dying to share my Sprouts finds with you, my readers for at least a week now, but life has been too busy! We went to a parenting conference last Friday night and Saturday morning, and then church on Sunday. Baby came down with a cold yesterday. Lots of laundry. Blah blah blah. Anyways...

Kiss My Face Sunscreen: This particular sunscreen by Kiss My Face ranked a one or zero on EWG's scale, with zero being the best. This means there are few to no potentially harmful chemicals in it! Or the chemicals that are in it aren't dangerous, but then they're not really "chemicals." Sprouts had this on sale last week for 25% off. With summer approaching, I'm sure this brand and/or Badger products will continue to go on sale. I haven't had a chance to try this as the weather has been gloomy here, and I don't spend much time in the sun since I work from home. I need to work on that.

This shower caddy used to be completely FULL, but since we're eliminating potentially toxic products, this is all we're using in the shower.

Everyday Shea Shampoo and Conditioner: These are Costco-size bottles that were on sale for $10! They come in two scents--vanilla mint and lavender. I got lavender because I love it, but apparently my husband doesn't, so I'll be opting for vanilla mint next time. I really like this shampoo. I have slightly dry hair that's on the thicker side, and it works great.

Dr. Bronner's Shave Gel: This works best if you squirt it right onto your skin because it's rather liquidy. I like the feeling my skin has after I use this, and the scent isn't strong at all, though I did get lavender. I also found I have to use more than I would if it were a cream.

Dr. Bronner's Pure Castile Soap (liquid and bar): I am in LOVE with this soap, by the way. I got almond, peppermint, and unscented in liquid form, and a peppermint bar. These bottle sizes were on sale, 25% off, only $12.74! I use diluted peppermint and almond soaps for--

• Foaming hand soap containers
• Body soap
• Dish soap
• Mopping

I use the unscented soap for my baby and our laundry. For laundry, the soap doesn't need to be diluted and I use the same amount that I did with my other soap. I'm planning to take the bar of soap on the road to use for washing my hands and body while away from home. I wanted to try out the bar of soap to see how it might be different, too.

Nature's Gate Natural Toothpaste: These anise and peppermint toothpastes received good ratings from EWG and were on sale. I really like it! I tried a drop of Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap on my toothbrush because that's one of the many things people use it for, but it tastes too soapy.

Tom's Mouthwash: I don't know what this is rated on EWG, but I didn't want my husband to continue using the high alcohol content Scope anymore. I figured this has to be better!

Chocolate Granola: Okay, this isn't exactly a personal care item, but I had to share it. It's regular granola and chocolate-flavored granola, plus there are little chunks of chocolate. Super tasty! Way to make a snack healthy and junky! Haha.

I hope this is helpful! Do you have a Sprouts near you? Have you tried any of these? What do you use for soap and such?

Costco Trip 4.12.13

I didn't get a lot at Costco this week, but I did get a few wonderful items that I wanted to share.

From left to right,
100% Whole Wheat Bread from Oroweat: I like this bread because the slices and loaves are big, it freezes well, and stays moist. It does have added sugar, and I would prefer bread sweetened with honey, but at least it's not high fructose corn syrup like most breads. I also like Trader Joe's Sweetened with Honey Whole Wheat Bread, but the slices are smaller and it's drier. It is a little cheaper though. Overall, this bread is pretty good option.

Mary's Gone Crackers: These are organic, gluten free, and contain great ingredients like quinoa. I actually haven't tried them before, but Mama Natural raved about them on one of her videos as a favorite snack. These are on SALE right now for a few more weeks for only $5 per box! Normally $7.50. What a steal!!

Shredded 4-Cheese Blend: My Costco doesn't have organic cheeses, unfortunately, but I love cheese and lots of it :) I probably should eat less. They just started carrying this in two smaller bags, which is nice for storage purposes. I put a little of this on my salad, and we put it on burgers and crackers this way too. I did the price comparison to the same amount of cheese as a block at Costco, and it was about the same price, so since it's easier to deal with shredded, that's all I get now.

2 Dozen Organic Eggs: The price on these organic eggs is incredible. I love making veggie breakfast burritos for dinner with eggs; I just pull out all the veggies in the fridge, cut up a little of each, and throw them in the pan while I'm scrambling the eggs. Delicious! I also found this fabulous Avocado Egg Salad recipe recently, so I've made that a couple times when we got eggs.

