Will COVID Change How We Clean?

I have a nine-year-old. She’s like a tornado, ripping through our house leaving dirt and slimy grime in her wake. Oil, mud, and unidentifiable muck—that’s our reality these days.

But here’s the thing. We live in an age of cleanliness, and undoubtedly heightened by the pandemic. But is there a balance between obsessive cleanliness and learning to live with bacteria around us? I think so.

Even though COVID has reminded us that there are bacteria that cause unpleasant and/or deadly diseases, lots of them are useful and beneficial to our health. Bacteria are responsible for helping us digest food, making vitamins in our gut, and coating our skin to protect us from harmful microbes. Outside our bodies, they break down organic waste, fix nitrogen levels, and make oxygen. 

For our own good, we have to be leery of being too clean.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep our homes clean though! Of course we should. 

We just can’t let marketing machines prey on our fears of infection and contamination. Instead, we can take a more balanced approach and avoid cleaning products that have an array of antibacterial compounds that can damage your health and even encourage bacterial resistance to antibiotics. 

For me—you know, the mother of a dirt-tracking kid—etee’s All-Purpose Cleaner is my hero. 

It has a mix of plant-based ingredients including surfactants (additives that are useful as detergents and degreasers) as well as acetic compounds that bust up things like soap scum. So I use it for everything in my house—on the countertops, furniture, walls, doors, appliances, bathtub and shower, basically any surface my kid might touch—without worrying about harming the health of my family. Added bonus: no plastic bottle, just a beeswax pod.

About the pod...did you know the pod can be repurposed as a fire started? Or that if you add two parts of olive oil to it, it makes an excellent furniture polish? 

But I digress!

If you have kids or just like to keep things neat, tidy, and clean, I’d encourage you to try etee’s All Purpose Cleaner, now available in a fresh Lemongrass scent!

Get Our New Lemongrass Cleaner

Keep it fresh, friends,

Chantal and the whole etee crew.