Our Favorites of 2007

This week in the spirit of the hurried holidays, the reviewers of Props and Pans will be posting our favorite reviews of 2007. We’ll be back in 2008 with lots of opinions.

I was recently offered an opportunity to sample some environmentally friendly cleaners and being the closet greenie that I am, I was more than happy to try them out.

I was sent Earth Choice Glass Control surface cleaner and Earth Choice Allergan Control for carpet and upholstery.

The first thing I noticed about the Glass Control was that it worked as well as Windex or any of the other glass cleaners you can buy in your grocery store.

My sliding glass doors are often really dirty because I have a toddler and a six year. Enough said, right? So using the Glass Control, I tried to get those doors clean of the sticky, greasy, spitty hand and mouth prints that decorated them like I would with any other cleaner. And? It worked perfectly.

This past week, I’ve continued to use the Glass Control around the kitchen, on the stove top and anywhere else that needed de-gunking or de-grossifying and the results were very positive.

Because we don’t have any serious allergies (other than a food allergy), I wasn’t sure how the Allergen Control worked on allergens but as a carpet cleaner, it did help get a few spots of unknown origin out of my carpet.

According to the literature, these are the Allergen Control product benefits:

* Reduces pet dander, dust & pollen
* Fragrance-free
* No soapy residue
* Woolsafe approved
* No harmful chemicals

The best things, however, about Glass Control and Allergen Control, are the things most of us never think about…

Glass Control is what’s known as a low VOC product. VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compound. You WANT your cleaners (and interior house paints) to be low VOC.

It also biodegrades into non-polluting substances, which helps relieve stress on the environment, especially threats to aquatic life.

In fact, all Earth Choice products biodegrade into non-polluting substances as well as being alkylphenol-free and phthalate-free. This is very important because pthalates and alkylphenols are considered endocrine disruptors that can produce hormone-modulating effects in human and wildlife populations. In two words…they’re very bad. You can read more about them here.

I don’t know what the single bottle pricing is on these cleaners but if they are reasonably priced, I would definitely buy them because I try to keep your average (environmentally-unfriendly) cleaning chemicals out of my home, as much as I can.

Written by Izzy, who is a work-at-home mom of two young children. She can usually be found writing at her personal blog, IzzyMom, venting at Moms Speak Up, or designing something.