Trader Joe's cloths part II

Ok, so I have to revise my opinion on the TJs cloths. I do like their texture more for wiping around my kitchen than I did my furry microfiber cloths, but after using one to wipe my trashcan lid I figured I'd better toss it into the washing machine. I washed it on cold and dried it on low heat. The thing shrunk to half its size! I think I may have to supplement these with a couple of Twist Euro Cloths. I've been wanting to try Twist's products anyway. The boxes their sponges come in can be made into birdfeeders. My neighborhood has feral parakeets who survive on birdseed in the winter, so I definitely want to have a birdfeeder out soon. Somehow the "killing two birds with one stone" metaphor seems wrong here.

In other news, I got a box of babyganics' products today in the mail. I can't wait to try them! They look and sound quite good.

Pet Hair Magnet

Seen in Apartment Therapy: Green, the "Pet Hair Magnet".

I want to try that! I use the tape-roller all the time and this looks like a better solution. I wonder if it works on people hair/ lint as well.

Method's omop

When Method's omop first came out, it caused a stir on a forum I was (then) active on. People were gleefully saying that it was a more eco-friendly version of products like the Swiffer wet-jet. At the time I was mopping my floors a lot. I had a wood veneer floored kitchen in an apartment, and my dogs were having a lot of accidents. The way the light from the porch doors reflected onto the floor, you could see every smudge. Filling a bucket with water and going to town just wasn't happening, not with my insanely busy teaching
schedule.

The omop promised speed. It explained that I could merely dribble the mop liquid on the floor, then run the mop over it with a microfiber cloth. There are two kinds of omop liquid: "all floor" (lemon ginger) and "wood for good" (almond). I bought the all floor starter kit in the beginning. The lemon ginger liquid smelled wonderful, and actually reminded me of Thai food. The liquid and the mop worked well in my bathroom. On my veneer kitchen floor I noticed the floor becoming sticky and the mop not gliding well at all. Actually, it kinda skipped around, and no matter how much or little liquid I used, that didn't change. It drove me crazy.

Well, the folks at Method told me to try the wood mop liquid because, as they put it, "veneer is tricky". I loved the almond smell of that version of the liquid as well, but my floor remained a bit sticky. I wound up doing a plain-water with a touch of white vinegar wash, and everything was stick-free and even shiny (why didn't I just stick to white vinegar? I'm a sucker for a gadget.)

In my new place, I'm on the fence about whether the wood for good liquid helps my wood floors or whether it adds a dull sheen to them. I honestly can't decide, which I know is odd. I don't use the omop on my wood floors though, just its liquid with my handy Magnet Mop. The omop does't glide at all smoothly on the floors unless you dampen the microfiber cloth, so I just stopped bothering.

Here's what I do like about the omop:

-use on bathroom floors (I use the microfiber cloth plus the all-surface cleaner, and my bathroom smells nicely of ginger)
-the dry cloths.

Compostable and corn-derived or not, the latter isn't as eco-friendly as I could be. However, when I dry mop with my magnet mop, I want to chuck the head in the laundry machine when I'm done, and even assuming an otherwise full load, that may be a greater waste of resources.

I like the dry cloths. They help me catch all the dust balls and dirt on my floor. I also vacuum, but occasionally I need, well, a quick solution. I'm not any less busy, after all.

Trader Joe's Super Amazing Kitchen Cloths

In my endless quest to waste less I sought out Trader Joe's Super Amazing Kitchen Cloths as paper-towel replacers. (Well, I at least wanted to use fewer of them. I still prefer paper towels to clean up doggie accidents.)

I use my sponges plenty, but mostly to scrub tough goo off the stove or for a preliminary counter swipe. When I'm using spray cleaner, as eco-friendly as it may be, I don't want it on my sponge. My dish towels are meant for drying dishes and hands, so ditto there. My solution had been to use microfiber cleaning cloths with my countertrop spray, but they were a bit heavy and seemed like overkill.

The TJs cloths (which come 2 to a pack for $3.99) are made of vicose, a super-absorbent synthetic material that's somewhat related to rayon. They're around the size of a standard 8.5x11" piece of paper, and feel a bit like felt to me. I hear vicose can absorb 10 times its weight in water? This reminds me of those special swimming towels a friend of mine had in the '80s. (They were tiny and came in a tube. I wanted one.)

