One of Oprah's Favorites: Review of Shaklee's Get Clean Line

I must first admit that I do have experience with Shaklee products. I was using Shaklee products over 30 years ago, but was too young to tell any difference between them and any store brand. I was guided by my mother who told me they were much better for me and the environment. That was ok for me. Hey, I was just a kid! After all what did I care about the environment at 7 years old- I just wanted to go out and play baseball.

I recently was reintroduced to Shaklee after it had appeared on Oprah's Going Green show last April. You can catch a glimpse of it HERE . I was impressed that the company had come such a long way. The story of Roger and Sloan Barnett's son's bout with asthma touched me, as my son has battled asthma also. I bought the Get Clean pack and started using it right away. I had not really thought about the existence of toxins in my home until that show. It was eye opening for me. In fact Oprah did another show on Toxins in the home with Dr Oz - see a glimpse HERE . Both shows gave great information about how to keep healthy and help the environment as well.

When the Get Clean pack came in the mail, yes it was delivered right to my door, I was downright excited. After all, I was going to be getting my family healthy and helping the evironment at the same time. The total cost for the entire pack was about $170. with shipping, it seemed a little expensive for cleaners, but I figured I was doing my part to help the world so I bit the bullet. Shaklee makes the claim that the average family will save over $3000 by buying this pack. WOW! that $170 sounds like chicken feed. I was a little skeptical about that claim, I mean after all $3000 worth of cleaning products is a lot of products and the average family doesn't spend anywhere near that on a yearly basis. On the Shaklee Get Clean Site it documents how it arrived at that figure. In a nutshell- the cleaning power you get from your new environmentally safe GET CLEAN pack is equal to:

60 Bottles of Fantastik
30 Bottles of Mop-N-Glo
728 Bottles of Windex
1 Bottle of Woolite
1 Container of Clorox wipes
1 Bottle of Soft Scrub
2.5 Boxes of Cascade
2 Boxes of Tide
3 Bottles of Downey
1 Box of Bouce

And they also claim by using highly concentrated products you will be reducing the packaging that goes into the landfills> The site says "When you purchase the Get Clean Starter Kit instead of ready-to-use products, you're helping reduce over 100 pounds of packaging waste from landfills and eliminating 248 pounds of greenhouse gases - this is the environmental equivalent of planting 10 trees."

OK, OK, I was sold on the savings and the environmental safety. After all, even if I reduced their $3000 claim by 75% I still come out with $750. A bargain. Now I needed to come up to the real test. This would be the bellweather test- MY WIFE. My wife is a terrific mother and my best friend, but she is a die hard Tide user. She would rather not mess with anything she gets in the mail. If she can't get it at the local market- she doesn't want it. I can appreciate that, she is a busy mother of 4 kids that need to be taken here and there and she has no time to plan to order laundry detergent. After the family meeting about what I was doing, she begrudgingly agreed to let me invade her space with my 'green stuff' just to see if I could actually do the laundry.

After using the products I was pleasantly surprised, and so was my wife, as to how well they worked. They were actually on par with our cleaners that we were used to. The first thing I did notice is that Shaklee is right when they say a little goes a long way. The Basic H2, which seems to be Oprah's favorite, can seem to last forever. It actually does have almost 1000 uses and all it takes is a few drops in 16 ounces of water. It can actually be used for Glass cleaner, moppng the floors, cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen. Best of all THERE IS NO ODOR! No more holding your breath when you are scrubbing those shower walls.

Realizing that these types of cleaners were an available alternative to the toxic products that most people use prompted me to form a group called Parents Against Toxins in the Home or PATH for short. Why isn't everyone using products like these that are better for them and better for the environment? My guess is that people are just not aware. The good news is that with Oprah and her Going Green movement, these products are getting more attention and more people are becoming aware.

I would strongly recommend Shaklee's Get Clean line as a safer alternative to the toxic products that are currently in your home. If you already use some of the non-toxic cleaners on the market, good for you, we all need to do our part to make this a non-toxic environment.