Were you shocked and alarmed to learn just how many harmful chemicals are found in the products that you’ve trusted to clean your home and use for personal care?

Once you are equipped with the knowledge and understanding of how these chemicals can affect you and your families, it becomes an impossible problem to ignore!

If you are feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to begin to detox your home of these harmful chemicals, then let me assure you, you’ve come to the right place!

I believe that using toxin-free, natural products for health, home and beauty will have short and long term benefits for your family.

I’ve done the research and made the changes in my own home, and I’m SO excited to be able to share my knowledge and passion for clean living with YOU!

Now, take a deep breath… and give yourself a little pat on the back…

The fact that you are reading this means that you are on the right track to creating a healthier, chemical free home!

I’m going to walk you through your home one room at a time, and show you easy ways to change out mainstream products in your home for clean, healthier alternatives.

Now, let’s get started in the kitchen and learn which chemical filled products we can ditch and switch for safer toxin-free alternatives!

Why you need to detox your kitchen

Why tackle the kitchen first? Well, if your home is anything like mine your kitchen is the hub. As a mom of 3, I find myself constantly “hanging out” in the kitchen - making snacks, cooking dinner, cleaning, baking, and making even MORE snacks, just to name a few things.

With all the food prep and hands-on time spent in this room, the kitchen certainly qualifies as a place that you want to avoid using chemicals in!

If you’ve spent any time at all walking down the cleaning products aisle in a grocery story, you’ll recall the colourful bottles and wide variety of scent options. Bottles covered in labels full of marketing words like “natural”, “green”, and “eco-friendly”. It takes a lot of research and time to know which (if any!) of these marketing gimmicks you should actually trust!

Woman holding a green and white bottle of Palmolive dish soap in her hands and showing the label

Despite these appealing looking promises, most traditional kitchen products have a number of concerning chemicals in them. Fragrance and Sodium Laureth Sulphate are just two common chemicals that you should avoid.

The most distressing part of fragrance is that manufactures are not required to disclose the actual ingredients that fall under this umbrella term!

Many people experience allergic reactions from scents in traditional products. This is because of the various chemicals that are used to create the scent, but all that you will see on the label is “fragrance”.

Sodium Laureth Sulphate is an ingredient thats only purpose is to create bubbles, and it is added to SO many cleaning products! We think that the sink need to be full of bubbles in order clean our dishes effectively, and this is FALSE! We’ve been conditioned to feel a false sense of cleanliness as a result of those bubbles. Think about this! Dish cleaning products typically leave a film or residue on your dishes… and that gets on your food, yuck!

If you want to learn more about the effects of these chemicals and 8 others, you can revisit the first post in the series here.

Now that we know what to avoid when choosing products for our kitchens, let’s talk about some safe swaps!

4 products to ditch and switch in your kitchen

Ditch & Switch Your Dish Soap

Ditch the Dawn, Palmolive, and Sunlight; dish soaps that are full of ingredients that are harmful for your skin and body, and make the switch to Young Living Thieves Dish Soap!

Made from plant-based ingredients and scented with 100% pure Thieves, Jade Lemon, and Bergamot essential oils, Thieves Dish Soap will not only effectively clean your dishes, it will also leave those dishes free of residue and clear of toxins!

A bottle of Young Living Thieves Dish Soap and a bamboo Young Living dish scrub brush next to a bright coloured striped towel on a bamboo cutting board

Ditch & Switch Your Hand Soap

Ditch synthetic fragrance filled hand soaps and switch to Young Living Foaming Hand Soaps, scented with pure essential oils.

No more seasonal 4 for $20 hand soaps needed! Young Living has lots of great foaming hand soap options including: Thieves, Lavender, Lemon (my personal favourite!), and even more seasonal options to choose from!

Stay tuned for an easy kitchen hack to make one bottle of hand soap go even further!

Young Living Lushious Lemon Foaming Hand Soap and a 5 ml bottle of Young Living Lemon Essential Oil on a Ten & Co sponge cloth next to a small plant in a rattan planter basket

Ditch & Switch Your Fruit & Veggie Wash

Ditch generic fruit and veggie cleaners from the grocery store, and switch to Thieves Fruit and Veggie Soak.

You might wonder why you should be using a fruit and veggie wash at all. Here is a quick fact, and the reason why we wash all the fruits and veggies we bring into our home! The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) reports that there are traces of 29 different pesticides in the average American body, this is mainly to do with pesticides that are sprayed on food crops and unknowingly ingested when we don’t take the time to wash produce well.

Young Living’s Fruit and Veggie Soak utilizes a blend of essential oils to clean both visual and non visual toxins and pesticides off of your fresh fruits and veggies. Lemon essential oil actually digests the petro-chemicals found on fruits and vegetables!

Bottle of Thieves Fruit and Veggie Soak next to a white ceramic bowl with a fresh bright red tomato and bright yellow pepper sitting on a bamboo cutting board

Ditch & Switch Your Multipurpose Cleaner

Ditch traditional multipurpose cleaners like Mr. Clean, Pine Sol or Lysol, to name a few. Even the LABELS on these products are full of warnings like “may causes skin or eye irritation” or “call poison control if ingested”! Many of these product labels actually display a skull and cross bones image as a warning that they are very toxic!

Switch to Young Living Thieves Household Cleaner! This plant-based cleaner is a highly concentrated multipurpose cleaner that can be diluted at different ratios, and used to replace a number of common home cleaning products.

Although there is a warning label on the bottle of Thieves Household Cleaner for possible eye and skin irritation, it has more to do with labelling laws (stay tuned for more on that). I’ve personally been using this product for 7 years and have never experienced either of those affects, and I have extremely sensitive skin! More importantly, the bottle has NO poison control warning or skull and cross bones! If that doesn’t make you feel good about your cleaning product, I’m not sure what will!

The best thing about Thieves Household Cleaner is just how many different uses it has for all of the areas and kinds of cleaning you might need to do in your home.

Head to the bottom of this post for a FREE printable featuring 5 Thieves Cleaning Recipes!

Glass spray bottle filled with all purpose Young Living Thieves Household Cleaner next to a 5 ml bottle of YL Lemon essential oil and a bamboo scrub brush with a brightly coloured striped towel and a bamboo cutting board

Start Cutting Out Toxins in Your Kitchen Today

So, what are you waiting for? Ditching these four types of traditional products and making the switch to clean, natural and effective alternatives is simple and straight forward. In doing so, you will cut down on toxin exposure in your home by SO much! These are small steps that you can take toward BIG change.

four Young Living Thieves products for the kitchen lined up on a bamboo cutting board next to a grey and white striped tea towel and a silver Norwex sponge

Next, we’ll tackle some easy DIY products that you can put together for some of the more specific cleaning jobs in your kitchen!

Be sure to subscribe to our email list below, so that together we can continue the journey to a toxin-free home, one room at a time!

Download a Free PDF with 5 Thieves Cleaning Recipes

Thieves Household Cleaner can be diluted and used for so many unique cleaning jobs!

This FREE PDF highlights 5 simple cleaning recipes that you can make with your Thieves Household Cleaner including: All Purpose Cleaner, Stain Remover, Tub & Tile, Soft Scrub, and Heavy Degreaser.

Print the PDF and keep a copy in the cupboard with your Thieves Household Cleaner bottle for quick reference every time you want to mix up a new batch of cleaner!

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. The information on this blog is not intended to cure, treat, or heal any disease. Please use essential oils and other Young Living products at your own risk (and with lots of common sense).

Photographs by Kim Norcross.

4 Cleaning Products to Ditch and Switch in Your Kitchen: A Room by Room Guide to a Toxin-Free Home