The SAKCs apparently come in many colors- ours are a chocolate brown (j. picked them out). I haven't actually washed mine yet, as ringing it out after use has sufficed. It dries really quickly. I am starting to feel badly for its unused buddy.

I wasn't relying very much on paper towels, as I said, but this is an improvement over my microfiber cloths (and I was thinking of going to disposable wipes from those, so the Trader Joe's cloths prevented that transition.)

Caldrea's Holiday Scents part II

I got my Caldrea holiday sample kit today! (The one I mentioned in this post.
The envelope said "let the season begin", which kinda made me snark because, y'know, it's September. Thankfully we have Halloween as a buffer between us and the Christmas madness.



Inside were three little soap samples, whose names and descriptions sound amazing (if not a bit pretentious), and whose smell I'd love to report to you. Alas, I am allergic to everything today and cannot smell a thing without a fit of sneezing. Reviews of the scents soon to come, then!

So we have:

Seville Orange Amber
Italian Cypress Pear
and
Cognac Vanilla Limon

Now, Caldrea seems to target a fairly bourgeois, earth conscious but high income consumer. They also have some of the best scented products on the market, but I _still_ can't speak to their effectiveness because I haven't tried them. What a reporter I am, eh? Seriously though, it may seem like I have a lot of cleaning products in my home, but I still haven't tried Caldrea! *hangs head*

Ok, ok... so, my urge to have a bit of fun at the expense of the scent names aside, the orange/amber one sounds goooood: "succulent orange mixed with spicy notes of clove, cardamom, and vanilla". Yum.... well, they do seem to sell it as a candle and hand lotion too, so perhaps if I love it, I won't be limited to standing around waiting for my hands to get dirty. The pear has cypress and cedarwood in it, and the vanilla one contains butterscotch, cognac, and lime. I swear, these sounds more like perfumes than cleaning products.

I really need to get my sense of smell back here.

In other news, the toilet concoction failed to remove the stains from inside my toilet bowl, even when left to soak overnight. Stronger measures must be taken! I'll be back. (Did it work for anyone?) Maybe I'll try the pine essential oil over the lavender.

Method vs. Caldrea

I just got an email about the new Caldrea holiday scent "Italian Cypress Pear". I wonder how that compares to the Method spiced pear (which I am currently still using.) Hey, who knew by buying too many cleaning products I could do the whole "stopped clock right twice a day idea" but with Christmas items. Hey, they're in season again eventually ;)

I'm kind of annoyed though- I wanted to do an ingredients quality comparison between the Method all-purpose spray and the Caldrea, and Caldrea's site doesn't list ingredients. Method's claims that the ingredients on the all-purpose spray "include":

"corn and coconut derived surfactants
soda ash
potassium hydrate
biodegradable surfactant
fragrance oil blend
color
purified water"

When I get a bottle of the Caldrea I'll make note of the ingredients.

Am currently waiting on my replacement Kenmore allergen vacuum filter bags. While permanent filters are more eco-friendly, I do love my Kenmore Intelli-clean vacuum (Consumer Reports rated it above the Dysons in their vacuum roundup, and I haven't been disappointed.) People keep telling me if I want my hardwood floors to truly be clean I ought to vacuum them. I'm going to try that as soon as my bags are here (I was vacuuming the other day and then I heard a BAM. Suddenly my vacuum bag light, the "check engine" of the vacuum came on.)

Cleaning the ol' laptop

As I sit typing this I cannot help but be distracted by the smears all across my poor Macbook's screen. It's time the poor gal got a cleaning. So, how best to do it?

I solicited opinions on eco-friendly laptop cleaning from a natural living community *waves to members* and received the following tips:

1. Clean the screen with a damp microfiber cloth. (This is good advice, and it's worked well in the past.)

2. "For the keyboard, take a toothpick and wrap the cloth around it to get the sides of the keys. To get gunk out of the keyboard (crumbs and things), vacuum it." --sierra81 (who runs a green cleaning company)

3. Use iKlear. (Actually, I have a kit of theirs that I ought to break out and try.)

Apparently, their packaging states: "environmentally friendly, non-toxic, non-flammable, chemically and physically inert, and cannot be absorbed by skin." It's also ammonia and alcohol-free.
ladyceleste added:

"You need to turn it off and let the screen cool or you'll end up with streakyness."'

Oops. Well, therein lies my problem.

