Dear Student or Subscriber... 📣

Welcome back to our weekly Friday Founder Faves. 🤎

We’re keeping it simple today: just laundry. 🧺

Next week, we’ll cover general household cleaners. 🫧

🕯️If you recall, in our last edition, we explored how chemical industry giants quietly poison our homes and waterways through so-called family brands like Johnson & Johnson, Febreze, Air Wick, and most scented candles or plug-ins.

These products emit toxic VOCs — including formaldehyde and benzene — both known carcinogens that disrupt hormones, inflame airways, and burden your liver’s detox pathways. This is a big deal, so it bore repeating.

You can boil cinnamon sticks (especially Ceylon), cloves, oranges, lemons, limes, or even old apples for a cozy, natural scent that fills your home beautifully.

We try to avoid chemical fragrances like the plague.

Are there exceptions? A few — but they’re rare.

For example, in a future edition, we’ll talk about how to choose cleaner perfumes and body sprays, and how to wear them more safely and responsibly if traditional fragrance is meaningful to you and you don't want to give it up.

And we’ll also share how to safely wear bright, sunny essential oils like bergamot, bitter orange, and mandarin — or sultry florals like rose, jasmine, and ylang-ylang — without triggering photosensitivity or skin irritation.

But as far as household synthetic fragrances go, that’s a different story. 

Once released, they’re nearly impossible to control, quantify, or remove — and the toxicity risk is real. Think liver health, chemical load, and exposure... etc. This really affects pets and children.

So remember the Nike slogan, Just Do It?

Our version for this topic: Just Don’t.

If you missed that critical, endocrine-system-saving issue, check the archive links at the bottom of the email. 🌲

☁️ This week is all about your holistic laundry room.

If you’re not making your own or buying holistic products by now, it's totally understandable, because you're probably swamped.

So, here’s a micro crash course on best products and practices: 🏳️ if I can smell your fabric softener when you pass me on the trail, your body is already waving a white flag. You may not feel it yet, but chemical overload doesn’t stay silent forever.

🧼 Better Choices (a.k.a. What I Use)

Because clothing touches our bodies, it leads to greater chemical exposure that — while incidental — is not harmless. 👕

I used ECOS for decades when it came out in my early 20s, but I don’t like the scent of the bulk-size Costco sells (magnolia?). You can pick up smaller sizes of it in orange scent.

My first choice: Sprouts Citrus Detergent (Whole Foods has their own, too)— if I even use detergent at all. More on that below.

Many brands like Seventh Generation offer natural detergents (or at least more natural). One of our staff likes these pods, which reduce the amount of plastic waste, and are super convenient. Although personally, I am never convinced such a small thing does anything...

How about you? Do you have any faith in pods?

Zero Trace Laundry Detergent Sheets — If you want to take the next step toward earth-friendly and plastic-free, one of our staff thinks these are great, and they have a fragrance-free option, bonus points! 

To be honest, often, I’ll just use sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda). Large Arm & Hammer bags from Costco or Amazon run about $10 and are great for brightening whites and deodorizing clothes. ☀️

For an extra boost, add some borax, which has many other household uses and is just great to have around. Plus, it really gets your clothes clean. I love both Borax and Sodium Bicarbonate. Total faves.

I keep them in a big container in my laundry room, and just add a couple big scoops. 

Bleach Alternatives  

I use hydrogen peroxide as a natural bleach (it’s exactly what’s in “natural” bleaches you buy like Seventh Generation or Greenwise from Publix).

If you do buy a container of natural bleach, you can refill bulk bottles from Costco — it’s cheap and just as, if not more, effective than bleach. 

12% Bulk Hydrogen Peroxide — Or you can mix your own 3% (the standard concentration) from a big bottle of 12% hydrogen peroxide to save space — and so much plastic.

Many Gen-Xers are addicted to bleach. Fine — keep it for emergencies if you must — but gone are the days when bleached cotton sheets are ripped from overuse.

