Dust, Kitchen Disasters and Crayons! (oh my!)

We moved back to the midwest almost 3 years ago from the west coast, where my husband did his schooling. When we were living in California, we didn't have a ton of money and owned a lot of Ikea furniture. Nothing against Ikea, but I was really looking forward to us settling down and actually having some furniture that we didn't have to put together ourselves! Well, I got my wish when we moved here. I fell in love with our bedroom furniture the minute I saw it.


The rich color of the wood is so beautiful. That is, until we actually got it home and we saw how fast it showed dust! ugh! I tried several products, but they all had a waxy buildup, harsh fumes, and really didn't seem to work well at all. I tried just using a cloth or duster with no product, but all that did was move the dust around the room to resettle back onto the furniture. After we detoxed our home over the summer however, we realized that our favorite Basic H2 organic cleaner was great at dusting. I couldn't believe how well it worked for this. Before, I had to dust just about every day. But with the Basic H2, I just put a little of the window cleaner (1-2 drops to 16 oz. of water) on a cloth and wipe down the furniture. I only dust a few times a month now, if that! It actually repels dust! So cool!

As an experiment, I let the dust really build up on this night stand to try to get a good before picture. Dust is a hard thing to take pictures of! :)
And here is the after once I wiped it down with a little Basic H2:This is also an after picture. I love how the Basic H2 really shines the furniture, without leaving any film, fume or chemical behind. It doesn't just move the dust around, but actually takes it away and keeps it away longer.


Before I found Basic H2 to dust with, I had sworn I would never buy dark colored furniture again. But last summer we bought some new furniture for our family room. Here is a picture of one of the end tables. So easy to dust and keep the dust off. (as well as the little finger prints that tend to show up from my toddler:) I wasn't worried about the dust issue anymore. I was confident that Basic H2 would take care of it and it has.

I also had another cooking disaster on my stovetop recently. I always like to make the most of my disasters by demonstrating how well Scour Off works to clean things like this.
I really love this product and one little canister will last you 1-3 years!!! It is actually made of cherry pits so it smells almost good enough to eat....almost:) Here's the before:
And the after:
All I used was a little of the Scour Off with water on my washable microfiber sponge and it came off pretty easily. Again, without the harsh fumes or chemicals.
Last week I told you about our Green Getaway to Wisconsin. During that trip, we visited with my parents and my mom gave my toddler some pretty awesome no-roll type of crayons. Well, the day after we got home, we hadn't unpacked everything and he found the crayons in one of the bags we had left out. You can maybe guess what happened next... yep, our little artist was at it again. This time on the window sill, walls, floor and even the carpet! I don't have any pictures of the carpet because my husband cleaned it up before I even saw it. He used the degreaser bottle of the Basic H2 and it came right up! (and it was a deep purple color on our cream colored carpet!) But I do have some before and afters of the other areas:

Before:

and after I used the degreaser (1 1/4 tsp. of Basic H2 to 16 oz of water) of Basic H2 with my microfiber sponge

Here's a before of the wall:
and here is the after. I used the Basic H2 degreaser again with the microfiber sponge.
Here is a before of the window sill. (we still have plastic on the windows:)

and the after:
And here is the last one of the floor:

And after. Again, just using the Basic H2 degreaser and microfiber sponge. The sponge is washable, so you can get a lot of uses from it.


As you can see, I have been busy cleaning lately! I am happy to share my cleaning adventures and tips with you.

And if you are interested in any of these products, Shaklee has a wonderful free membership special running right now for Earth Day. It is the best I have seen so far. You can get a free lifetime Shaklee membership with only a $30 MN order! Members save 15% on all products always. And Shaklee always carries a 100% money back guarantee on all products. Since we switched brands to Shaklee cleaners, we have found that we really have saved money on these type of products because Shaklee cleaners are so concentrated. I really love using Shaklee cleaners, which is why I love sharing them with you. If you would like to try a sample of the Basic H2 that I mentioned, please let me know and I would be happy to send you one to you. If you are interested in a Shaklee membership, please remember to ask about my new member specials too:)

Thanks for reading and have a great and healthy week! Oh, and happy spring cleaning too! What spring cleaning projects are you working on? I would love to hear:)

Rebecca