4. Of course, if you just want to clean off the keyboard without shutting down your machine (i.e. if shutting down your machine falls under "annoyance" for you as it does for me), there's a cute little donation-ware app for the Mac that temporarily disables your laptop while you clean.

5. Use a touch of diluted white vinegar (from multiple sources). I haven't confirmed this one through testing, but white vinegar is one of my buddies.

I'm sure it'll be a lot nicer to use my laptop in natural lighting after I give it a bath.

Toilet Stains

I am so sick of my toilets having rings inside of them (hard water type-stains, not for lack of cleaning.)

I think I'm going to try this recipe overnight tonight and see if it works. It promises no scrubbing is necessary, so that's tough to argue with considering I still don't feel overly great.

1 cup borax
+
1 cup white vinegar
+
10 drops pine or lavender essential oil
+
5 drops lemon or lime essential oil

(Combine first in a plastic bowl, then add to toilet and leave overnight.)

I tend to trust Aura Cacia for my essential oils, as I've been using them forever and they work well. Anyone have a different preferred brand? There's so much crap out there.

If anyone else decides to try this toilet soak, let me know if/how it works!

Bathroom scrubbies and laundry whites

There's a new-to-me product I really want to try: Bon Ami's 1886 Formula Cleaning Powder. I want to use it in my bathroom, on the tub and tiles and grout. As an avid bath-taker, my tub needs to be clean. I kind of admire the Japanese custom of rinsing and cleaning before climbing into the bath. I don't like the idea of sitting in dirty water, in other words. A product that's been around this long may just have something going for it. Anyone tried it?

Today was a day for doing a load of laundry whites. I wasn't feeling particularly well, and was looking for mindless chores to do instead of getting academic work done. Among the culprits was my husband's bathrobe, which looked pretty scary before I tossed it in.

I have a habit that I picked up from ... somewhere? of using borax in loads of white. I'll combine something like 1/4 cup of borax and white vinegar plus 10 drops of lemon essential oil with loads of whites, and it brightens them up nicely. I wish the lemon scent really stuck around, but citrus oils are great for brightening so it's worth keeping them in the mix.

Casabella Magnet Mop 2

Ok, I really really love my mop, so it's about time I gave it it's own shrine...er post. Every time I use it I think what a smart purchase it was. It's not like one of those products where each use merits reflection on whether it's really working well and whether you should continue using it. I've gone through so many mops that were just meh, it was high time for a shining star.

I got the magnet mop when I moved into a place with hardwood floors. It's essentially a wringable sponge with a microfiber top. It dry-mops nicely, trapping most of the stray carpet fluff and hair that accumulates on our floor (we have a natural wool area rug that sheds like crazy.) The thing works well with just water, though of late I have been using it with just Method's "Wood For Good" omop liquid (which works so much better with the Casabella than the actual omop.) How I feel about the W4G I'll leave for another time.
If you've tried the omop, it really handles the same "dry/just with Method liquid" mopping, but it doesn't "skip" as much on the floor.

However I choose to mop, the sponge head comes off and is easily tossed in my washing machine to clean it thoroughly (no more germ-infested mop head, yay!)

I did have to pay more for it than the last mop I got at Target, but considering how much I love the thing (and that I can get replacement heads when this one expires), it was worth it. I lugged Mr. Mop from halfway across Chicago on the El/Bus, and it earned its keep on the first use.

Oh Magnet Mop, I heart thee.

(Ed. note- though the picture is blue and yellow, my mop is red and silver.)

Burts Bees Citrus and Ginger Root Hand Soap

We've finally reached the end of the Method hand soap in our house (except for the recently reviewed Almond Flower.) This past weekend, therefore I was able to nab some of the Burts Bees hand soap that I've been wanting to try. I mean, it's been out for a while now. I was disappointed to sniff the Green Tea Lemongrass, as it ended up having a bit of a generic soapy-detergent aroma. I asked my scent-picky husband to try sniffing both that one and the Citrus and Ginger, and he picked the latter. I wasn't entirely surprised, as he has a slew of Orangey-Ginger products.

The Burts in our master bathroom soap dispenser now, and I really like sniffing my hands after using it. I have also noticed that it's the only hand soap we have in our house that doesn't dry out my hands. I don't rush to moisturize right after using it. Between the smell, and the the better skin reaction, I am happy.

