Clean Brands I Use

These are the brands I use for myself, for my children and in my home. I listed them along with what I like and what I don't about each of them. If you know of other clean brands, do let me know and I'll add them to my list.

I created this directory because I wanted something I struggled to find myself: a place where brands aren't automatically recommended because they describe themselves as natural, clean, green, organic or non-toxic. Those words can be useful, but they can also be marketing, and I want to know what sits behind them. My philosophy is based on reducing unnecessary exposure wherever it is reasonably possible, particularly in the products we use repeatedly on our skin, around our children, in our homes, on our clothes and bedding and on the surfaces we touch every day.

I don't believe we need absolute scientific proof that an individual ingredient directly causes a particular disease before we're allowed to question whether we really need it in our lives. Chronic disease develops in a complicated world of genetics, nutrition, stress, metabolism, pollution and countless environmental exposures, often accumulated over decades, which makes simple cause-and-effect relationships extraordinarily difficult to establish. Lack of definitive evidence of harm is not automatically evidence of safety, so where a simpler, well-formulated alternative exists, I'm comfortable applying the precautionary principle.

At the same time, I don't believe that natural automatically means safe or that anything with a chemical-sounding name is dangerous. Water is a chemical, essential oils can irritate and even the gentlest water-based products need appropriate preservation to prevent microbial growth. This directory therefore isn't about pursuing an impossible idea of chemical-free purity. I look at what is actually in a product, why those ingredients are there, how they're produced, what has deliberately been left out, how transparent the company is about its formulations and sourcing and whether meaningful independent certifications support its claims.

I also look beyond what brands say about themselves. I search independent customer experiences, certification bodies, company records, ethical assessments, product testing and credible research, looking for recurring complaints, controversies, formulation issues or inconsistencies that the marketing pages understandably won't tell me about. Environmental responsibility matters too: organic and regenerative farming, sustainable sourcing, animal welfare, biodiversity, manufacturing, packaging, refillability and what happens to a product after we've finished using it are all part of the same picture.

I don't expect perfection and an Approved Brand isn't an endorsement of every single product it makes. There will always be compromises, and I will say what I don't like as openly as what I do. These are simply the companies that, after looking beneath the marketing, I believe are making meaningfully better choices than the conventional alternatives and are moving in the direction I want my own home and lifestyle to move: fewer unnecessary ingredients, greater transparency, lower environmental impact and products chosen thoughtfully rather than simply because somebody put the word natural on the label.