Since I started blogging, I’ve learned a lot about MCS – Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. People like Kathryn Treat taught me that each person has a chemical load, and if it gets too heavy, your body will fight. Kathryn went from a normal life to being “Allergic to Life.” Her body began to fight everyday chemicals in soaps, fragrance, cleaning products, and the air itself as if it was fighting a deadly illness – that means she became extremely ill when exposed to these every day things.

Each person is different, and there’s no telling how much of a chemical load your body can sustain. It makes sense, then, to cut as many chemicals as you can from your every day life BEFORE you HAVE to for life-threatening reasons. I haven’t done anything crazy – I stopped using perfumes, and only use deodorant and soap with natural fragrances.

If you’ve tried to shop smarter in a similar fashion, you know how often you end up reading every label on an aisle only to find there are NO chemical-free or even less-chemical options, especially for cleaning products. And while it’s one thing to chuck out perfume, cleaning products are a bigger mental block. You buy them to get rid of odors, so don’t they need fragrance? Without fragrance, your laundry wouldn’t smell fresh and nice, your kitchen would smell like old food, and your house would smell like dogs and cats! And of course by you, I mean me.

But remember that products like Fabreeze or scented candles only mask odors anyway. What you really want is to get rid of odors for good – not spray chemicals periodically to continue covering them up. That’s why it’s really cool that OdorKlenz took an interest specifically in their customers with chemical sensitivity, and worked to develop a line of cleaning products that is not only effective, but safe for everyone to use.

So today I’m looking at their awesome products one by one, and stay tuned at the end of the post because I have a special discount code just for Do I Look Sick readers!

First up: EnviroKlenz Laundry Enhancer!

I already use exclusively “free and clear” laundry soaps because I’ve always been allergic to fragrance in detergent. Since companies don’t need to list what chemicals are in “fragrance” I’ll never know what it is I’m allergic to. To be safe, I also quit using fabric softener. Instead, I use vinegar, which works great and doesn’t leave an odor in the clothes – you’ll smell it while the washer runs, though. But one of the best things about laundry is a fresh scent, right? So I spike my jug of vinegar with a few drops of essential oils, and I also dab them onto my dryer balls. Perfect set up, right?

Well, sadly I’m not perfect. That means that sometimes (a lot) I throw a load in and forget about it for a while. Then when I open the washer, there’s no nice essential oil smell – there’s just mildewy ick smell. So when I find it, I usually have to run the wash again. Which is wasteful.

Enter the EnviroKlenz Laundry enhancer! A combination of liquid and powder, you simply add it to your load with your normal soap – but it CANNOT be used with vinegar! But I can say from first-hand experience that there will be no icky washer smells, even if you leave a load of wet clothes in overnight. It’s pretty amazing!

But for this particular product, I have to say I wouldn’t use it all the time. I’d probably only throw it in if it was late and I knew I’d probably go to bed before I could dry the load, or if the washer was just getting funky-smelling in general. And it’s not just because I still like using vinegar when I can. There are a couple of downsides to this stuff.

One is that the liquid is like milk. At first, that’s merely surprising when you first dump it in. But after a wash, there’s a milky residue on the washer itself, so you either need to rinse it out or run a load without the enhancer before you add vinegar again.

Another drawback is that the powder can leave a residue on clothes. For me, it only happened on small items like panties and socks, so they probably just got folded into a larger item of clothing and didn’t get rinsed properly. Still, next time I’ll probably use a bit less than the recommended amount of powder.

The good news is that it works with any type of laundry. I tried it with clothing, towels, a rug, and even a hand-sewn costume piece (Husband’s poncho from D23). All came out great except for the aforementioned powder residue on a couple of things. But no colors ran, nothing came out looking weird or different at all.

All in all, I’d recommend it if you’re specifically having trouble with your washer creating an odor.

Next, the EnviroKlenz Odor Eliminator and Absorbent Neutralizer!

This is what’s probably gotten the most use at our house. The odor eliminator is a great surface cleaner and works pretty straightforwardly. It’s great at cleaning up messes on the kitchen counter or tile/wood flooring. A disclaimer though – I’ve only used this on very small messes. We just put in wood floors and I’m still slightly paranoid about them, so I haven’t tried it on a large area for fear of discoloration or…I don’t know what. The floor was expensive and I’m afraid of it. That’s not what this post is about though.