Burts was really the first natural company I got into. Like most people, I was introduced to them when I tried their lip balm. Later on, I nabbed one of their head-to-toe starter kits for a ski trip. I have a great memory of using the lettuce complexion soap in the motel. I loved the way that bar smelled. A while back when I was about to buy the Burts Lavender toothpaste at my Whole Foods, one of the clerks commented that Burts was great, but their quality had gone downhill since Burt and his wife got a divorce and the wife took over the company. Honestly, I haven't noticed much of a difference. I'm glad they have hand soaps, and a new hand sanitizer out. (Of course, now that I'm not teaching, I'm not as paranoid. Well, except for when I ride public transit.)


p.s. if you support the idea of setting a standard for the use of "natural" on personal care products, sign their "bill" here. Their values, as summarized here, are laudable.

Household staples

As a bit of a detour, here are some great things you can do with items that may already be in your house. Not all are about cleaning your home, but they're about cleaning something!


Olive Oil
-Shine stainless steel
-Cleanse your skin- combine 50/50 with caster oil to use the "oil cleansing method". (Read more) (It's also great for removing eye makeup.)
-Prevent wax from sticking to a candle holder (rub a thin coat on your holder before lighting a candle.)
-Unstick a zipper
-Moisturize your cuticles
-Dust wooden furniture (apply to a microfiber cloth and rub gently.)
-Reduce door squeaking (apply a little to a cloth and wipe the top of the hinges so that oil runs down the sides.)


Baking soda
-Erase crayon, pencil, ink, and scuffs from painted surfaces (sprinkle a bit on a damp sponge, rub the stain, then rinse.)
-Unclog a drain (1/2-1 cup baking soda down the drain, then 1/2-1 cup white vinegar after it. Let sit for 5 minutes, covered if possible, and then follow with a gallon of boiling water.)
-Exfoliate skin and "wash" hair (try mixing with water beforehand for a kind-of-shampoo, follow with a rinse of appple cider vinegar. Otherwise known as the "no 'poo method." Google it, seriously.)
-Scrub pans
-Remove stains from enameled cast iron and "stainless" steel (For the cast iron, create a thick paste of baking soda and water, then scrub with a soft nylon brush. For stainless steel clean with a soft cloth and 4 tbsp of baking soda dissolved in 1 quart of water. Dry with clean cloth.)

White Vinegar
-Remove coffee and tea stains from cups (Soak for lengthy periods of time if the stain is bad, otherwise switch 2 tbsp vinegar in the cup and then wash as usual.)
-Clean your dishwasher (once/month run white vinegar through an empty dishwasher. You can do this less often if you're worried about the water waste, or you can think of it as a way to keep your dishwasher in good shape, which is eco-friendly.)
-Clean a teakettle or coffee maker (warning, tell your significant other or roommate first. My poor husband made himself tea while I was soaking the teakettle once. Mmmm vinegar green tea. Anyway, boil a mixture of water and vinegar in a teakettle, then wipe away any grime. Some folks advise you to then let the w.v. mixture sit overnight. To clean a coffeemaker, create a mixture of water and vinegar and run it through a brewing cycle. Follow with as many plain water cycles as you need to remove the vinegar taste. It only took one water cycle the last time I did this.)
-Remove price tags or stickers (let the sticker soak in the vinegar for at least 5 minutes.)
-Deodorize a garbage disposal (make vinegar ice cubes and feed them to your disposal. Run plain water down the drain after this. I also throw lemon and lime pieces down there whenever I can.)
-Replace Jet Dry in your dishwasher (*nod* to the reader who pointed this out.)
-Mix 50/50 with water and use to clean glass and mirrors
-Apply via spray bottle to bathroom faucets and scrub with a toothbrush (not your own or the brush of anyone you like.)


Hey, I baked amazing lemon-zest frosted coffee spice muffins last night. For the recipe (which is vegan if you use the proper margarine), check here (my personal blog.)

Autumn Potpourri

So I am making a homemade autumnal potpourri this weekend. Poor potpourri, it has such a bad reputation. All of those awful bags of prepackaged potpourri left out in grandma's house with their weird perfume that gets up your nose. I actually love the word potpourri. I like to sprinkle it about in conversation- i.e. "that was a strange potpourri of sounds." I also seem to recall from French class that it means "rotten pot."

