Caldrea Daily Shower Cleanser

Huh, I am looking on Caldrea's website right now, and I don't see any shower sprays listed. Perhaps they have been discontinued! That's a shame, the one I tried worked quite well. I nabbed the "Basil Blue Sage" scent from drugstore.com, and it did cut down on the amount of shower cleaning I had to do while using it. My major qualm about it was that the package was too small and we went through it super fast. I am already done the bottle and I feel like we just got started! I felt guilty trying to cover my full shower each time I used it. Considering the price, I'd have preferred the bottle last longer.

Caldrea is Mrs. Meyer's more upscale brand, and they tend to have pretty good, largely essential-oil based scents. I've never been disappointed by anything of theirs I've tried (but that's admittedly limited to hand soap and shower sprays.)

Hey, maybe they're re-doing the package and it'll be back! In the meantime, drugstore.com has the Citrus Mint scent left.

I want to try Caldrea's dishwashing powder (I love powders), hand balm, and laundry detergent. I'm also wondering if their linen spray would be nice before clothes go in the dryer (or to freshen up bed sheets mid-week.)


p.s. Now that I am between store-bought products, I am using a homemade daily shower spray: 50/50 mixture of white vinegar, water, and maybe 6 drops each of tea tree and lemon essential oils. I haven't been using it long enough to gauge its success yet.

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.)

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.