Clorox Helps You Fight the Flu

Anyone who reads my regular blog knows that I have been particularly scared of the flu this winter. I struggled to get my daughters vaccinated against the H1N1 flu and I've been beyond anal about avoiding germ infested places. (Public library anyone?)

Beyond not taking my kids to places that might be harboring more than their fair share of germs, I've also been making a conscious effort to keep our home as sanitized as possible. I routinely disinfect door knobs, phone handsets, remote controls, and anything else that strikes me as potentially germy.

Lucky for me and anyone else who's on the "no germ, no virus" bandwagon this winter, Clorox has decided to make our lives a little easier. They've packaged the best of their disinfecting products with a handy guide that tells you, step by step, how to keep your house flu free this winter.

Best of all? If you buy the Clorox Home Flu Kit you'll actually be saving money - buying all the components separately costs more and you don't get the handy dandy cheat sheet!

Now personally I was already a big fan of Clorox even if I am a hair scared of bleach and what it can do to jeans and cute clothes. And I may be a hair obsessed with Clorox wipes. So it wasn't a stretch for me to fall in love with the Flu Kit. (It's for killing the FLU! I love killing the flu!) Add the fact that the kit includes Clorox's hospital strength hand sanitizer (my other obsession this winter), and I'm sold. You can't buy that stuff in stores and if rumors are true, sooner rather than later this winter it's going to start getting hard to find Purell on store shelves...

The Clorox Home Flu Kit isn't yet available in stores. Right now you can only buy it online. For $24.99 +shipping you get:

• 2 canisters of Clorox^® Disinfecting Wipes, one Fresh Scent and one Lemon Scent  (35 wipes in each)
• 1 bottle of Clorox^® Bleach (24 oz)
• 2 on-the-go packets of Clorox^® Disinfecting Wipes (9 wipes in each)
• 1 bottle of Clorox^® Clean-Up^® Cleaner with Bleach (32 oz)
• 1 bottle of Clorox Commercial Solutions^® Clorox^® Hand Sanitizing Spray. (16.9 oz)
• 2 on-the-go bottles of Commercial Solutions^® Clorox^® Hand Sanitizing Spray (2 oz each)
• A 4-color guide and laminated wallet-size card describing the most effective ways to use these products at home and on-the-go.

So? What are you waiting for? Let's teach those germs who's boss!

Please Note: I am in no way affiliated with Clorox. I was sent a Clorox Home Flu Kit to test out at home for review purposes and was in no other way compensated for this review. The opinions and thoughts expressed in this post are mine and mine alone.

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Top Thirteen Uses for a Microfiber Cloth

I first encountered microfiber cloths in the Solutions Catalog. I'd get the promo emails and I'd drool, then I'd delete the email and go about my day. They were cloths. We had cloths. I didn't need any more.

Oh, if only I'd known.

I can't remember what pushed me to finally order a set from Amazon. (I'm pretty sure it was the Active Ion demonstration.) My 36 Zipes Microfiber Cloths arrived and our lives changed.

OK. Maybe that's a bit extreme. But still! Do you know how awesome these things are? Even M is a convert and he didn't even complain too much when I bought another set of 36 from Costco. (What? They were bigger. And on sale. And. And. I needed more. Plus, I've been giving them as gifts. So there.)

Don't believe me? Well, maybe this list of top thirteen things you can do with microfiber cloths will convince you! (It started as a top ten list, but I couldn't stop...)

1. Best dust cloths ever. They trap dust like nobody's business.
2. Best window washing cloths ever. They don't leave any little lint streaks behind. Seriously.
3. Replacement for Swiffer wet AND dry cloths. Save the environment and never run out! Squeee!
4. Best dishcloths ever. One swipe of a microfiber cloth over a plate and it's instantly dry. Even better, one microfiber cloth will dry a mountain of dishes!
5. Best hand towel ever. Dry your hands and they're instantly dry. Say goodbye to that clammy not quite dry feeling you get from dishcloths.
6. Burp cloths! Do you have a baby who seems to spit up more than he drinks? Large microfiber cloths will be your saving grace. Super soft and super absorbent. Need I say more?
7. Cloth diaper liner. I'm not a cloth diaperer, but I know a mom who swears by these. It makes sense, they absorb a ton of liquid and they're super soft.
8. Sop up spills. Kids spill something on a rug, bed, or carpet? Use a microfiber cloth to mop up the spill. You'll get more out of that carpet than you would with a regular towel or dishcloth. (Even works on toddler pee! Don't ask me how I know.)
9. Car multipurpose cloth. Use it to dust the dash, mop up spills, clean messy kids, whatever comes up. And you know it does.
10. Screen cleaner. A tiny bit of moisture and some gentle elbowgrease and all those fingerprints, smudges, and whatever else is clouding up your computer screen, TV screen, or phone screen will be history.
11. Jewelry and silver polish. Gentle enough for all your most valuable valuables, tough enough for the grime covering them.
12. Baby and kid wipes. A damp microfiber cloth will wipe a chocolatey face clean faster than any paper towel. And if you're trying to be a greener parent you could do worse than use a stack of these instead of disposable wipes. A little spray bottle of water and you're set to handle the most foul of diapers!
13. CD/DVD cleaner. In a house filled with children there are few CDs that aren't covered in fingerprints and unidentifiable sticky substances. These cloths can make them shine like new again.

Have I convinced you yet? Buy a set, if you're not an instant convert you can send them to me. I bet I can find a thing or ten to do with them.

