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There’s a whole trend piece cycle right now about laundry becoming a “luxury” category — detergent brands doing scent stories the way perfume houses do, cleaning routines getting rebranded as rituals instead of chores. Is it really though?
Our great grandmothers had their own cleaning solutions — vinegar, castile soap, whatever was in the kitchen. In fact, we talk about these ingredients in our book, Radical Señora Era: before industrial fragrance and a hundred unpronounceable ingredients got involved.
That’s the reason I’ve never enjoyed cleaning – because ingredients were too harsh, and they stung my eyes, or they created an allergic reaction. I have always hated cleaning because I never really trusted the ingredients.
But something happened this past month that really changed my view on cleaning products.
the part that actually changed my routine
I’ve been using Branch Basics for about a month now, and it’s the rare case where a product lives up to its own marketing. A few things I noticed pretty quickly:
- No harsh chemical smell. Not “masked with fragrance” — actually just not there. I have never liked cleaning products with any fragrance. To me, that smells like chemicals. But Branch Basics has a clean, not really there scent, that I just loved (because fragrance is actually just chemicals!).
- No funky odors creeping back. The problem with organic cleaning products is that many of them just don’t work (there’s an old joke about that). But this one actually literally does the job that it’s supposed to do – and does it really well.
- It’s really easy to use. One concentrate, a few bottles, some tabs. No standing in the cleaning aisle cross-referencing which spray does what.
- Learning what Oxygen Boost does has been a game changer: You mean to tell me all I have to do to get stains out is soak a shirt overnight, then run a regular cycle?
It’s the closest thing I’ve found to an easy, and fun approach to home cleaning.
A little soap, a little vinegar, some herbs, maybe citrus peels steeped in something, and that was our great grandma’s cabinet. No dye, no synthetic fragrance doing the heavy lifting of making a room “feel clean,” no ingredient list you needed a chemistry degree to parse.
It feels like Branch Basics is built on that same logic, just formulated: one plant- and mineral-based concentrate that does the job without the chemical smell, the residue, or the stuff you can’t pronounce. It’s what happens when you strip cleaning back down to what actually works, which is exactly what our grandmothers were doing out of necessity long before it had a label.
the swap, if you want it
If you want to try it, our readers get 10% off through our link: branchbasics.com/SENORAERA
This post is done in partnership with Branch Basics; some links are affiliate links.