Ocean Friendly Cleaning Tips and Our Staff's Favourite Products

Ocean Friendly Cleaning Tips and Our Staff's Favourite Products

Ocean Friendly Cleaning Tips and Our Staff's Favourite Products

All the products we carrying in our refillery are all natural, biodegradable and of course ocean-friendly! We all spend a lot of time testing and using our cleaning products and thought it was time to share some of our staff's favourites as well as some handy tips and tricks to use while your cleaning using your zero waste products:

Rylie   

find Rylie working in our store on the weekends refilling for our walk-in customers and also assisting in our warehouse refilling for all our hotel and vacation rental clients. 

"Since I have started working at the Den I have been super excited about all of the new natural products that I have been able to test out. One of my staples has been the Mint 3-in-1 cleaning scrub. I love this product because it gets every room in my house clean and I love that I can mix it with some water to turn it into a liquid all-purpose cleaner. It makes me feel a lot better using a product that is free from harsh chemicals and that can be refilled again and again". 

Lizz

a familiar face for our local customers, Lizz has been employeed with us since July 2020. She has become a true expert with all things refill and sustainability!

"The stain remover stick is probably one of my favourite products in the whole shop! I'm quite clumsy and am always spilling my coffee or draping my sleeve in something. The stain stick is my friend! There's different ways to use it but I just wet the stain stick and rub it straight onto the mark I want to remove and then rub the material on its self before rinsing it, I can usually get away with doing this while I'm at work or out at a restaurant if it doesn't require too much water. If it's a more stubborn stain I'll do the same thing but leave it a bit to soak before rinsing it or throwing it in the washing machine, it works like a charm!"
I'm also a big fan of Swedish dishcloths, they come in so many cute patterns and colours. I find them really useful as a replacement for regular dishcloths and paper towel. I usually have a couple in the kitchen for wiping down the surfaces, soaking up bigger spills and then I have a couple in the bottom of my fridge as they're super absorbent, and recently I've been placing them under my little seedlings on my windowsill, they can hold a lot of water meaning the soil stays damp without letting water drip everywhere. They're easy to wash, just stick them in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes or put them in the washing machine." 
"My favourite dish soap is the Live For Tomorrow - Grapefruit. I've tried a lot of different biodegradable dish soaps and have liked nearly all of them... it's just dishes after all. What I like about Live For Tomorrow's grapefruit soap is how bubbly it is; a tiny little bit goes a long way. As I prefer to fill the bowl to do dishes instead of running the tap, I want to see those bubbles!"

 

Diane

Co-owner, store manager and buyer.

I love things that can be multi use, so one of my absolute favourites is the Dr. Bronner's line. I mostly use it for laundry soap and body wash but it can also be used as dish soap, all purpose cleaner, hand soap, anything you want really! It's really concentrated so in the laundry you only need about 2 tablespoons for a full load. My trick is to fill an old 1 gallon laundry soap container and then fill about 1/3 of it with Dr. Bronner's and top it up with water. This way no matter who is doing the laundry I know the product isn't being waste or over poured! My favourite scent for laundry is eucalyptus!

Another favourite in our household are the package free dishwashing cubes. They last forever (about 3 months for us) and they sud great and are tough on grease! There is some debate about all natural dish soaps and suds, but I can promise suds or no suds natural dish soaps do a great job. They key to good suds however, is to use hot water. I like to fill my sink, and with the water running and a dish brush in hand I hold the dish block under the water and use the dish brush to lather and create bubbles! (filling your sink with water vs letting the water run while doing dishes is also more water conscious and sustainable!)

Kristen

Co-owner and resort and vacation rental manager.

"I have been experimenting more these days with our range of natural ingredients i.e. Baking Soda, Vinegar, Peroxide Powder, Borax and Washing Soda. Washing Soda has quickly become my favourite & a staple in our household. This highly alkaline white powder has a ph of 11, which makes it effective for various stains and very useful with 'hard water,' which we have in our town. We use it in a multitude of ways, but here are some of my favourite ways I love to use Washing Soda."

 

To unclog drains:  pour 1 cup of washing soda into the clogged drain followed by 2 or 3 cups of boiling water. (Goodbye Drain-o!)
To keep your whites white : Keep sheets white with adding ½ cup of washing soda to a load of extra dirty laundry. Washing soda also helps to counter the effects of hard water in your washing machine. (Goodbye Bleach!)
To remove grease build up from pots and pans, oven racks, and drip pans. (Goodbye Easy-off!)
In the garden, washing soda works well to clean outdoor furniture and decks. (Goodbye random outdoor furniture cleaner!) 
It feels amazing to find a product that is affordable and safe to use around the house and say goodbye to products that can cause you and your family harm. 

I also love our hand soaps from Carina Organics & Mint Cleaning! My hands do a happy dance as they do not get dry, smell amazing and know they are being lathered with healthy product."