Green Irene Cleaners: Green, but Do They Really Clean? (Giveaway)

Many of you have written me and asked for green cleaning options that don’t smell like vinegar, are available in your area, or didn’t cost a small fortune to buy on line. It was you folks I had in mind when I talked to Green Irene at the Green Blogger’s Soiree. They offered to send me their Enzymatic Clean Starter Kit for review.

Rosamaria Caballero designed a line a green cleaners with a short list of ingredients without phosphates, alcohol, ammonia, chlorine, artificial fragrances or colors, petroleum-based ingredients and were non-toxic, non-caustic, hypoallergenic and safe to use around her daughters and her Yorkie. Well, as a fellow dog lover I applaud her efforts but the big question is, do the cleaners actually work?

I used the Green Irene Floor Rinse-Free Concentrate, Stainless and Glass Cleaner, Kitchen Cleaner, Bathroom Cleaner, Mildew Stain Eraser, and Stain and Odor Eliminator to clean my condo from top to bottom several times during my test period, including a deep clean when I put the kitchen back together after painting it.

First off is the packaging. The cleaners came with empty spray bottles and packets of concentrated cleaner to cut shipping costs and reduce packaging, with the exception of the floor cleaner, which is in a 16 bottle of concentrate and each ounce is mixed with a gallon of water. I had to fill the bottles with water and add the packet of cleaner. When I run out, I can just buy the packet of cleaner. I like this idea and wish more companies sold refills like this.

Stainless and Glass Cleaner – It cleaned my windows and mirrors without streaks, including Blitzkrieg’s nose prints on the sliding glass patio door and it does it odor free. If you don’t like cleaning your windows, mirrors, and stainless steel with vinegar because of the smell this is your product!

Kitchen Cleaner - Right away I noticed the citrus scent that wasn’t too overpowering or fake smelling. It tore though the dirt on my counter tops from me standing on them to paint, and did very well cleaning stove splatters after I finished painting and had to start cooking dinners again.

Bathroom Cleaner – The Bathroom Cleaner is awesome! The scent is floral but not overpowering. I cleaned the bathroom one weekend and spent the following Saturday in that bathroom sick because I could not keep food down ifyaknowwhatImean. Yes I spent a day with my head in the toilet just to test this cleaner (let's go with that instead of my very real stomach bug.) My toilet still smelled as clean as it did when I cleaned it the previous weekend, which just doesn’t happen when I clean it with vinegar.

Stain and Odor Eliminator – My dirty little secret is that I use a not so friendly odor eliminator because I have a dog, a husband, and the homemade versions don’t work as well for me or are vodka based which I’m not using around Blitzkrieg because he’d try to lap it up even though he’s underage. This one actually works and does not have the too sweet fake floral of my not so friendly odor eliminator. *Love*

Mildew Stain Eraser – Works great on the embarrassing ick in my shower. I appreciate that it doesn’t have the overpowering scent of vinegar that sometimes makes my eyes water when I’m cleaning the shower stall.

Floor Rinse-Free Concentrate – This is the only cleaner that comes premixed. I used it in my automatic floor cleaner and it does wonders. Here’s the embarrassing Before photo of some sticky ick that was underneath my refrigerator.

Would you believe I'm fastidious about cleaning my kitchen floor?

Here’s the After photo. I cleaned the floor with only a minimal effort, like one pass with the floor cleaner instead of several.

It even got the newspaper stuck on the sticky ick on the first pass!

Pretty impressive, huh?

The cleaning job. Not the vinyl flooring. That came with the condo and I am not in love with it.

The only con I can see is that the shipping charges are a flat rate of $4.95 up to orders totaling $100. That could make buying one refill packet of cleaner at $2.50 a tad spendy unless you bundle the order with other items. Green Irene has tons of other great green items for sale so that shouldn’t be such a stretch or maybe that's just me :) You can also use the Autoship option where you can just have packet refills sent to your automatically on a pre-set schedule (either 30, 60 or 90 day intervals) at a special $2 flat rate.


Win It!

Green Irene Green Cleaner Starter Kit Giveaway! *Closed*

The nice Yorkie-loving folks at Green Irene have offered to sponsor a giveaway for the same Enzymatic Clean Starter Kit I received for review.

This Starter Kit of our 6 cleaning products comes with:

• 1 Kitchen Cleaner Sprayer Bottle (empty) and 1 packet refill
• 1 Bathroom Cleaner Sprayer Bottle (empty) and 1 packet refill
• 1 Stainless and Glass Cleaner Sprayer Bottle (empty) and 1 packet refill
• 1 Mildew Stain Eraser Sprayer Bottle (empty) and 1 packet refill
• 1 Odor and Stain Eliminator Sprayer Bottle (empty) and 1 packet refill
• 1 16oz bottle of Rinse-Free Floor Concentrate
• 1 Green Irene re-usable shopping bag (it's really big and handy!)

To enter: Visit Green Irene and leave a comment on Condo Blues telling me which item from their on line catalog is your favorite.

You must leave your email address so I can contact you if you win or your entry will be disqualified. If your email address is available via your Blogger profile that counts. I am not going to do anything mischievous with your email address. I just want to contact you about sending your prize to you if you win because not being able to contact giveaway winners makes me sad.

You can earn extra chances to win by doing any of the following after you’ve made your initial comment on my blog:

1. Blog about my contest with a link back to Condo Blues. Please leave the URL of your blog post so I can verify it.
2. Subscribe to Condo Blues by Email.
3. Subscribe to the Condo Blues RSS feed. 
4. Follow Condo Blues on Twitter AND tweet about the contest. Please leave your user name and the URL of your tweet in your comment so I can verify it. 
5. Become a fan of the Condo Blues Facebook page.

You must leave a separate comment for each method you used to enter the contest. If you choose to use every method of entry, you have up to seven chances to win! I will use a random generator to select the winner.

 The Green Irene Cleaner Giveaway runs from September 26, 2010 – October 10, 2010 12 midnight EST. Good Luck!

Disclaimer: Green Irene sent me a free Enzymatic Clean Starter Kit to facilitate this review. I am not being paid to run this contest or say nice things about the products. All opinions are 100% my own and I'm pretty opinionated. I’m also 100% embarrassed about the mess under my refrigerator (my mom’s going to kill me when she sees the photos) but equally impressed how the Floor Cleaner cleaned it. That’s the truth.