spring cleaning – The Review Studio

French Soaps – La Corvette Home Cleaning Heroes

eco friendly, Family Life, Home, Home & Garden, Spring

Disclaimer – We received this item for the purpose of this review but all words and opinions are our own.

Cleaning is one of those jobs that you either love or hate! I like my home to be clean, but I don’t have a strict cleaning regime and if there’s something more interesting to do then it’s more than likely that the cleaning will get pushed down my job list! I like my cleaning products to have a pleasant scent and I don’t really like using products that contain harmful chemicals, so I was really pleased when a parcel containing La Corvette Home Cleaning Heroes arrived from French Soaps. Made with up to 99.5% naturally derived ingredients, these traditional cleaning products gave me the motivation I needed to finally make a belated start on my spring cleaning!

If like me you haven’t heard of French Soaps before, they are a UK company who were established in 2012. Based in North Yorkshire they specialise in traditional soap products such as Savon de Marseille, Aleppo soap and Provençal vegetable-oil soaps produced using established soapmaking methods. These soaps belong to long traditions of practical soapmaking where plant oils are transformed into durable soaps used for washing, laundry and household cleaning. Their appeal lies in their simplicity: reliable soap made from straightforward ingredients which are designed for everyday use. The company aims to make these traditional soaps more widely available in the United Kingdom while preserving the heritage behind them.

La Corvette Home Cleaning Heroes bundle is a great introduction to La Corvette’s home cleaning range. Made using 99% natural ingredients with herb extracts these products deliver impressive results with little effort – now that’s my sort of cleaning!!

The set contains

Lavender Vinegar Spray – as the name suggests this natural spray is enriched with organic lavender and smells wonderful. The vinegar spray is a real multi purpose product that will descale, clean and shine everything from kettles, shower cubicles and bathroom fittings. All you need to do is spray straight on to surfaces and wipe – no need to rinse making cleaning a quick and easy job.

Sage Glass Cleaning Spray – enriched with organic sage this glass cleaner is so easy to use. A quick spray on windows, mirrors and glass tables, wipe it off and a quick polish with a dry cloth is all I need for sparkling clean mirrors and windows. I normally hate cleaning the shower doors but this spray cuts through the grime and my shower doors have never looked cleaner.

Thyme Degreasing Spray – The Thyme Degreasing spray is a another multipurpose product that dissolves grease and adds shine to all washable surfaces. It’s perfect for cleaning worksurfaces and sinks in the kitchen and bathroom. I was really impressed at how easily it removed the build of soap and grime in the bathroom, leaving everything fresh and sparkly clean.

Olive Black Liquid Soap Spray – this is my favourite of all the products as it can be used in so many different ways. Indoors, it cleans, degreases and shines all types of surfaces: worktops, sinks, cookers etc and it’s also a great product for gardeners as it can be used for protecting and cleaning plants. To clean plants and tackle common garden pests simply mix 5 large spoons with 1 litre of hot water, leave for a few minutes and then spray or wipe the leaves with it. It’s a much better way of getting rid of insects, spiders and aphids. It’s also good at cleaning garden furniture and garden tools too. The real test of it’s cleaning ability came when I used it on the cooker after one of my sons had been frying chicken – and like all teenagers didn’t think to wipe the cooker clean afterwards! A couple of sprays and a quick wipe later, the greasy marks were gone, leaving my cooker looking clean again.

Traditional Mop cloth – made from recycled textile material the traditional fibre mop cloth is perfect for cleaning floors.

Overall I have been really impressed with the La Corvette Home Cleaning Heroes bundle. The products effectively remove dirt and grime from everything from bathroom taps, kitchen worksurfaces, shower screens and more. While slightly more expensive than the everyday supermarket cleaning products they are much kinder to both the environment and skin making them well worth considering for anyone looking for a more natural approach to household cleaning.

