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2009-11-21

2009-11-18

2009-11-05

Agriculture

Lifestyles

Friday, October 23, 2009 12:00 PM

ASK A PROFESSIONAL: Go green at home

By LINDA BROWN, Ask a Professional

If going green appeals to you, but seems like an awfully lot of change in your personal habits, there is a simple way to ease into a more environmentally friendly life style.

Start with the products you use to clean your home.

Instead of those harsh chemicals used to create traditional surface cleaners and scrubs consider switching to natural cleaning products that are phthalate-free.

Such products do exist and can be found locally at Windsor Cottage Antiques, 502 N. Main St. in Ottawa.

Heather Windsor Jordan opened Windsor Cottage nearly a year ago and has added a Caldrea line to her inventory because she has used the home cleaning products for years.

“I’m environmentally conscious, as well as health conscious,” Jordan said. “My daughter has asthma and uses the Basil Blue Sage scent cleaners without them bothering her.”

Caldrea products do not contain ammonia, chlorine, phosphates or petroleum distillates. Their formulas combine long-trusted essential oils with leading-edge cleaning know-how to provide a pleasurable, safer housekeeping experience for product users.

Not only do the products work well they also smell good. Windsor Cottage carries two fragrances, Basil Blue Sage (made with the essential oils of basil, blue sage and rosemary) and Sea Salt Neroli (made with essential oils neroli, lemon and Sea Salt fragrance).

Basil Blue Sage is a clarifying scent, while Sea Salt Neroli is an uplifting scent. Both provide aroma-therapeutic home keeping.

By having all your household cleaning products share one common underlying scent you eliminate the war-of-scents that so often develops when you use a lemon scented floor cleaner, pine scented surface scrub and orange scented furniture cleaner.

Caldrea offers dishwashing liquid, hand soap, all purpose cleaner, window spray, wood furniture cream, linen spray, a powdered scrub and body lotion.

All liquid products are biodegradable and packaging is recyclable.

Also available at Windsor Cottage are personal care products from Pre de Provence, a luxurious collection of exquisitely fragranced soaps, bath and body products from France that restore the body and soothe the spirit.

Embracing the concepts of aromatherapy and aromachology, these products are made from the purest vegetable and essential oils, rich shea butter and other premium botanicals.

The soaps are triple-milled; the fragrances are hand-blended.

There is no synthetic coloring, no mineral oils, no animal by products, no ethyl alcohol added and no petroleum.

Pre de Provence products do more than cleanse and care for the body. They actually make your world a more fragrant, soothing and pampered place.

And, speaking of being pampered, what if you never had to lift another heavy container of laundry liquid or powder again?

What if you could drop four or five little nuts in a drawstring bag and toss in with your load of laundry?

And, what if you could reuse those same four or five nuts 12 to 15 times before replacing them?

Oh, wait, there’s more. What if those same little nuts also eliminated the need for a separate fabric softener product for each wash load?

No, I’m not making up my Christmas wish list, I’m describing a 1,000-year-old product that just might be a modern laundry-day miracle.

They’re called Soap Nuts, and are 100 percent natural, chemical-free, fragrance-free, biodegradable and hypoallergenic alternative to laundry detergent.

For less than $5 you can get enough Soap Nuts to wash up to 70 loads of laundry.

And finally, a natural cleaning product for your finest antiques packaged under the name Kramer’s Best Antique Improver.

It cleans, restores, preserves and protects without the petrochemicals that, over time, do more harm than good.

Kramer’s uses only the finest, natural and compatible ingredients used by hundreds of years by our ancestors.

Going green, living chemical-free, getting back to nature; it all begins with a stop at Windsor Cottage.

Linda Brown is marketing director for The Ottawa Herald. E-mail her at lbrown@ottawaherald.com

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ASK A PROFESSIONAL: Go green at home

By LINDA BROWN, Ask a Professional

E-mail this story to a friend | Print this article | Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Ottawa Herald.

E-mail this story to a friend | Print this article |
Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Ottawa Herald.