What’s in your cleaning products?
Don’t forget to answer this month’s poll about ingredients in household products!
Product Review: Tropical Traditions
What kind of household cleaner do you normally use? In the past I have used something like Endust or Fantastik, but for the past couple years I have been using the brand Method. It is a company that has a multi-surface all purpose cleaner product, as well as a tub & tile product, so I like to use them for most of my cleaning needs. The line is non-toxic and works really well.
Tropical Traditions recently sent me a large 944 ml bottle of their all purpose cleaner, and I was impressed with the label on the back: it can be used on counter tops, stoves, sinks, as dishwashing liquid, as hand soap, in the bathtub and toilet, and even for laundry and automobile cleaning. Now that is an all-purpose* cleaner!
The ingredients list: “pure water, amino acids, minerals, and other ingredients derived from leafy green, edible and seed-bearing plants”.
I found that last phrase really interesting.
other ingredients derived from leafy green, edible and seed-bearing plants
What exactly does that mean? It is a fairly ambiguous phrase. Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s good for us.
That being said, I’m simply pointing out the rhetoric – I’m quite confident that the ingredients that Tropical Traditions uses in this household cleaner are safe for us to use on a regular basis and safe for the environment.
As far as the product itself goes, I love it. It works amazingly well. I have yet to use it for clothes or cars, but it works great for bathrooms, kitchens, and regular dusting purposes. I even used it to scrub the toilet, which also worked very well (although, because it doesn’t use artificial colouring, the colour of the product itself is pale yellow… and that doesn’t look so “pretty” when it’s in the toilet. For some reason I associate a clean toilet with bright, artificial blue. What can I say? Old habits die hard).
Interested in winning your own Tropical Traditions all purpose cleaner? You can enter to win a big bottle simply by leaving a comment below about the cleaning products you currently use, what you look for in a cleaner, your cleaning product frustrations, or anything remotely related to cleaning, cleaning products, and the health of ingredients in cleaning products. As always, you’ll have a better chance of winning if your comment is particularly funny, clever, or insightful. Winner will be announced one week from today, on Monday, September 27th.
Disclaimer: Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose. Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway in return for the free product.
*I really like hyphens, but cleaning companies neglect to use hyphens in the phrase “all-purpose”. It drives me nuts.
For most cleaning, I use a damp cloth. (I do believe I might start a blog called The Allergy Perspective! Except then I’d feel the need to do actual research.) Or a cloth with dishwashing liquid. Or mop with same. I use scouring powder on sinks, and bleach for toilets and dog-exposed floors. (Have a nice hyphen!)
“Other ingredients derived from leafy green, edible and seed-bearing plants” certainly wins the Vague Prize.
Your hyphen just made my day 😉
It’s amazing what a cloth and water can do!
I use the projects my mom buys. Which, as you might expect, are cheap and poisonous. Six months and I’m outta here, and then it’s all natural for me!
Maybe she can be converted? Hehe.
For most cleaning I use vinegar and baking soda and water, as I’m trying to reduce the chemical load in my house and I’ve got asthma so a lot of harsh cleaners make me squeak – plus as a scientist I know what prolonged exposure to a lot of different chemicals can do and I am always frustrated that domestic cleaning products do not have to list their specific ingredients on the package (if you do contact the manufacturer they will give them to you). The “other ingredients” thing on your cleaner made me smile…
I haven’t found any good eco friendly cleaning stuff that works better than the “old standard” so I’ve stuck with the basics my Mum used to use. I associate the smell of vinegar with clean from when I was little. My one concession is that I do still buy toilet cleaner…it just doesn’t seem clean to me without an actual cleaner…odd I know. I’d be really interested in trying this cleaner – a good natural based cleaning product is a good idea and if it worked well I’d be all in for it.
I feel the same way about the toilet. It’s such a weird thing, but it just seems more clean when it’s bright blue. Very odd.
My mother dear taught me the joys of vinegar, water, and baking soda, too – I swear by them.
I use a lot of Dr. Bronner’s in hopes for a more natural cleaning experience. But when the cat pukes or my husband lets raw chicken touch the counters I still go for the harsh stuff. I didn’t even realize Tropical Traditions sells cleaning products!
Your post made me laugh. I went to a home show for an “all natural” cleaning company that didn’t sound so great once the ingredients were read. They didn’t even specify the solvent used – just listed “solvent” in the ingredients – which really made me roll my eyes.
I have been slowly but surely switching to using mainly vinegar and water as my cleaner – it’s cheap and effective. But, I still have some stronger cleaners with questionable ingredients hanging out in my cupboard.
Interesting that Tropical Traditions makes cleaning products. I know of their coconut oil, but was surprised by this!
That’s one of the really frustrating things about this little challenge, actually. It seems that the regulations for ingredient lists on household products are worse than the ones for nutrition products in terms of being able to understand exactly what’s in there.