RRP £35

Hotel Collection 5 Star Luxury White Goose Down Pillow

Birthday Gifts, Children, Family Life, Home, Home & Garden, Spring

Disclaimer – We have received this item for free or on a loan basis for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

As the long Bank Holiday approaches for Easter, many of us are looking to spring clean and update our homes, and BHS (yes, the British Home Stores of old!) have some fantastic items available. Starting with this Hotel Collection 5 Starr Goose Down Pillow, available for only £40, you can add some luxury to your bedroom and take advantage of the natural goose feather feel.

The premium duvets and pillows are all made of goose down, that is 60% goose feather and 40% down, to give the ultimate soft feel. The white colour is made of 300 thread count 100% cotton to allow air to flow and also reduces the changes of allergies. The pillow is completely washable (but follow instructions!). If you’ve only ever had synthetic pillows then you are in for a treat! Unlike synthetic material pillows, the goose feathers keep the shape of your head as you sleep, allowing air to circulate but doesn’t get bunched up and lumpy. After you’ve vacated the bed, the pillow plumps up again to give the even shape, ready for when you next lie on it.

The quality of the goose down filling can be felt as soon as you squeeze it. The feather give a light resistance to pressure whilst remaining soft. When you lie on the pillow, it’s firm but you soon realise that the feathers are taking the weight of your contours and changing shape as they do so.

Once you try goose down, you won’t want to go back to anything else!

The Hotel Collection 5 Star Luxury Goose Down Pillow can be washed at 40 degrees centigrade and tumble dried, but not dry cleaned. Measures 74 centimetres length, 48 centimetres width. It is not bleach safe.

Available from £40.00 at: https://www.bhs.com/hotel-collection-5-star-luxury-white-goose-down-pillow.html

Clean Living Biological Multipurpose Cleaner

eco friendly, Family Life, Home & Garden, Vegan

Disclaimer – We received this item free of charge for the purpose of this review but all words and opinions are our own.

Whilst it may not seem like it when you look out of the window, we are now officially in Spring! It’s been too wet to do much outdoors, so I’ve been busy Spring cleaning and was very pleased to receive the Biological Multipurpose Cleaner Starter Pack from Clean Living which has been well and truly put to the test with a wide variety of cleaning jobs in my house.

I like my house to be clean and smell fresh, but I don’t really like using products that contain harmful chemicals, so I am really pleased that Clean Living use plant based biological formulas instead of harsh chemicals in their products. The products are built using live, friendly microbes which break down dirt, remove nasty odours and also stop mould, bacteria and viruses taking hold. I’ve been trying to reduce the amount of single use plastic and Clean Living offer the perfect solution as they are actively reducing plastic waste by using refillable aluminium bottles instead of the standard plastic trigger spray bottles.

If you are new to Clean Living products ideally you need to purchase one of the starter kits, There are 10 different sets to choose from for cleaning everything from bathrooms, to sports equipment. I have been trying the Biological Multipurpose Cleaner set which contains a 300ml reusable aluminium container, a yellow microfibre cloth and a 30ml Biological Multi-purpose Cleaner concentrate sachet.

To start you simply pour the contents of the sachet into the bottle, top it up with tap water, give it a good shake and you’re ready to go.

The spray bottle is easy to use, giving a good even spray which is easily wiped away with the microfibre cloth. I first used it to clean my bathroom and I was really impressed how easily it removed the build of soap and grime, leaving everything fresh and sparkly clean. The microfibre cloth is lovely and soft and gives a streak free finish on mirrors and my glass shower doors.

The real test of how good it is was when I used it on the cooker after one of my sons had been frying chicken – and like all teenagers didn’t think to wipe it clean straight away! A couple of sprays and a quick wipe and the greasy marks were gone, leaving my cooker looking lovely and clean again.

I am really impressed with the Clean Living starter pack, it’s a great multipurpose cleaner that effectively removes dirt from bathroom taps, kitchen worksurfaces, hobs and more. While slightly more expensive than the everyday supermarket cleaning products they are much better for the environment and kinder to your skin too.