Sweet Kale Vegetable Salad with 7 Superfoods: This has kale, some collards, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, and some other tasty stuff. It also comes with dressing. We tried this last night and devoured it. We actually used some of the dressing we use for our normal salads instead of the poppy seed dressing this time. I'm a little hesitant to try different dressings because many contain vinegar which I'm not a fan of. This is great for when you want a salad but you're tired and/or it's late, so you don't want to fix your salad.

Chef's Knife: This knife that comes with a lifetime warranty and was only $40! It cuts beautifully and easily. This was from a road show going on at my Costco currently. Look for them at yours soon!

Peaches: Three pounds of organic frozen peaches! I'm making baby food for my 8.5 month-old son these days, and he loves his fruit. I haven't seen fresh or frozen peaches at Sprouts, so I grabbed this bag, which should last awhile. It's great too because I don't have to worry about them going bad or freezing them myself, and I can throw them in the blender frozen.

I also saw a 36-pack of microfiber towels for $15.50! I wish I would have seen those before I ordered a package off Amazon...oh well. If you're looking for towels to dust with and clean up wet messes, pick up a package for yourself.

What are your favorite Costco finds?

Toxic Chemicals in EVERYthing!!

AHHHHH!!!! My cabinets have been full of products with scary stuff in them. I was watching Candid Mommy on YouTube the other day, and she mentioned this website called EWG where she found out about the safest sunscreens to use. So I traversed over to this site last night, and could hardly fall asleep after looking up a couple products I use because I could only think about replacing them. Environmental Working Group (EWG) has gathered test results and ranked a bazillion skin care products and household cleaners, but this is just two of the pieces on their website that I have explored today! They also have stuff about food--eek! What will I find there??

After reading over the skin and household cleaner parts of the website, I did some cabinet binging.

Here's a closer look at a couple of the bags

 All of these bags are full of products I'm throwing away that have toxic chemicals in them (except the soy milk box). And it's made a ton of room in my cabinets, which I won't be replacing with much! What am I doing about it?

Household Cleaning
 
Nearly all of my soap-based products are being replaced by Dr. Bronner's soaps, including Sal Suds as a tougher cleaner. Dr. Bronner's soaps are replacing my body wash, hand soaps, floor and surface cleaners, laundry detergent, toothpaste, dish washing soap, and probably some other things. You can get Dr. Bronner's 18-in-1 liquid and bar soaps at Target. You can also get huge amounts off Amazon or the company's website. This will be much cheaper than purchasing all those other products, especially since I'll be diluting it for my body wash.

For the dishwasher, I'll be using Seventh Generation Automatic Dishwashing Powder (available at Target, I believe) and pure citric acid to fight the hard water here in So Cal.


For dusting, I'm just going to use microfiber towels. They're supposed to wipe up dust well; it's what's recommended for dusting electronics and cars, so it should work in my house. I'll also use them for mopping up messes and other surface cleaning.

Personal Care

As mentioned above, I'll be using Dr. Bronner's soap for many personal and household cleaning items. Dr. Bronner's even makes a mild baby soap! And it's available at Target!!  

Moisturizing: I'm also purchasing Dr. Bronners lip balm, shaving gel, and unscented body balm off Amazon. Additionally, I'm getting 100% almond moisturizing oil for my everyday moisturizer, and it only costs $11.99 for a 16oz bottle! That's only 75 cents per ounce! Lotions from Bath and Body Works in 8-12oz amounts cost at least that much and more! I'm also planning on making a mixture of coconut and almond oil for an extra-awesome combination; it was recommended by an Amazon reviewer.

For deodorant, I'm planning on mixing together pure coconut oil, corn starch, and baking soda. Cotton Bottom Mama's blog explains how to do it, and I'll be trying it out as soon as I can make it to the store!

For sunscreen, I'm going to peruse Sprouts tomorrow to see if they have the Kiss My Face Natural Mineral Sunscreen because that brand is on sale this week. I will also be checking for Badger sunscreen products. If they don't have these, you can be sure I'll be purchasing something from Loving Naturals off Amazon, as Candid Mommy recommends.

Unfortunately, all this change means I'm throwing a way A TON (well at least several pounds worth) of products, but I like feeling confident in my choices, and in the end I will waste less and spend le$$.

By the way, in case you think your products are safe because they say "natural," or they're made by Burt's Bees or Yes to __ brands, think again. Some things made by these companies are safe, but not all of them. To make it easier on myself, that's why I'm using mostly Dr. Bronner's brand.

You can be sure there will be MUCH, MUCH more to come on this endeavor. Do you make any of your own personal or household products? What do you use? How have you liked them? If not, what do you think about this?