Your kitchen sink
Kitchen sinks are dirtier than most bathrooms. There are typically more than 500,000 bacteria per square inch in the drain alone. Plus your sponge, basin and faucet handles are crawling with bacteria as well.

And if that doesn’t gross you out, how about this?

“Most people don’t realize that in our studies of homes we find the greatest number of fecal bacteria actually in your kitchen sink, and the least number in your bathroom,” says Gerba. There are actually 200 times more fecal bacteria on a the average person’s cutting board than on a toilet seat, he notes.

So, I don’t think I really need to go into what this means for our food preparation and health, right? We need to get rid of all that grossness before it effects us and our families.  And what should we do? KILL KILL KILL! Well, that’s what we are led to believe anymore, isn’t it? We have to use harsh chemicals to KILL the bacteria so it won’t kill us. And what happens as that KILLING chemical goes down the drain? Does it just magically disappear? No, it goes out into our world where it continues KILLING many things we never intended to kill.

The other problem with these KILLING antibacterials is that they are raising alarm in the medical community because of the increasing evidence linking their use and the sharp rise in childhood allergies, asthma, and eczema AND the mutation of bacteria as it grows resistant to these products.

Well then, how do I protect my family from these very real and serious food borne bacteria?! What if we just remove them? It turns out that Better Life products use safe non-toxic ingredients that create CLEANERS. Yeah, that’s right. They simply CLEAN the bacteria away. Are you too brainwashed like me to believe that is possible? Take a look.

Most days and nights, after I’m done washing the dishes I spray down all my counters AND the sink with Whatever and wipe them all down. A couple of times a week, I’ll use Even the Kitchen Sink to get a nice scrub and shine. My sponges go in the dishwasher with every load and a couple of times a week I cut up a lemon and toss it down the garbage disposal to freshen it up.

Naomi, a Better Life customer, brought to our attention how Even the Kitchen Sink saved her favorite pot she inherited from her grandmother.  After a bittersweet chocolate pudding scalding, she boiled some soapy water on the stove and scrubbed to no avail. Her ever-helpful husband put it in the dishwasher where the burnt stuff got nicely baked on.  As a last ditch effort she grabbed some Even the Kitchen Sink and gave it a scrub and voila! Pot saved.

After hearing this story, I decided to go after my own burnt pan from when I pan seared a flank steak last week. (I really need to get a cast iron skillet.) I had also tried the simmering the soapy water trick and was able to get a good deal of the burnt crud out. But this was left.

So, I gave it a whirl. Even the Kitchen Sink and scrubbing pad and sure enough, Voila!

I was impressed. You want to try it? Leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win one of three bottles we’re giving away! And if you want to blog about this give away, we’ll give the blogger with the most clicks to this post a free Starter Kit! Comments open until 5/26.  Not lucky enough to win a free bottle? You can buy it here!

This week’s Whatever Wednesday promises to have no poo in its post.

Soft insulated lunchboxes.  They can really start to stink.  I combat the stale food odors with a spray of Whatever and a wipe with a damp rag. Keeps the lunchboxes clean, sanitary, and smelling fresh. (Can anyone see the clue that Gin and Tonic Season is in full swing at the Frowzy house?)

As I keep saying, earth-friendly and pocket book-friendly generally go hand in hand.  In this case it goes for lunches.  Our school is striving to have 100% waste free lunches.  Those little plastic bags have been called an “environmental scourge.”

The plastic bag is an icon of convenience culture, by some estimates the single most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. They’re made from petroleum or natural gas with all the attendant environmental impacts of harvesting fossil fuels. One recent study found that the inks and colorants used on some bags contain lead, a toxin. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they’ve been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It’s equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.

Only 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled worldwide — about 2 percent in the U.S. — and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries. They can spend eternity in landfills, but that’s not always the case. “They’re so aerodynamic that even when they’re properly disposed of in a trash can they can still blow away and become litter,” says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste. It’s as litter that plastic bags have the most baleful effect. And we’re not talking about your everyday eyesore.

But, you use those reusable plastic containers, you say? Well, you might want to check those out.  Many contain BPAs which are chemicals in plastics that mimic estrogen and many studies are linking to accelerated puberty in girls, a huge increase in genital abnormalities and low sperm count in boys (American 18 year olds have close to half the sperm count of 18 year old boys 40 years ago), and new studies are showing a link to a slew of cancers from testicular to breast cancer.  Even #1 plastics that were once thought safe (think bottled water) are now showing endocrine disruptors in the urine of study subjects.

So, here at the Frowzy house we use reusable sandwich wraps. The linings of the wraps are BPA free, lead free, and phthalate free.  We bought a few Wrap-N-Mats, a few homemades from Etsy, and if you’re crafty you can really save some dough and make your own like my neighbor does with super cool Elvis material.  We even have reusable snack bags for chips or carrots or what-have-you. I bought these in August and have used them daily with no real sign of wear.  We’ll probably be able to use them all next school year as well. When we empty the lunchboxes after school I spray with Whatever and wipe the wraps and hang them up to dry on the line on my back porch.  (Dolphy went for a real swim.)

If they get really messy I just toss them in the washing machine and hang to dry. It’s really quite simple. Because Whatever leaves no residues and is completely safe,  I don’t have to worry about chemical condiments with my kids’ sandwiches.

edited to add: For those wanting to make your own (God love ya’) I have found that the most useful of our wraps is the wrap-n-mat because of its size (13×13) and the one strip of velcro extends off the side for greater versatility. The others aren’t big enough for a 1/3 of a sub sandwich. They are only good for square or hamburger bun size sandwiches.

There are a wide variety of commonly used disinfectants that range from alcohols, peroxides, and bleach, to all kinds of stuff that even we can hardly pronounce. One thing that they all have in common is that they contain chemicals that are designed to kill the germs that they come in contact with.

There are two problems with most chemical disinfectants:

1. Disinfectants contain chemicals that can actually spread vapors in the air and leave residues on the surfaces they are used on. The labels tell you to not use the products around food, children, pets, etc. Hard to believe that you have to actually introduce potentially toxic materials into your home to ‘clean’ it, but that is what you are doing.

2. Disinfectants take time. Depending on the disinfectant, it is required to remain on the surface anywhere from 15 seconds and up to several MINUTES! Check out the label, next time you pick up a bottle. You’ll be surprised, we know we were. Is that the way you really clean? We don’t. Most of us clean by spraying and wiping. When using this method with a conventional disinfectant, the germs are not being killed and a nasty and harmful chemical residue is being left behind.

We believe in getting rid of these germs, we just believe there is a better way to do it. We decided to do some testing. Our founder Kevin Tibbs is a scientist. He picked up a piece of equipment that is designed to test bacterial levels. It is the kind of equipment that is used to instantly test surfaces in hospital operating rooms and other areas where testing for really clean is really critical.

You can watch the video below to see what happened, but let’s just say BETTER LIFE can make your home safer than you ever imagined. Not only did we eliminate more bacterial contamination than the conventional disinfectant, but we did it without leaving behind the toxic chemical residues.

How do we do that, you ask?

BETTER LIFE uses powerful natural surfactants. We don’t have to kill bacteria. We simply REMOVE it – and as you are about to see, we remove it better and faster than chemical disinfectants can kill it.

The bottom line for you is a truly clean surface that without the toxic vapors and chemical residues.

Safer for your home, your kids, your pets and the environment.

If your family and friends are concerned with disinfecting, please share this with them.

Also remember to check out the ultimate in green cleaning the BETTER LIFE starter kit