RRP £12.40 and refills are £2.07

Tower Aquajetplus Carpet Washer

Family Life, Home, Home & Garden, kitchen appliances, Spring, Tech

Disclaimer – We received this item free for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

With spring here, most of us are thinking about the Spring Cleaning jobs we have to do, especially as its warm enough to open the windows and get some air into the house! This year I really need to concentrate on getting a proper clean done before the really hot weather when it’s so humid so I was delighted to be able to review the Tower Aquajetplus Carpet Washer.

The Tower Aquajetplus Carpet Washer is a mid-range cleaner which means it isn’t the heavy duty, really expensive carpet cleaner you typically hire for a weekend. Instead, this is a cleaner which can clean a whole carpet or just spot clean heavy use areas and then be put away until you need to use it again 6 months later. This is reflected in the cost, which is usually £119.99 but is on offer at the moment for £79.99.

The carpet washer comes mostly assembled with just the handle to put together with the 3 screws included. You’ll need to read the instructions and have a screwdriver handy to attach it but it literally takes a minute to assemble. The rest of the carpet washer comprises of the body (mostly assembled) and a detachable water tank and dirty water reservoir. They fit together with a click so again, it doesn’t take long. There’s a 5 metre cable to the washer which makes it easier to move around a room and probably fits most UK room sizes.

Using the detergent provided, I filled up the clean water tank with warm tap water. The tank clips back into the midsection and once you make sure the dirty water reservoir is properly attached (I didn’t and water went everywhere!) then you’re good to go. Make sure you dry vacuum the whole area first with your usual vacuum cleaner to get rid of large particles. You can decide whether you want to do a whole room or just the busy areas as it does leave the carpet wet for at least a day. If you have small children around or pets it might be best to do a few rooms and then go away for a weekend without people walking on it and let it dry. Alternatively, you can do smaller areas in the summer when everyone is at work and the heat of the day will dry it quicker.

There is definitely a knack to how you use the washer, and it took me a while and a bit of YouTube to find out how to do it. The Tower Aquajetplus Carpet Washer washes as you push it away from you and then vacuums up the water as you pull it towards you. You have to compress the trigger on the handle as you push it away to deploy the water and detergent otherwise it doesn’t work. It is the backward motion of the washer that vacuums up the dirty water otherwise the water sits in the carpet and takes ages to dry. It takes a few tries on each stretch of carpet to clean and then vacuum the water for the washing to be really effective. Think of it like mowing a lawn – long straight lines at a slow, even speed but instead of just going over the line once, you have to drag the washer backwards over the same line several times.

It took a while for me to get used to the noise too. It is incredibly loud so I would suggest doing the cleaning when the neighbours aren’t home and especially when no one else in the house is on a call or asleep! Ear defenders or noise cancelling headphones were a must for me. The washer isn’t particularly heavy so you don’t need to be super fit or have a lot of strength to use it. The clean water tank isn’t that big (maybe 1 litre?) so that brings the weight down but I found that I had to fill it up several times just for my small landing carpet. As you clean, you can see the dirty water being sucked up into the reservoir so you know it’s working, and it becomes a challenge to see the state of the water at the end! To remove the reservoir, just unclip using the blue bar and remove the plug at the back. Be warned though, if you pick it up at the wrong angle, the water runs out through the inlet and not through the plug!

How did it work? Well after I went over the carpet a few times with an empty water tank and just vacuumed up most of the water, I found that it had cleaned the carpet plus it wasn’t soaked as I imagined. It took about 36 hours to dry, so not the next day but the day after it was dry enough to see that there was a difference in the colour of the carpet as well as the stains.

Tower Aquajetplus Carpet Washer

Pros:

Much cheaper than the hire carpet cleaners and lighter to lift
Easy to store as it’s the same size as a vacuum cleaner
Gives a very good clean of carpets and doesn’t take long to dry afterwards
Great for spot cleaning or heavy use areas and whole rooms if you have time

Cons:

Very noisy!
It takes a while to work out the knack of how to clean in one direction and vacuum in the other
Works better on smaller areas
Fiddly to get the clean water tank and dirty water reservoir lined up without water going everywhere.

Available from £79.99 at:

https://www.towerhousewares.co.uk/carpet-washers/tcw5-aquajetplus-carpet-washer