ActiveIon Pro Review and Giveaway

What do Bill Nye the Science Guy and cleaning have in common? Well nothing really, except for the fact that he's the spokesperson for simply the coolest cleaning tool you will EVER own. Even maybe the last cleaning tool you will ever own, the ActiveIon Pro.

Imagine a cleaning product as pure and chemical free as water. Doesn't exist you say? You're right. ActiveIon isn't as pure and chemical free as water, it is water. Yup, water. Nice healthy plain ol' tap water. I'm not kidding. (See? It's so pure that that's a picture of Bill Nye squirting it into his mouth!)

You fill up your slightly E.T. looking ActiveIon Pro with tap water, squeeze the trigger, and through some electrical magic that water becomes ionized. Or rather the electricity infuses the water with positive and negative ions, that attract dirt like teeny tiny little magnets.

That could very well be a completely wrong analysis of what the little magical tool does. I don't know, I was terrible at physics in school. Bill Nye and the ActiveIon people are probably shaking their heads a lamenting the fact that they asked me to blog about this. But whatever, I don't care, and I'm not giving back my ActiveIon Pro, even if I failed the science explanation, so there.

Here is what I do know. I have used my ActiveIon Pro every day for the last week or so and I still love it as much as the day I took it out of the box. I love not using cleaning products and getting a better result than I did when I used them. I love that I'm not exposing my asthmatic girls to more chemicals. I love how clean everything is looking. And I love that I still think this is fun. Oh, and every time I use my tap to fill up the ActiveIon Pro I love the fact that I'm not spending mega bucks on cleaning solutions!

In the last week I have cleaned windows - ActiveIon ROCKS the window cleaning, I have cleaned the stove top - swoon on the easy wiping up of food spatters, I have cleaned the bathtub, I have cleaned the kitchen counters, the kitchen cabinets, the nasty corners on the kitchen linoleum, the TV screen, the computer screen, the bathroom mirror, and yes, the window frames outside the house. The only thing that the ActiveIon didn't rock was the grease build-up over my stove. It's not a huge fan of grease. Then again, neither was the Clorox Greenworks Cleaner.

Armed with my ActiveIon Pro and my brand new 36 pack of microfiber cloths (microfiber cloths! ActiveIon Pro's BFF!) I am making dirt and dust my... uh, I am mastering the cleaning of my home. Ahem. Even better, even M thinks that the thing is fun so the house is getting really clean. (Also, yes, our house is really dirty. There is much dirt to be mastered.)

It's a pricey investment, I won't lie to you, but it seriously will replace most of the cleaning products in your home. Plus, rumor has it that you can also use it to remove your make-up at night. Which I would have tested, except that I tend to forget that step and end up removing it in the shower the next morning. But that's entirely besides the point.

So, if you're very green conscious, or just looking to reduce your family's exposure to cleaning chemicals, if you really like to clean or need a fun gimmick to get yourself cleaning, and yes, if you have a couple hundred dollars lying around, hurry over to the ActiveIon website and purchase one of these babies for yourself! Or, you know, scroll down to see if you can win one.

ActiveIon Pro Giveaway!

To enter:
1) Leave a comment telling me how much you love or hate cleaning.
2) Leave a comment telling me how many times I wrote ActiveIon up there, cuz dude, it was a lot!
3) Visit the ActiveIon website and come rave about how cool and revolutionary this is and how you would use it.
4) Subscribe to this blog's feed. Leave a comment telling me you subscribed.
5) Subscribe to my other blog's feed. Leave a comment telling me you subscribed.
6) Tweet, email, blog about this giveaway.

That's a grand total of 8 ways you can enter! Please remember to leave me a way to contact you. And please, please, please, leave a separate comment for each of your entries. I can't credit you for each of them if you don't.

Giveaway ends Friday, June 19, 2009 at 10pm PST.

I received an ActiveIon Pro for review, but I was in other no way compensated for this giveaway. All opinions included in this post are mine and mine alone.

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Wett Giggles - Review & Discount Code

What could be sweeter than a cute little bath toy lodged in a fun sudsy soap? Well, how about instead of a bath toy you got an adorable little nail brush?

Wett Giggles, Inc has come up with perfect little gifts. Use them as party favors or as birthday presents. Give them as part of a gift for wedding or baby showers! These little guys are sure to bring smiles to everyone's faces.


Wett Giggles pros:
- Adorable little characters encased in sweet smelling soap that come individually wrapped and adorned with a matching ribbon.
- Just enough soap to make it worth your investment, but not so much soap that a child would get frustrated about getting to the prize at the center.
- Encourage hygiene in little kids by introducing a fun new way to scrub away the dirt that builds up under your nails!
- Love the soap, but can live without a tubful of nail brushes? You can buy the soap or the nail brushes separately.
- Quite affordable! $10/soap+brush, $8/soap no brush, $5/brush no soap.
- Kosher glycerin of vegetable origin!

Wett Giggles cons:
- These things are so darn cute you're going to need to buy the whole collection. I'm sorry.
- And... yeah, sorry, I really have nothing else. Uh, you might end up with too many nail brushes? Not that that's really a con...

Wett Giggles DEAL!
So, in conclusion, you need one or ten of these right away. And because Wett Giggles, Inc rocks, they've given me a discount code to share with you.
Right now, on the Wett Giggles site, there's a 20% discount on all orders and just for The Lemonade Stand readers, until the end of February, by using the discount code: Carvp09 (Careful! Case sensitive!) you also get free shipping! So, what are you waiting for? Get that gift closet full of cute little dogs, ducks, and cows!

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