Some people have laundry liquids for whites and separate ones for colours, scented fabric conditioners, specialist silk and wool washes, even distilled lavender water to pour into deluxe steam irons. Not to forget fragrant polishes for wood, more for stainless steel and pretty microfibre cloths for glass.
These are my people. For I'm not remotely ashamed to admit that I love to clean. The hum of the washing machine and converting tangled dirtiness into soft stacks of neatly folded clothing is my kind of happy. I choose to view it as a form of meditation. In other words, cleaning is the act of tending myself through the medium of my possessions. It acknowledges the importance of my home as my sanctuary and is my pathway to a state of mindful contentment.
After all, as far as I'm concerned, one of the best ways to appreciate your home is to touch it. Because, through the gleam of shiny stainless steel and the sparkle of clear windows you can begin the all-important journey of emotionally engaging with your home. Putting my house in order feels like putting myself in order, it grants me solace.
Quite the conversion then to see me relinquish all my beloved fancy uguents for five fantastically mundane items in ugly packaging: liquid soap, washing soda, Citric acid, white vinegar and eco bleach (a plant-based oxidising whitener not to be confused with chlorine bleach). After all you have to use different products for different surfaces and fabric softener is a must, right?
Wrong. So very wrong, as I soon discovered.
Home as the fourth pillar of wellbeing
It all began a few years ago when I was writing Happy Inside: How to Harness the Power of Home for Health and Happiness, my guide to life based on my belief that your home is as fundamental to your wellbeing as good food, sleep and exercise. The fourth pillar for a balanced life. Albeit one often overlooked despite the following statistics: 1. We spend 90% of our time indoors; 2. the average home is more polluted inside, than a busy street corner outside due to the build-up of toxins therein.
Pollutants like the VOCs (volatile organic compounds) released by some household paints, MDF and new carpets (plus the adhesives used to fix them). Throw in domestic cleaning sprays, artificial air fresheners and perfume, the particles given off by paraffin-wax based candles and the nitrogen dioxide emitted by gas hobs and wood burners. Plus, pollen, mould, viruses, general dust, cigarette smoke or pet dander.
It's a situation that's exacerbated in the winter when the heating goes on and windows are rarely opened. In fact, according to the Royal College of Physicians in London, the passive inhalation of contaminated indoor air in Europe has been linked to 99,000 deaths a year.
Indoor air quality is everything
The quality of our indoor air is thus more important than ever, especially as society shifts towards increased working from home. Quite simply, you are what you breathe.
Let's start with bleach, cheap and sat on every supermarket shelf. I'd thought it was pretty anodyne suff. But inadvertently combine it with other cleaning products and the effect can be lethal. If you mix it with ammonia, as found in your wee, it can even make the highly toxic Chlorine gas (used as a weapon in World War 1)! Yet many happily tip it down the loo thinking they're being hygienic.
Nonetheless, it was only in 2002 that the United Nations introduced the "Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals" aka the shouty hazard graphics displayed on the back of such products. But do you look at them? Check the ingredients? Or heed the recommendations to ventilate and wear gloves or eye protection as is often suggested in small print beneath those shouty symbols?
Of course, you don't.
No-one does. Which is what the brands are banking on. Literally.
Their chemicals, your responsibility?
These safety claxons are nothing more than an industry liability waiver, like the horrific warning pictures on cigarette boxes. Buy at your own peril, they simper, we're being open about the dangers. Except, most people do not expect common household products to potentially increase their vulnerability to everything from headaches and allergies to chronic respiratory problems, diabetes and cancer.
Think I'm being unduly alarmist? In 2019 Breast Cancer UK submitted a paper to UK Parliament on the daily health risks posed by the hormone disrupting chemicals commonly found in our cleaners and other products. It subsequently published a list of chemicals to avoid on its website.
The thing is, we're busy and if there's a readymade, inexpensive solution to our limescale, and it comes in a handy squirty bottle, then we're sold. Add in a nice scent and we're hooked. Except, there are equally convenient alternatives (for example, plant-derived Citric acid) that do the job quicker, cheaper and contain absolutely nothing that requires PPE to use it. This was my revelation.
How dirty are you anyway?
In line with this, it behoves us to question our relationship with dirt? You don't need a sterile toilet bowl, just a clean one. Unless you're working on a building site, farm or underground, how dirty do your clothes really get? And why are so many of us convinced that 'clean' must mean exotic like ylang ylang or frangipani flowers?
Historically scent was used to mask odour, today it's added to play on our fear of odour. To me, 'clean' smells of nothing, like fresh air.
What's ironic is that most scented products and air fresheners are anything but the cleansing purifiers they profess to be. They’re synthetic by-products of the petroleum industry. Air fumigators would be a more accurate description.
For example, if you look up the data safety sheets for Zoflora, the concentrated disinfectant that claims to "eliminate foul odours with a freshening power that will last all day", every single one of its scents is qualified as "may produce an allergic reaction". The liquid and vapour itself is highly flammable, it's classified as a Class 2 skin and eye irritant and is deemed chronically toxic to aquatic life. And yet, thanks to so-called #cleanfluencers, it's become fashionable to pour this stuff neat down every sink possible in pursuit of unnaturally pristine and perfumed homes.
