Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day

Time to get cleaning.

I'm reviewing the products above today, just in time for spring cleaning. From left to right, there is the lemon verbena hand soap, lavender dish soap and geranium countertop spray. All are touted as being environmentally friendly and safer for you, along with being made with essential oils and free of chlorine, fake colors, parabens, phthalates, glycol solvents, animal-derived ingredients and formaldehyde. Because it is biodegradable, these would be great for those readers with septic systems.

The Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day website gives you more information about each product, what's available, and, best of all, breaks down all the ingredients to tell you what they are and what they do. That's a wonderful feature many companies don't do. The site itself is easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye.

The line comes in many different scents and offers other products. You can find them on Amazon and in some stores. I love how the packaging has a 50s-housewife-feel, while being modern. It's very fun and upbeat and the colors are perfect.

Hand Soap

Ratings (out of 10)

Overall: 7

Scent: 7

Gentle on Hands: 6

Cleaning Power: 7

Cost: 4

In our house, we usually keep regular dish soap in a dispenser at the kitchen sink as a multi-purpose soap. The Mrs. Meyer's hand soap is much easier on my hands for sure. It's taken up residence next to the dish soap. A little bit goes a long way, there's no need to use a giant squirt unless your hands are really, really dirty. However, it is nice. The lemon verbena scent is nice and leaves your hands smelling pretty for awhile. I'm usually not a fan of lemony scents, so that's saying something! Even A has been using this instead of the dish soap. I don't think it's a ton better than other hand soaps, maybe a touch.

What sets this soap apart is the cruelty-free and biodegradable qualities. The soap is clear because it's free of all those fake dyes. In fact, all the products I tested are. I really liked that about them.

This bottle made from 25 percent post-consumer plastic. All the ingredients I can't even pronounce listed on the bottle do worry me, but the Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day website does the breakdown of each ingredient and what it does on the website to give you peace of mind. One bottle is much more expensive than Softsoap or the store brand equivalent. You can also get some fancy soaps for around this price.

Final review: It's a solid product. If you really like it and have the extra money to spend, I'd say go for it. We don't, so I'll be sticking to cheaper brands.

Countertop Spray

Ratings (out of 10)

Overall: 8

Scent: 9

Gentle on Hands: 8

Cleaning Power: 8

Cost: 5

The counter top spray one was my favorite of the three. I tried the geranium scent and it smells so good for hours after use. It definitely freshens the air as it claims. My countertops are left sparkling clean and any gunk was easy to get off. It is not a disinfecting spray, by the way. Like the hand soap, 25 percent of the container is post-consumer plastic. I haven't tried this in the bathroom but imagine it'd work well on counters there, too.

The bottle says the product is 98 percent plant derived, which is a big environmental plus. Again, the list of ingredients make me a bit leery, but there is a breakdown on the Mrs. Meyer's website for this one as well. The bottle is running out rather quickly, but I also tend to spray a lot to be sure I'm getting everything clean. You could probably use less and be fine.

Final review: This is a great product! While I really like it and it works great, I don't think I'll be a regular customer since my usual vinegar wash works almost as well, disinfects and is cheaper--mainly, because it's cheaper. Though, the vinegar doesn't smell nearly as good! The best part of the cleaner is really having the geranium scent for hours so your house smells like fresh flowers. If we had the extra cash, this would go on my shopping list. I was going to give this one a 9 (it's hard to get a 10 from me!) what brought it down was the price. If you have the money to splurge or hate vinegar, I'd say go for it.


Dish Soap

Ratings (out of 10)

Overall: 4

Scent: 3

Cleaning Power: 3

Gentle on Hands: 6

Cost: 3

The dish soap was my least favorite, by far. The first thing I noticed was that while the soap does have those essential oils, it still has sodium laureth sulfate--basically an inexpensive cleaning agent added to many soaps, shampoos, etc. It's also an ingredient I expect "healthier" brands to not have. A bit of disappointment from the start. This bottle is also only 25 percent post-consumer plastic, though that's still much more than many companies can say.

The soap cuts grease well but I found I had to use more soap than I'd expected for a more upscale product. The bubbles just weren't as plentiful as I'd like, especially for the price.

I'm a big fan of lavender, it's one of my favorite scents, but this soap is STRONG. After using it for a bit it started making me sick to my stomach and I had to switch to another. That may not bother someone else, but it bugged me. The upside of the strong smell is that all those plastic sippy cups, bibs, etc., that smell manky over time lost the mank once I soaked them with water and this soap in the sink for awhile. Not even baking soda got it all.

The biggest drawback and what cinched this as a "will not buy" for me was that it leaves a scent on all the dishes. Yes, it gets rid of the manky smell, but they're going to smell like lavender for sure. It does seem to fade eventually. That still doesn't sit well with me though, especially when using this on baby items.

Final review: An ok product. There are worse products, but there are also much better. I'll be using up the bottle and that's it. This one is not going to find its way onto my shopping list, even when we do win the lottery. I'm hoping they reformulate and improve this soap because it just isn't in line with the other products which tested much more solidly. This one's really the black sheep. For now, a skip it for sure.

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Healthy, Quick, Money-Saving Snacks

If you're like me, when you want a snack you want it quick. You don't want to have to put something together, especially when the baby/toddler/kid is liable to get into SOMETHING while you do it. Whatever you see first is liable to be what you grab. If you go the pre-made snack route, many of the ones you can buy are expensive and not even that healthy.

Veggies and fruit
We keep containers of carrot sticks, fruit and/or other veggies in the fridge. I change it up depending on what we have at the time. Right now, we have the carrots and grapes. Last week, we had strawberries instead. You can also do orange slices, mandarin oranges, apple slices (dipped in lemon juice to keep them fresh for a few days), cucumber, snap peas--whatever you like. This helps to sneak in extra servings of fruits and veggies as well.

Carrot sticks are really cheap when you avoid the trap of baby carrot bags. At Walmart, I can get two pounds of carrots for $1.52 vs $1 for 12 oz. of the baby carrots. I simply peel and slice them, then stick them in a container full of water in the fridge. It takes 15 minutes, tops, to fit a large bucket. They're the first thing we see when opening the fridge. Tasty, healthy and easily accessible. I reuse large yogurt and butter containers for further savings. The carrot scraps can be put into a compost pile.

For fruit, I find something that's on sale, wash and/or cut it up and put it in a reused container in the fridge. That's all there is too it! Be sure to keep the containers up front in the fridge so they don't get lost and forgotten about.

A loves carrots, so a large butter tub of them lasts about a week. I refresh the containers (including hand washing them) when they get empty.

Another plus? This technique is very helpful for weight loss as well. Instead of being tempted by the granola bars, bread or other easy-grab items, I can nab a handful of these babies. Mmm.


Popcorn
Another quick snack, albeit it does take a few minutes to put together,  is air-popped popcorn. I've read so many studies that say the microwave bags are just plain bad for you, plus they're pricey and you can't control the butter and salt content. Instead, we keep a popper (it was $20 tops at Walmart, cheaper around Black Friday) and a bag of kernels on hand. It's easy to dump in the kernels after the popper has heated up for a moment, stick a bowl under the popper to collect it, melt a bit of butter and then drizzle it on top. If you want, you can add salt or cinnamon and sugar. Be careful, the more butter and toppings you add the less healthy this one gets. This is great for afternoons, rainy days, during movies--whenever! We even have a popcorn bowl for big batches. M2 is a big fan.