Anyway, I am using a recipe from Naturally Clean Home again:

2 cups dried apple slices (I simply bought these)
1 cup bay leaves
1 cup sage
1/2 cup chopped (not peeled) gingerroot
1/2 cup whole cloves
8 1-inch cinnamon sticks

and am combining them in a glass jar. Basically, you shake the jar daily for about a month until it smells right to you, and then either display it nicely or simmer it in water. It also is lovely added to pillows or sachets.
I found an apple wood bowl on etsy to display it in. I'll have extra so I can think up other crazy things to do with it. I may work on a holiday mix to give to friends come this winter, but I suspect most of my friends and family aren't as scent-driven as I am.

(I don't have the glass jar yet. Sadly, I was just at Home Depot and Target today and I forgot.)

EFP's Natural Spa Dish Soap

Earth Friendly Products has a line of "Personal Care Products." These are deluxe essential-oil scented hand and dish soaps, hand lotion, and linen "water" (aka product you spray on fabrics before ironing them.) I recently scooped up the dish soap in "Black Currant". I've used a lot of scented dish soaps recently, but this is the one that smells the strongest and is the most pleasant. I haven't gotten to scrub any really tough items (no over-microwaved tamales this week), but I did notice that my hands were less dry after using this.

I kind of like their caddy, actually. You know how water collects around your soap dispensers by the sink and you get dirt under there and bottle-marks? Er... I use "you" generously here. I could perhaps be assuming too much. Ahem. Anyway, if I could take for granted that most hand and soap bottles would fit nicely next to each other in that thing, I'd get it. I kinda wonder if Earth Friendly Products' standard dish soap bottles will fit.

I like the essential oil descriptions featured on the left column of the site. I'm a big enough aromatherapy nerd that I knew all of these (heck, I have half of the EO bottles mentioned in my house), but it's fun to think about lemongrass dish soap helping to revive me on a daily basis.

(They sure need to redesign their website however. Were I in the design business any longer I'd offer. It doesn't do them justice.)

Anyone tried the hand lotion? I'm using Desert Essence's Spicy Orange hand lotion right now, but as it smells nothing like oranges (or spice, for that matter), it won't be a repeat buy. (On a total tangent, their pistachio foot cream is lovely, however.)

Caldrea Holiday Samples

Reader Twynk wrote in (I just had to say that. It makes me feel like I have more than two readers ;) ) to tell me that Caldrea has an offer right now whereby if you sign up for their holiday email list they'll send you three free scent-samples.

I love that eco-friendly products have been on top of the aromatherapeutic cleaning concept. I'm sure I've mentioned that before. I am definitely motivated by scent, so this is a good thing. If you walk down the isles of your drugstore or standard supermarket, most mainstream products are barely even there yet. Indeed, I'm sure my parents (for example) would find the idea of cleaning with something that smelled of pomegranate unnecessarily decadent. What's more, I'm sure they'd suspect it of being ineffective. The trininty in their house has always been "Soft Scrub-Comet-Windex", with every kitchen surface cleaned by sponge and water (my mind recoils at the germs... but I'm odd.)

The whole "holiday scent kit" is something I've covered before. Both Method and Mrs. Meyers have been on top of that. It looks like Caldrea has rolled up its sleeves and is getting in on the action (considering Mrs. Meyers gingerbread cleaning kits were sold out everywhere last winter, it's a safe experiment.)

Anyway, some of my favorite scent concoctions come from Caldrea (at least in name, I haven't tried many) so we'll see what they come up with.

Earth Friendly Products Wave Jet

Hello green cleaners! Every time I log in I see a notice asking me if I'd like to place targeted google ads in my blog. I have to admit, I'm curious (for my sake) what they'd turn up. So, if you are at some point subjected to ads upon visiting me, my curiosity got the better of me.

Onward, Earth Friendly Products makes a dishwasher product called Wave Jet that's essentially just like Jet Dry. The idea is to eliminate spots and residue and make your glasses sparkle (it goes with your sparkly TV commercial teeth. What, you don't have those? Me neither.) All dishwashers I've been blessed with since my second apartment (prior to 2002 I lived only in apartments with dishwashers that led me to hand wash my dishes) have had a reservoir for this product, labeled conveniently with the Jet Dry™ brand name. Are there no other rinse aid brands?