What I really want to do is sing the praises of the Absorbent Neutralizer. This product is a powder like substance that works similarly to baking soda, if you’ve ever used that to clean up a smelly mess. If not, think of it like kitty litter for other wet stinky messes. Not only does it suck up the moisture, it takes the odor with it.

There’s a reason Dudley looks so guilty.

Now, this package arrived right around the same time that the vet said that our dog needed to take allergy medicine. Listed in side effects was excessive urination. And excessive is right. I had a nightmare on my hands. The dog had climbed into bed with us overnight, and he wet the bed. A lot. And oh Lord, it was the smelliest mess. I’m thinking I’m just going to have to throw out my expensive sleep number bed now because I don’t even know how to begin to clean it. We sprayed it with vinegar and mopped up the mess as best we could but it was still moist and the smell…..the ungodly smell….

I couldn’t find our baking soda, but while I was looking I spotted the new package of EnviroKlenz cleaners. I pulled out the powder, dumped it on the mattress, and said a prayer. I let it sit for hours, waiting, hoping. And sure enough, it saved the bed. After we vacuumed it up, the smell was gone. The bed was dry. My wallet was relieved.

This will definitely be a staple around here. It passed its trial by fire and I know I can count on it for NORMAL messes. Because if my dog ever needs this medicine again, we’re boarding him until he’s over it.

Anyway. If you have a similar situation, google about using vinegar and stuff because that part was an important base. But this powder saved the day and I think it worked much better than baking soda would have. If you’ve got a dog, buy the odor neutralizer. Just do it.

A word about ingredients: on the labels and the website, it lists the active ingredients: Magnesium Oxide (MgO), Zinc Oxide (ZnO), and Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) powders. I’m not savvy enough at label terminology to know if that means that’s everything in the products, or just the active ingredients. I do know that generally speaking, the less ingredients there are in something, the safer it is for use with allergies or newborn babies. Plus we know these products were developed specifically for people with MCS, so I doubt they’d leave things off the label.

Finally, the EnviroKlenz Home Air Purifier!

This is the one I was most excited to try. We have a small air purifier in our bedroom and I think everyone should have one. I sleep much better at night, and our bedroom never smells like dog even though he spends plenty of time in there. Plus there’s very little dust. I knew I wanted to get one for the baby’s room too, because their little lungs would need it even more than I do!

Disclaimer – none of us have any asthma, breathing problems, or allergies. We got one just for basic wellness, so I mean it when I say it’s for everyone.

The EnviroKlenz purifier is much bigger than the little one we picked up at Walmart. It also has way more settings. High will clear out heavy dust and odor, but it’s pretty loud. No worries though, because medium and low are very soft, and it even has a “whisper” setting if you want it silent. And WOW, does it do a good job. Our downstairs area is completely open, with a high roof and open floor plan. This air purifier has no problem handling that huge space. I don’t know how to describe it except that the air is just fresher. Breathing is just nicer. And that room feels as airy as it looks now!

And, if the odor powder got a trial by fire, my husband decided the air purifier needed one too. He’s been putting in the new wood flooring downstairs, which means tearing up carpet and creating a lot of dust. I’ve been spending my time upstairs to keep baby from having to breath whatever all that gunk is. So he decided to do one better and set up the air purifier at the foot of the stairs. Any air currents that head upstairs get filtered through the purifier, and I haven’t had a whiff of dust, old ratty carpet smell, or the weird new wood smell upstairs at all.

When I found out it was the air purifier that was creating a barrier for me, I thought that was probably asking it to do a lot more than it was meant for…. but clearly it was working just fine. So this thing means business. It’s going to purify the crap out of your air, no matter what.

According to their website, this air purifier uses hospital-grade technology to remove chemicals, VOCs, dust, and other allergens from the air. It’s also HEPA certified, so no worries there if you do need it for medical reasons.

You can check out this video for more info on how exactly it all works:

So, ready to get some for yourself? Because I’ve got a very special code JUST for readers of this blog!

Just go to https://enviroklenz.com/shop/ and when you get to checkout, use the code:

toxicfree20

To get 20% off from now until September 28th!

This is an awesome company that, rather than turning a blind eye to their chronically ill clients like most companies, they went and developed an entire line of products just for them. That’s the kind of company I want to support when I vote with my dollars, don’t you?

Thanks EnviroKlenz for seeing the invisibly ill, and doing something to make the world a better place.

Full Disclosure: I was given samples of these products in return for my thoughts, but the opinions here are all my own.