I have a confession to make: I am not the best housekeeper. I don’t really enjoy cleaning, although I do enjoy a clean house. There is one area of my house I insist is clean: the toilet! Usually, I just pour in a little vinegar and sprinkle a little powdered laundry soap into the bowl and scrub away, but recently I discovered Seventh Generation’s Emerald Cypress & Fir Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner. There’s nothing like a new natural cleaning product to motivate me to clean.
Most toilet bowl cleaners are made with caustic acids that can burn your skin, and I certainly don’t want my little one’s bums to experience that! Seventh Generation’s Emerald Cypress & Fir Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner is biodegradable, safe for septic systems, chlorine-free, phosphate-free, dye-free, etc. It comes in a cool shaped bottle allowing you to squirt under the toilet bowl rim. Unlike many other natural cleaners who guard their ingredients in a shroud of secrecy, Seventh Generation fully discloses its ingredients. This toilet bowl cleaner is made from:
Aqua (water), lactic acid (plant-derived demineralizer), polyglucose, coceth-7, coceth-4 and deceth-5 (plant-derived cleaning agents), xanthan gum (natural thickener), essential oils and botanical extracts* (citrus aurantifolia (lime), abies balsamea (balsam fir), calilistris columellaris (emerald cypress). *d-limonene is a naturally occurring component of these ingredients.
My son has finally started using the toilet. At first, he insisted on going outside, which was fine since we live in the middle of nowhere. When the forest fires hit, the thick smoke forced nature boy to try the inside toilet for his elimination needs. He won’t use the little potty, so the big potty it is. He leans all over it, holds on to the seat with his hands, peers over to look to see if anything is happening causing his head to sometimes touch the toilet, etc. The need for a clean toilet has greatly increased with his toilet learning!
Since I’m talking about toilets, I thought I would share a story about my daughter. I have had the same toilet brush for 18 years. We recently finished a new bathroom in our addition, and I thought I would celebrate by buying a new toilet brush for our new toilet. As I was perusing the toilet brushes at the store, when my daughter said to me, “Mom, you really shouldn’t buy a new toilet brush. You don’t really need it. There is nothing wrong with your old one.” Needless to say, my eco-shopping conscious daughter stopped my toilet brush buying fantasy in its tracks. I’m still using that old brush, just with my new Seventh Generation’s Emerald Cypress & Fir Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner.
Seventh Generation takes its name from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy, “In our deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” I trust this company and have been using their products since I left my parent’s home. Seventh Generation products work, and I feel good about supporting a company that takes corporate responsibility seriously.
I have tried the Seventh Generation Toilet cleaner and found it not as great as the other products. It didn’t clean any better than just using the brush but it does smell great. I’m back to vinegar and baking soda.
The bathroom is the place where the greatest amount of bacteria lurk, whether or not your toilet is located in the bathroom itself or elsewhere. The bathroom often looks the tackiest, what with soap and toothpaste smears everywhere, grey soap scum on the taps and rings around the bath. And it can be all too easy to succumb to the temptation to bring in the heavy cavalry in the form of hospital-grade disinfectants and powerful degreasing agents that promise to cut through all your bathroom gunk in a manner of seconds as well as killing every single germ in sight.