Green Choice: The Soap Dispensary

Mount Pleasant has a new cleaning store!  As you all know I love cleaning so I was very excited to be strolling up Main Street and see that The Soap Dispensary was open for business.  The store has a simple yet unique concept that promises to cut down on the plastic bottles circulating in the world - always a good thing! 

Linh, the owner, stocks a variety of green cleaning products in bulk sizes.  You bring in your empty bottle, she fills it up and you are out the door!  The selection is great and a lot of the products are unscented so you can add essential oils to personalize the scent for your home.  If you don't have bottles to reuse initially, she carries plastic bottles that you pay a small deposit for and then you can bring them back in the future.  

Anyone who appreciates green cleaning products with little to no packaging needs to check out The Soap Dispensary.

Stay clean and green!
Shonagh

Declutter: Creative wrapping solutions

Gift wrap - what an environmentally unfriendly material!  Wrapping paper can't be recycled because of the coating they use on the paper.  I know it is so pretty.  I happen to love wrapping gifts, probably more than buying them or having them opened.  I just think they look so nice clustered together, like little bundles of loves.  BUT, I am sure that there are ways to create beautiful gifts without using gift wrap. 

DIY: Holiday Aromatherapy Blends

When I was 21-years-old I got a certificate in aromatherapy from Langara.  It was one more step on my scented journey in life.  I have loved scent for as long as I can remember - one vivid memory: Being five-years-old trying to capture the scent of rose petals in water and being mystified that it didn't work.  Indeed aromatherapy still captures my imagination and fascination.  It is in this spirit that I thought:  Let's share some of my favorite holiday aromatherapy recipes!

Healthy for the Holidays!

Who loves the holidays?  I know I do.  Besides Halloween, Christmas is my most favorite time of year!  This is probably because it gives me an excuse to bake to my hearts content.  During Christmas there is no excuse needed for showing up with a tin of cookies or a pot of homemade dulce de leche (it's my current obsession).  The foodie in me delights.  The cleaning lady in me cringes slightly as all of those hugs and handshakes means germs are flying around like no ones business.  To help you get through your holiday season (whenever that might be) health intact, here are a few green and clean suggestions:

Deep Clean: Ovens

Oh goodness, who enjoys cleaning out the oven?  All that stuck on gunk that has been baked over and over and over again.  Let's be honest, how often do you clean out your over?  If you are the average person then probably not very often.  Well it's time for penance and that penance is called elbow grease.  Oh yes, you heard me, because with my deep oven cleaning there are no toxic oven sprays allowed.  This is the green and clean method.

Shall we begin?

Deep Clean: Oven Stove Top

Dinner is finished.  You grab your damp rag and give the stovetop a haphazard wipedown.  Looks pretty clean and it is time for dessert!  Most of the time I think that is a perfectly fine after-dinner routine.  Every once in a while (maybe once a week?) though your stove top really needs a good solid clean.  Here is how to do it.

The Dirty: Black Mold

The unwanted intruder, creeping in behind your walls until one day - the tell-tale sign - a mass of tiny black dots.  Ugh!  Black mold.  It definitely looks gross but even grosser is what it does to the health of people who live with it.