Green Products Not Friendly To All

You can go "nuts" sometimes in your quest to be more green. (I know, I know, I can hear the groans.)

Living in a rural area, it can be difficult enough just to find green products. Imagine now, how difficult it would be to find green products if you had nut allergies in the family. If you are a label reader (and if you aren't, you should be so that you aren't getting greenwashed), you will know that many, many products contain almond oils, coconut oils, nut shells as exfoliates, nut butters...

Nut allergies are so common these days (they were probably not so much in the past because people just died and no one really knew why, so people with nut allergies didn't last long - no offense to all you out there with allergies). Everyone knows someone who has a nut allergy. I have both a close friend and a relative through marriage that are highly (aka deathly) allergic to nuts. (I will be honest here, it is a bit of a bummer at Christmas having no nuts - so we save all the nuts for when they are not invited...that's when we bring out the good stuff!! Oops, now the secret is out.)

Here is a case in point: The winner of one of my giveaways couldn't use some of the products since her husband was allergic to nuts and they contained, you guessed it...

I wanted to buy cute little handmade soaps for kids, and give them to my little cousins...but couldn't because when I read the label I found them to contain nut oils. Well, I tried. I, of course, just kept and used them myself, and if my cousin is reading this (as she had better be), sorry, but I did really enjoy them
:-)

AND THEN, there was the laundry detergent saga.

I have this crazy cousin (nothing related to this post, she's just generally crazy). She is also very green, and ran out of laundry soap. Living here in the sticks, you can't just go and get it at the local grocery store. So, when she was out of town on a shopping trip (the nearest good shopping is a 2 hour drive), she.....didn't actually remember to get any.

So, she had SOMEONE ELSE pick it up for her, and bring it back home to the Island.

Another friend was then supposed to get it from that friend, but forgot.

Someone else was supposed to pick it up at work, and it got into the wrong car.

Another friend finally ended up with it, and kept forgetting to bring it to her.

(At this point in the story I was counting up how many days had gone by and wondering if her family was having to turn their undies inside out due to lack of clean laundry.)

Finally, one cold winter's night, she had to drive to someone's house, break in, search for the laundry detergent, and bring it home, all under the cover of darkness. Really!

OK, not quite - her friend told her to go to her house and get it, even though she was away, told her the door was unlocked (a nice perk of living in the middle of nowhere on a Rock), told her where it was in the house....no cause for alarm, there was no B & E going on.

So, a week had gone by, and she finally had her laundry soap. I got an email the next day:

Do you want some laundry soap? It contains coconut oil and I can't use it!

I don't think she has any laundry soap yet. I think I am going to avoid visiting until I know for sure that they have been able to do some laundry.

By the way, dear cousin, please don't be upset for me relaying your tale...I am going to the big city today and can pick you some up. I even promise to read the label!