three questions with corinna williams
Bringing a new baby home can have you rethinking a lot of things about your day-to-day life, including the products you use to keep your space clean. We spoke with Corinna Williams, a mysha mom and the co-founder of Celsious, an eco-friendly laundromat-slash-cafe in Brooklyn about her favorite clean cleaning products and ways to keep a more conscious home environment for families.
1. What is the most unexpected thing you have learned about laundering clothing?
One of the more surprising, fun facts I found out about after venturing into the laundry industry is that many of the products we use aren’t actually essential components of getting our clothes cleaned. They are built to optically brighten or to mask unpleasant odors more than remove grime or stains. Mechanical action (i.e. elbow grease and/or some quality laundry equipment) are the key to clean laundry. It’s why our clever ancestors used wash boards in the olden days. Today, a good washing machine that is actually loaded all the way to the top (loosely full, not stuffed) will do the trick. The full machine causes friction between your laundry items and the machine drums, which is oftentimes all that’s needed for a thorough clean. If not, due to pesky stains at play, you’ll almost always have to get to work with some good old-fashioned manual stain treatment. I use Celsious’ Wunderbar Stain Stick and a toothbrush for all of my daughter Lila’s beet-carrot-sweet potato stained white onesies before I machine wash them. And guess what? They’re all still white.
2. What do you use to clean your home?
photo: healthynest
I use a total of three different cleaners at home: my homemade glass cleaner (with alcohol, vinegar and peppermint essential oil), a chrome cleaner that contains Castile soap and vinegar to get all our bathroom and kitchen fixtures streak-free and shiny, and an all-purpose cleaner mixed with the Healthynest Cleaning Concentrate for pretty much everything else. My wooden cleaning brushes are by Bürstenhaus Redecker, toothbrushes by Brush with Bamboo for those hard-to-reach spots, and sponges by Sqwishful are my sustainable cleaning tools of choice. I will admit I own a Swiffer (we have a nine-month-old, after all, and her adventures in solid foods will end up on the floor ten out of ten times), but I’ve cut up old towels and rags that I soak in a mason jar filled with my all-purpose cleaning solution instead of using the disposable mopping pads.
3. How can we as mothers create a more conscious home environment for our families?
As moms, I believe we are all hardwired to want what’s best for our babies. We vet everything from baby’s clothing, foods, care products and toys – to make sure we avoid toxic ingredients. What I see frequently is that this process unfortunately stops at laundry products and home cleaners. Part of it is due to the fact that there is very little federal regulation around company requirements to list ingredients in cleaning products. But I believe another reason is that our cleaning practices are so habitual that we oftentimes don’t even question them. We just do what our moms did. That said, given the fact that there has been growing evidence in recent years that indoor air quality – even in industrialized countries – is oftentimes poorer than outdoor air quality, it is all the more important we take a closer look at household cleaners and other products that contribute to air pollution in our homes. So we can swap out some of the culprits for non-toxic ones. If you have no idea where to start, here are a few steps to begin with:
Less is more. Same as you would steer clear of a laundry list (pun intended) of ingredients on processed foods, be wary of a long list of ingredients on cleaning products. If you are unsure of an ingredient, consult The Environmental Working Group for its potential environmental and human-level toxicity.
Skip the fragrance. On any given ingredient label for cosmetics or cleaners, the word “fragrance” is an umbrella term masking any mix of up to over 3,100 unnamed chemicals. 1 in 20 of these hidden ingredients earned a “High” hazard score by the Environmental Working Group, three of them being particularly harmful to our and potentially babies’ endocrine systems: phthalates, octoxynols and monoxynols. And even if not toxic, fragrances are still often linked to allergic reactions, so go unscented – especially with baby’s products – whenever possible.
This is the next step and there are of course so many unknowns (like, toxic building materials that may be hiding in your apartment walls): When purchasing furniture and other home goods, try to avoid materials, adhesives, glues and lacquers that off-gas and may contribute to that poor indoor air quality mentioned above. This may sometimes require significant detective work and/or reaching out to brands to enquire about the exact makeup of their product. If you need a quicker fix, look out for certifications like Greenguard, which focuses specifically on identifying and certifying products that have low chemical emissions.
Not linked to air quality, but a huge step in reducing our overall footprint: avoiding single-use materials. Just ask yourself, with every product you purchase: If I have to throw this in the trash after usage, is there a non-disposable alternative? Can I store breastmilk in mason jars instead of plastic bags? Are cloth diapers, via Healthynest, for example, a possibility? Can I use washable cotton wipes?