I used Jet Dry in one apartment where the water was particularly hard and liked the results. When I switched to natural cleaning products I was going to indifferently do without, when I spied this product. I've used it for a couple of years and it's always lived up to its claims. One thing I'm never quite sure about is when to stop pouring the Wave Jet into the reservoir (I go with- when it starts to overflow) and how to know when to refill it (I go with- when I remember.)

I've never had London-hard water, but I'd still advise those looking for sparklier dishes with little effort to give this a shot. Sometimes I toss some borax in with my dishwasher detergent (in one of the additional cups) for fun too. Yes, for fun. ;)

If you've tried this, I'd love to know how it's worked for you. I've used it in two dishwashers, in two states, but these things can be subjective.

Method hand soaps

Ok, I'm going to cover a bunch of Method hand soaps in one post because I've tried several on my own, and at friends' houses. I haven't tried the foaming hand washes at all, actually, but I've got the others covered.

My most recent Method hand soap purchase was the creamy hand wash in "almond flower". I've mentioned my scent junkie status before, so I'll just say that I was hoping this would be kind of a pale marzipan scent. Alas, it smells rather of dryer sheets and/or nondescript flowers. I have really dry skin, so much so that when I wash my hands I almost immediately have to run for the lotion. I was hoping something touted as creamy and moisturizing would end my unlucky streak. Alas, it seems even more drying on my skin than even the regular method hand soaps. I'm confused. I'm also annoyed that I didn't order the "olive leaf" version instead.

The texture of this soap is admittedly really nice. It's almost like a lotion. The little square bottle almost makes me forget my plans to get a soap dispenser for the guest bathroom (the plastic label cover comes off and is recyclable.)

The regular hand washes have been a staple in my home since I bought that holiday three-pack reviewed earlier. I've tried green tea, pink grapefruit, cucumber, and the holiday trilogy. They're just okay... essentially not much better in my experience from a more pleasantly scented SoftSoap (what my family used when I was growing up.) I am curious to try the "Sea Minerals" scent, as it's gotten many good reviews, but most of Method's scents are pale and overly synthetic to this nitpicky nose. "Green Tea" scented products never smell like green tea to me- and if they did most people would probably wrinkle their nose and complain that they'd accidentally bought a "lawn clippings" scented product. Sounds good to me. Anyway, it's nice when companies actually manage to work tea into their products for functional or scent reasons, but the method green tea is just synthetic, and a weird interpretation at that.

(I must try the Burts Bees "Green Tea and Lemongrass" hand soap to see how it compares. That actually contains green tea "oil".)

I might be persuaded to buy one of the foaming hand soaps, or even to give the olive leaf creamy one a try, but for the most part I'm pretty soured on method's hand soaps. Actually, I'm falling out of like with the company in general. I'm just not impressed with the formulas compared to other brands/my own homemade goods.

Heather's Concentrated Oxygen Bleach Cleanser

Before leaving our last apartment, I really wanted to try to tackle some of the stains we'd created that I hadn't been able to remove with my arsenal of products. Nothing took them out, and I didn't want to resort to buying Clorox or Soft Scrub. After buying and returning a couple of products, I saw a slim canister tucked among the offerings at my local Whole Foods. "Heather's Concentrated Oxygen Bleach Cleanser" it said on the label, and promised to be chlorine-free, natural (oh that vague term), and "safer around kids, pets, and the environment." I nabbed the can and rushed home to try it.

First was the kitchen counter- my husband's iron teapot had left stains on it that wouldn't budge. I dampened the spots and sprinkled the powder onto them ("Comet" style), and then ran upstairs to do the same for the bath tub stains (too many fancy bath bombs, not enough prompt cleaning.) By the time I came back down to the kitchen to wipe away the cleaner, it had worked! Goodbye stains! Perhaps I used a bit too much in both cases, but I didn't care. The bath tub was a little more difficult, but the stains at least faded.

In my new apartment I have used this stuff on the stall shower floor. I wait until post-shower so the floor is damp, and then go to town. I have noticed the floor is whiter after I apply this stuff, but I think nothing can help that shower floor (god I hate it. My bathrooms need to be pristine or I get severely grossed out.)

Um, my nuttiness aside, this is a great product. It doesn't remove everything, but it tackles plenty of stains that other eco-friendly products don't even make a dent in.
I want to try the Basin, Tub & Tile Cleaner, and they offer a "trial size" pack so you can sample their product offerings without a big commitment.