You can put those questions aside now – here’s a really great way to set your seedlings off to a good start this spring

eco seed planter

Economic and eco-friendly too, you could drop a large hint to your little one’s for a green-minded Mother’s Day gift.

Using old newspaper you can create perfect little pots for your seedlings. Just wrap strips of newspaper around the wood and press into the disc to create a seedling pot in seconds.
£10

Continuing on my 2010 theme of green living (that’s rich coming straight after my review of Princess and the Frog isn’t it?) this is a green cleaning product review. I’ve now had time to use them and here’s my feedback.

The new range of Ecover eco-surfactants goes a lot further than the older products – they have a bit more ‘muscle’. There’s a crazy story behind the creation of this eco-surfactant, apparently it was the discovery of yeast in a bee’s nest – are there no lengths these tree huggers won’t go to to save the planet? It seems not…have a look at the new Ecover website I really like the wipe clean widget. There are four products in the range, Multisurface and Windown & Glass Cleaner (both plastic spray bottles), Power Cleaner and All Purpose cleaner.

I recently lost my cleaner after she returned back home (she’s Polish so it’s a long way) and after weeks of living in squalor reckless abandon chaos grunge filth being slightly disorganised and a little dusty, I took back the cleaning duties with avengeance. But only as a temporary measure.

Thanks for Ecover for sending the products – my cleaner did try them out first while she was still here and said she really liked them because they worked and they did not ruin her hands. So she was happy and that’s a professional opinion.

Miniminx has had a peruse – she is impressed with the eco credentials and gentle aromas but does not ‘do cleaning’ – good for her but not for me.

And in my amateur opinion, I’ve a few thoughts.

Having taken on board Karen’s comment on The Rubbish Diet that you don’t need to use kitchen roll for cleaning and cloths are better, I’ve actually started using these products daily and instead of my usual spray and wipe with Mr Muscle and paper towel, I use Ecover multisurface and slosh around the kitchen with abandon. But maybe Ecover should not recommend the use of paper kitchen towels on the products either?

All packing is recyclable which is great.
You can also refill products at some shops – one near me does that.
There are no strong chemical smells with the products unlike other cleaning ranges.

I’m still going to employ a new cleaner though and she’ll be using these lovely products too. Actually quick question to Ecover – do you know any good cleaners???

Thanks to the Royal Mail strike, my review samples from Simple Human are still sitting in a depot somewhere but the company has kindly sent me an extra 2 of their stackable recycling units. From the photos on their web site which I’ve used above, they looked like they would fit nicely in my Ikea shelves – so I’m a little peeved to only have two.

So, on first impression, they arrived in a massive box and were packaged on what we called as kids ‘pop buds’ and giant plastic blisters – we’re very easily distracted in my house so Miniminx and I happily popped for ages – before remembering that we had a purpose in the packaging – recycling units.

I was quite in awe of the size of these things…but I like them. I’m not going to post a full review until I’ve used them for two weeks – I’ve chosen to go for the paper and plastic options to see if the boxes can handle our output.

First impressions are good – my piddly Ikea aluminium boxes I was using to store paper, bottles and plastic for recycling will be used as planters…