I've always snickered at (or been mildly offended by) commercials thatmake finding the right cleaning product seem like a conversionexperience. Can extra-special soap really make the world feel new? Isit even possible for the tile in my bathroom to sparkle like the tileon TV? (My tile is especially nasty, since our apartment buildingdates back to 1886; it's been renovated a few times, I'm sure, but someof its fixtures are at least as old as I am.) Long story short, I neverexpected to be caught in a ray of sunlight as I gazed lovinglyat a product. I assumed that the grout hadalways been grey and don't ask questions.
Enter a little something I'll call Product X, which I bought for the first time and sprayed in the bathroom before a friend came to stay with us a few weeks ago. Within minutes - with no help from me - it loosened and then ended the soap scum on the walls behind the shower. It made the chrome knobs above the tub gleam like M.C. Escher's reflecting sphere. It turned my grout white. It made the world feel new. How had it never occurred to me to use Product X before? Why doesn't everyone use it all the time? What was, er, that sickly-sweet chemical smell?
Figuring that my Product X giddiness was probably equal parts clean bathroom and whatever was causing that smell, I went online to find out more about it. The good news is that I didn't turn up any scary headlines about how my favorite new spray would give me a horrible disease; the bad news is that I didn't find much reassurance, either. My best discovery was GoodGuide, a searchable site that compiles information on more than 60,000 "personal care & household chemical products." Though it doesn't have an entry for good ol' Product X, it does provide useful information on other cleaners' health performance, environmental performance, and social performance (that is, manufacturers' track records on things like workplace diversity and human rights).
So...I may not have an official answer, but I'm off to a decent start on finding others that'll give me that ray-of-sunlight experience without also scorching my nose. In the meantime, o Internet, what have you found to tackle your nastiest grime? Do you have favorite products that rock the clean without turning you green?
Posted by Lauren
Redbook
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Reprinted with Permission of Hearst Communications, Inc.