Bacteria isn’t all bad!
Not to forget that constantly bashing bacteria into submission with ever stronger agents claiming to kill 99.9% of all known germs, purportedly gives rise to antibiotic-resistant super bugs, something the World Health Organisation calls "a looming crisis in which common infections are becoming life-threatening."
Besides, washing with soap and warm water works just as well, with no known side effects to human nor fish. In fact, most bacteria are beneficial; our immune systems need a degree of dirt to make them strong. It's why playing outside and having pets is good for kids, versus antiseptic environments proven to make them more susceptible to allergies, eczema and asthma.
Nevertheless, we're bombarded with antibacterial sanitiser at every turn ignoring even the age-old advice to clean before you disinfect (disinfection may kill the germs, but it does not remove them), the latter only really being appropriate in a healthcare setting.
Don’t get me started on detergents…
It's a similar story if we look at mainstream laundry detergents: synthetic chemical cocktails containing artificial bleaching agents, enzymes, fragrance, dye and more, all designed to keep dirt suspended in water. In truth, your washing machine does most of the work. And all of this, plus the lint and microplastics shed from non-natural fibre clothing, flows into our sewers, ultimately contributing to the persistent bio-accumulative chemical waste destroying our aquatic ecosystem.
In 2009 even DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) commissioned a report into reducing the environmental impact of clothes washing citing "eutrophication and other toxity impacts due to washing detergents" as "significant". Eutrophication being the name for the murky waters and excess algae that prevents the light penetration and oxygen absorption required for underwater life.
Or Fairy Liquid…
Add in the 150 million bottles of Procter & Gamble's Fairy Liquid used and flushed each year in the UK, and the problem becomes clear. It may be good for dishes but it's poisonous to fishes — it says so on the back of the label: “harmful to aquatic life with long-lasting effects”! (See my #dirtylaundry Highlight on Instagram for more on this).
Although Fairy claims to be biodegradable, and complies with EU guidelines in this respect, those guidelines request only that a product degrade by 60 per cent in 28 days. That seems like an awful lot of time to do some damage to me. But we don't know exactly what's in it, because P&G are not legally obliged to tell us.
And if you think the water treatment plants sort it all out, think again. Overwhelmed and ill-equipped to deal with growing populations as well as the rising chemical toxicity of our waste, not only can few facilities cope but they're legally allowed to discharge raw sewage into the sea after heavy rainfall to avoid the system backing up.
It's a loophole that's been routinely, and blatantly, exploited. According to the Environment Agency, untreated effluent, including poo, condoms and wet wipes, was released into our waterways more than 400,000 times (or more than three million hours) in 2020 alone.
But here's some good news…
If you use good old-fashioned liquid soap and washing soda (sodium carbonate), the run-off is entirely pollutant free. The soda naturally softens the water which helps the soap to clean. Your machine does the rest. And if you've softened your water with soda, commercial softener is entirely unnecessary; tried, tested and personally vouched for. (see my #cleanlaundry Highlight on Instagram for more!)
I've been cheerfully laundering everything this way since my enlightenment! And my clothes — colours, whites, wool, delicates — have never been cleaner, or softer.
In the end I concluded that brands make these synthetic and chemically laden products because they can churn them out for pence and sell them to us for pounds. And we buy into it seduced by rabid marketing. The shareholder bottom line is their main motivator, and the claim of proprietary information allows the concentration of allergens or composition of fragrances, to be considered trade secrets, which does little to foster transparency.
To mitigate this there's been a lot of trendy eco speak from many a brand. However, it mostly concerns the improved recyclability of packaging, or how concentrated laundry pods reduce emissions due to more efficient transportation. There's been little heard about really green alternatives to lower water pollution ie changes to what’s inside these products.
Change must come
A recent US class action lawsuit against SC Johnson, owner of Method, touted as "future-friendly products designed to smell like sunshine and work like magic", forced it to remove its claims to be non-toxic, and settle damages to consumers to the tune of $2.25m accordingly. Small change to them, but a mainstream greenwashing point was made.
Make no mistake, we are all products of our environment, so anything we use to clean ourselves or our homes ultimately ends up in our water, inadvertently ingested or inhaled. So, while we wait for the pharmaceutical behemoths to develop a conscience, or our governments to tighten lax legislation (don't hold your breath, pun intended), I figured I'd clean up my own act first and revert to ingredients that have been safely used for centuries.
But perhaps, most importantly, my pleasure in keeping my home clean has been heightened considerably by knowing that nothing I use knowingly contributes to pollution, inside or out.
A version of this piece was originally published in the Financial Times How To Spend It magazine.
Links to my recommended cleaning products can be found at the end of the previous post: Good Health Starts at Home.
I can’t find the previous post for the recommended list of products. Would anyone be able to share the list please?
I can’t find the Good Health Starts at home post either. Anyone found the link? Thanks.