Just use hydrogen peroxide. It’s superior (and smarter and safer).

Bleach smells in a house? Try to let that go. It doesn’t equal clean. Old habits die hard — I know, my mom was the same way — but just because mom did it doesn’t make it ideal or right.

FACT CHECK: 

✅ True (for the most part):

Hydrogen peroxide is safer for you and the environment than chlorine bleach. It breaks down into water and oxygen instead of producing toxic byproducts like dioxins and chlorinated VOCs.

Chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite) can be harsh on fabrics, weaken fibers, and cause yellowing or ripping of cotton sheets over time — so yes, “ripped from overuse” is real.

The “clean smell” of bleach is actually the odor of reactive chlorine compounds — not cleanliness itself. So the point, “Bleach smell ≠ clean,” is absolutely true.

Hydrogen peroxide disinfects well for most household uses (laundry, countertops, mildew, etc.) when given proper contact time.

⚠️ Nuance (not 100% equal in all cases):

Bleach kills more pathogens faster — including hardy spores like C. difficile — so it’s still used in hospitals and water sanitation.

Hydrogen peroxide (3–12%) works very well for general home cleaning, but for major biohazard disinfection (e.g. sewage, mold remediation, or viral outbreaks), bleach is still stronger.

Essential oils are also disinfecting: lemon, thyme, etc. Use those instead if you need a hard-scented cleaner besides alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. 🍋

Here’s a little TikTok we made about it years ago if you want to watch and follow us there.)

Stain Remover

I’m not sure I could live a full life without the convenience of modern stain removers, but if you’re using SHOUT and other toxic ones — then your body is shouting back at you to STOP— it's likely you’ve become desensitized and fully exploited by the chemical industrial complex.

Make no mistake: using these accelerates the decline of health, especially this category, because it’s particularly noxious.

These are my favorite replacements:

Seventh Generation Stain Remover

Biokleen Bac-Out Enzyme Stain Remover

Ecos Stain and Odor Remover

And yes, we have a little TikTok about them too. 😉

For many of us, at this point in evolution, it’s default common sense — intuition — to buy from earth-friendly companies.

But for others it’s still an awareness and logical shift we haven’t yet made in our commitment to ourselves, holism, and nature. 🌸 🌎

What I’m saying is, the bulk footprint of the chemical industrial complex via companies like Tide and SHOUT is 1000× harder on our rivers and waste facilities, and 3000× harder on our bodies.

So here's your loving, gentle nudge to make a small change that collectively, can make a huge difference. 🫂

🎼 Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens 
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens 🎶

🎧 Stay Tuned...

Next week — the rest of the house. We’ll get into other cleaning products around the home and let you sit with this first.

I’ll be calling out a few greenwashing brands (I’m looking at you, Mrs. Meyer's, Koala Eco and Method) and sharing a bonus list of natural ones I just don’t love because their formulas or scents just miss the mark.

I’ll also share how to make your own quickly and efficiently, if you’re so inclined.

 💚 What did you think about this week's edition of Friday Founder Faves?

We’d love to hear from you and feature your faves. Just hit reply and link your faves and let us know what you’re loving—and we’ll share it with the community.

See You Next Friday...

Scroll down for our archives. ⬇️

The Archives

Issue 1: Bath and Moisturizer

Issue 2: Holistic Pet Care

Issue 3: Restorative Sleep

Issue 4: Whole-Food Supplements: Micro-Lesson on Polyphenols & Goitrogens

Issue 5: Natural Alternatives to Home Fragrances: Micro-Lesson on VOCs

Disclaimers & Fine Print Some links in this email are Amazon affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase through them—at no extra cost to you.

It helps support our work, and we only share products we believe fit into a holistic, healthier way of living.

None of the content in this email (or anywhere from Rockwell) should be taken as medical advice. Always do your own research, use common sense, and take full responsibility for what you decide to do with the info shared here.