Did you know the air INSIDE your home can be up to 500x more polluted than the air OUTSIDE your home?
Products like disinfectants, sanitizers, and cleaners emit toxic fumes than can lead to skin irritation, asthma, allergies, and even cancer. You should be especially careful of what products you’re using on surfaces and floors if you have a little one learning to crawl or walk.
The first step to reduce toxins in the home is to do a MAJOR OVERHAUL of your cleaning products.
How do you know what you should toss or keep? I recommend following this guide to help navigate sorting through your products. Basically you’re tossing anything with a warning label or requires gloves to use.
So what can I use?
You can replace dozens of bottles of conventional cleaner with the Branch Basics concentrate and a little bit of water! Branch Basics concentrate will create all purpose cleaner, glass/window cleaner, bathroom cleaner, laundry detergent, and hand soap! It uses derivatives from plants & minerals (think coconut, baking soda, salt, etc.) and is free from the usual toxins typically found in household cleaners. The Branch Basics concentrate is MADE SAFE certified which is the highest level of safety standards.
If you have a super tough stain you can use the Oxygen Boost! It helps remove grease or stubborn stains on things like laundry, tile grout, and the shower. This stuff is a miracle worker on stains and doesn’t contain any bleach, fragrance, or ammonia! I like to add a scoop in with my laundry when I wash my white sheets or towels.
How do you disinfect?
I don’t use sanitizers or disinfectants under normal circumstances because they contain toxic chemicals and kill off the good bacteria. The main reason why I don’t recommend disinfectants is because most of them will only kill off 99% of germs, meaning 1% (the absolute strongest bugs) do not die. As they survive and reproduce they can create superbugs which will be resistant to sanitizers and potentially create a much larger problem in the future.
If someone is sick in your home and you must disinfect, use the following two step cleaning process:
- spray with Branch Basics all purpose cleaner and wipe clean
- spray with straight Hydrogen Peroxide (3%) OR alcohol (70%) and allow area to completely air dry
How To Use
- fill with water to the line that says WATER on your bottle (I use filtered water)
- fill with the concentrate to the line that says SOAP
- screw on lid and give a gentle shake before using
Hand Soap
My most used Branch Basics item is the foaming wash. This is what we use for hand soap in the kitchen and all of our bathrooms. It’s so gentle it doesn’t dry my hands out at all! One bottle comes in the starter kit, but I loved it so much I purchased these glass soap dispensers to use in the other bathrooms around my house. I also use it as a produce wash and sometimes face wash!
It’s free of common toxins that are usually found in handsoap like sulfates, triclosan, and fragrance. The term “fragrance” can be used as an umbrella term for a list of 3,059 chemicals and materials. Companies are not required to tell us exactly which of these 3000+ materials are contained in the product. Many of those chemicals have been linked to health problems such as endocrine disrupters, reproductive issues and certain cancers.
To get started, I recommend this starter kit. One bottle of concentrate is enough to make 3 bottles of all purpose cleaner, 3 bottles of bathroom cleaner, 3 bottles of streak-free cleaner, 3 bottles of foaming wash and detergent for 64 loads of laundry! When I priced it out it was significantly more affordable than the conventional cleaner I used to purchase. You can ORDER HERE and use code LOCHANDLER for 15% off your order!
What non-toxic swaps have you made recently? Let me know in the comments below or on Instagram, I would genuinely love to hear from you!!
Thanks so much for reading, Xo – Lo
