Shadazzle ingredients

Cleaner & Polish, ingredient by ingredient

Clay is a fine mineral powder. In a cleaning paste it works as a gentle abrasive: the grains are small enough to rub a dull film off steel or glass as the sponge moves, and soft enough to be the second step on a cleaning ladder, after plain water. Gentle still means abrasive, though, which is why a glass cooktop and a silver spoon get their own cautions on where Shadazzle works.

Vegetable oils are the classic base of soap, and in the tub they are part of the lather that builds when you rub the damp sponge over the paste. Vegetable glycerin is a plant-based liquid that holds on to moisture. It keeps the paste soft enough to pick up with a sponge from one clean to the next, as long as the lid goes back on.

Fragrance gives each tub its scent: lemon, eucalyptus, grapefruit, lavender or mint & lime. The paste under the scent is the same in all five, so you are choosing which smell you want in your kitchen after the clean. If scented products bother your skin or your breathing, keep in mind that the label lists fragrance as one ingredient and does not break it down further.

What natural means on our labels

When you see natural on a Shadazzle pack, read the ingredient list printed with it. That list is the whole of what the word means: these ingredients and no others. Natural is not a test result and certifies nothing on its own, so the printed list is the only thing it can promise you.

The Federal Trade Commission sets out how marketers should word green claims in its Green Guides, and the rules help you read any cleaner on the shelf. A broad claim such as green or eco-friendly, with nothing specific to back it, is one the FTC says marketers should not make, because it is close to impossible to prove. For a product called non-toxic, the FTC asks for reliable scientific evidence that it is safe for people and for the environment. When a label leans on one of those words alone, look for the specific fact behind it.

On our packs, the facts you can read are the ones we stand behind: what is in the tub, where it was made, what the wood restorer leaves out, how many liters the laundry sachet makes.

Solid Dish Soap Bar

The dish bar is soap in solid form, three bars to a pack, made in the USA and cut by hand, which is why no two have the same edges. There is no bottle around it, so what you bring home is the soap itself, with nothing to rinse out and throw away when it runs out.

Like any dish soap, it is for washing and then rinsing away. Rinse your plates and glasses well after the lather, and keep the bar and its dish where small children cannot reach them, as you would a bottle of dish liquid. For the full ingredient list of the bar, write to us on the contact page before you buy.

Natural Wood Restorer: solvent-free

The wood restorer is a liquid in a 500 ml tin, made in France, and its formula is solvent-free. Wood care products often contain solvents, so on a furniture product the absence tells you something. The FTC Green Guides set out when a free-of claim holds: the product contains no more than a trace of the substance, that trace does none of the harm people expect from it, and the substance was not added on purpose.

Read that claim for what it is. Solvent-free describes what is left out of the tin, and it makes no promise about your air or your skin, so open a window while you work, close the tin afterwards and keep it away from children like any cleaner. Restorer, on our tin, means a cleaner for the finish on your wood: it takes grease, fingerprints, old wax and water marks off a sealed surface, and our page on where Shadazzle works explains how finishes react.

DIY Laundry Detergent: plant and mineral base

The laundry powder has a plant and mineral base and a fresh linen scent. Shaken into water, one sachet makes 1.8 liters of liquid detergent, enough for up to 65 loads. The water comes from your own tap, so the sachet you store is flat and small.

How much you pour per load matters, so follow the directions on the pack. NMSU Extension, in its guide to getting clothes clean, explains why measuring counts. Too much detergent wastes money and can make so many suds that clothes come out less clean, while too little leaves body oil and dirt in the fabric. The same guide says an extra-large machine, a heavily soiled load or hard water can call for more.

Before a load goes in, read the care label sewn into each garment. Under the FTC Care Labeling Rule, that label gives at least one complete method of regular care: whether to wash by hand or by machine, at what temperature if hot water would harm the fabric, and whether bleach may be used, only non-chlorine bleach, or none at all. Follow it with our detergent as you would with any other.

Nanofiber Cleaning Cloth

Nanofiber is a finer grade of microfiber. The University of Washington describes microfiber in a fact sheet as polyester and nylon fiber split into strands fine enough to reach into crevices a cotton cloth misses, and it says microfiber picks dust up instead of pushing it around. Our two cloths are white, about 11.8 by 11.8 inches each, and made in France.

The cloth cleans glass, mirrors and screens with water and nothing else. The same fact sheet pairs microfiber with a cleaner and a registered disinfectant wherever germs are the concern, so use the cloth for dust, streaks and fingerprints and reach for a disinfectant when that is the job.

Wash the cloths with other microfiber only, using ordinary laundry detergent and no bleach, as the University of Washington sheet advises. Washed that way, they come back ready for the next mirror.

Every ingredient named above is the one printed on a product in the Shadazzle family of cleaners, and the contact page is the place to ask about any of them.