Tropical Traditions has a whole line of different products! So far I have been quite impressed with their coconut oil, coconut flour, raw honey, and now the cleaning product.
(Oh, I didn’t mention the vinegar thing. I occasionally use baking soda to clean something, but just sitting at the next table to someone eating a salad with vinegar in the dressing can give me a headache that lasts more than a day.)
I am absolutely friggin embarrassed to say what I use.. you may fly out & try to kick my old broad butt to kingdom come as an old fogy like me says.. 😉 Well, depending on where you live!
I would love to try an economically safe cleaner!!!! I do love their coconut peanut butter!!!! I don’t clean with it though.. it makes my taste buds & tummy feel good though! 🙂
I really don’t like the taste of coconut, I must admit, so I’m reluctant to try coconut peanut butter… then again, can a person really go wrong with PEANUT BUTTER? I think not 😀
Very interesting. I buy Seventh Generation household cleaners, which are said to be “all natural”, which of course is completely ambiguous and doesn’t really mean much. I just looked at the ingredients and there are a lot of names I don’t know (and of course they are under a label that you have to “peel once you buy it”. Tricky. But the ingredients are all plant derived and “Free of dies and fragrances and anything that harms our Earth…”. hmmm, it works, but I may have to try some Tropical Traditions!!
I guess it comes down to trying to get the best products we can, and HOPE that they’re decent enough, even if they are a tad ambiguous!
For cleaning, I use my fiance. Seriously, I somehow have him convinced that he’s a better mopper AND shower srcubber than I’ll ever be, and that it’s just not clean unless he does it. And he does! I’m stuck with the rest of the apartment, though, and I recently switched to Trader Joes all purpose cleaner for counter tops but I am wondering how clean it really gets things. Would love to try something new, especially this non-toxic brand, since we’re trying to switch over all our cleaning products and things like shower curtains to be more safe.
That is awesome. Go fiance!
You’re switching things like shower curtains? I need to learn more about the impact that shower curtains can make.
I really minimize the use of toxic cleaners. I’ve been careful with that one for a while. Hey I’ve even written about how dirt is good for us 🙂
Absolutely! Dirt falls under the category of “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” 🙂
Where can I access that article? I am very interested in that as I have read a great deal about how the “antibacterial gel, wipes, and soap” are actually doing us harm. My son who is a chemistry major has been telling me some pretty frightening things and won’t let me buy antibacterial hand soap any more.
I use cleansers like the orange oil ones for everything EXCEPT the bathroom. I just HAVE to bleach it when I clean it. Tub, potty, sink, floor. Even handles and door knobs. I know that is not the best route, but I just don’t feel like it is clean until it is bleached to within an inch of its life. I guess it’s just some weird phobia or something I have. I blame high school science when they showed us a video of the spray that comes out of a toilet when it is flushed and gets over everything in sight. True or not, it must’ve had an effect on me.
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I followed my mom and used ammonia for years. TOXIC! Maybe that’s what happened to me! 🙂 Now, I use Tropical Traditions cleaner, baking soda/vinegar, or EcoStore.
My goodness! What cleaning products DON’T we use?
By the laundry hamper we have three stain products–SHOUT spray for most dirty things, SHOUT gel for dirty collars on my husband’s shirts, and Stain Stick for things that are more dirty than normal, but regular SHOUT won’t cut it and it isn’t a “set in” stain like the SHOUT gel is for. But, you know, we don’t want anything bad in our laundry, so we always use a “green” brand of laundry soap. Usually we use Seventh Generation, but we have also used Meyers when it is on sale. We also don’t use dryer sheets because we’ve heard they’re bad.
Oh, and then there is special laundry soap for delicate wash, special Febreeze laundry soap for removing odors (from the time my husband put a paint thinner rag in the regular laundry basket!), bleach, baking soda and vinegar (which I still don’t know how to use correctly), and all of the ingredients for homemade laundry soap which is still waiting to be made.
That’s just the laundry cleaners.
The trouble is, my husband is SUPER allergic to MSG, so after he’s had reactions to soap (we make our own now) and shampoo (he just uses soap in his hair now), we know that anything we use matters.
We have talked about using baking soda and vinegar, and I made spray bottles of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide and a shaker of baking soda. I bought baking soda in bulk, for cleaning.
It doesn’t seem to work very well at all! It seems kind of like a placebo effect. Sure, stuff sometimes gets clean, but it takes forever and ends up tearing my fingernails and getting them all gross in the process. I think they just make me do all the work.
So, we keep buying “green” brands and hoping they’ll work, and then reverting back to “bad” products that actually do what they are supposed to. I have shelves full of both, because I have the very best of intentions but I am just way too busy to have to scrub everything with “cleaners” that don’t do anything!