Conscious Living: Bring Joy to Your Natural Cleaning with Spruce.

this post contains affiliate links - rest assured I will never feature anything I’m not fully supportive of

Happy Sunday! A bonus post today because I really wanted to get this post out in a hope to spread a more conscious message around this weekend of pushy sales and pressure to buy things we don’t need and instead place some spending with companies doing good. .

My sister and I were diagnosed with asthma in our teenage years, thought to have been bought on by our Dad’s chain smoking. I had periods through my life where my asthma was scarily bad and had never really linked it to anything. It was only when I was studying nutrition about a decade ago that I make the correlation of my environment and diet to the scale of my asthma. My lecturer had lots of stories of toxicity in her clients from cleaning products and it was around this time that I’d made the leap to cruelty free skincare. It hadn’t occurred to me that my cleaning routine might be contributing to animal testing and my own health too.

Once I’d switched over to eco brands I noticed a massive difference to my chest and it turned out this is a thing - every day cleaners contains chemicals such as ammonia, triclosan, formaldehyde and chlorine - all linked to respiratory issues. As I learned more I got very worried about the affects of the cleaning products I was using and I replaced them all with a well known eco cleaning brand which was about the only option back in the 10’s, the products weren't particularly nice to use, they were just functional. And while there were a few shops you could refill them it became time consuming and expensive. This well known cleaning brand was bought out by a large company with questionable ethics so I looked for a new solution and this is about the time zero waste shops started popping up. I started using Bio D and Ecoleaf (two great brands) but again, they were functional and didn't exactly encourage me to clean. I had a refill system down - a large straw bag sat by my door and when I would go to the refill shop I would fill up the bottles of sanitiser/kitchen spray/bathroom spray and multisurface. But despite my Virgo rising organisation it was still a bit of a faff. The bottles got covered in stickers from the Tare machine and cleaning product residue would build up around the bottle until the lid/pump broke and it would be time to buy a new one.

Enter Spruce - epic refillable cleaning products. Founded by Mahira Kalim who is on a mission to raise awareness about the toxicity of cleaning products because of her own infertility story, Mahira wanted to bring something to the market that looked nice, was pleasant to use but also was free from toxins and plastics. Spruce got in touch - they offered to send me a set of their cleaning sprays to try and I said I’d give them a go. I was sceptical because I’ve often found natural cleaning products to be underwhelming but having never found a good solution I was keen to try. I was really interested in the less waste aspect of the products and love that you can refill by ordering little dry sachets that you can subscribe too taking the effort out, perfect for busy people who struggle to get to refills shops.

There are two sprays: a multi purpose and a bathroom. You initially buy a starter kit: the eternity bottles with a refill each. When the bottles arrived I poured the little sachets into the bottles and was delighted by the scent of both refills - geranium for the multipurpose and eucalyptus for the bathroom. The multipurpose spray is for most sealed surfaces such as wood, stone and tiles and is perfect for every day kitchen use.

I’ve always liked a styled house but wouldn't have considered myself an overly clean person until Spruce came into my life, they smell delightful and I really love using them and at a tenner for 4 refills they are affordable for those of us on an average budget. The refills come in a paper envelope and the wrappers are compostable. Whats best is they really work - as I do AirBNB it’s important for me to keep the bathroom clean so use Spruce every morning to shine up the sink and bath/shower. My hands don’t get dry from using them and I genuinely enjoy using them, they have the bonus of just looking really nice around the home too. Am I going to lie to you and tell you this is all I use now? No. I use a homemade spray of baking soda and water to deep clean round the taps and basins once a week as I have done with other cleaners for years but otherwise Spruce works a treat!

I am so here for everything Spruce is doing. I think they’re onto a winner and I am a convert. Bring some joy to your cleaning and Spruce up your life.

Get your refillable cleaning products here.