Is the Branch Basics Premium Starter Kit Really a Replacement for All Your Household Cleaning Products?
The company claims that its product can clean dishes, floors, mirrors, and a lot more. So we put it to work in our homes.
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The chemicals in our cleaning products can often be pretty sketchy. We’re learning new information about the safety (or lack thereof) of many of the ingredients commonly found in our household cleaners. Products with fragrances, especially, have come under fire in recent years because of their potential to pollute the air in our homes with dangerous chemicals like volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
With all of this new information, choosing healthier cleaning products has never been a better choice. Some manufacturers are listening, and the cleaning industry has seen an influx of healthier products for you and the environment. One of those brands that’s popular online is Branch Basics.
How the Branch Basics Concentrate Works
The concept behind the Branch Basics Starter Kit is simple: The company notes that its “powerful and versatile Concentrate replaces all of your cleaning supplies when diluted with water.”
The concentrate is made from just seven ingredients: purified water, decyl glucoside, organic chamomile flower extract, coco-glucoside, sodium citrate, sodium bicarbonate, and sodium phytate. According to the brand’s website, all of the ingredients are plant- and mineral-based, plus the formula is free of sulfates, chlorine, phosphates, phthalates, parabens, and volatile organic compounds.
To use the concentrate, users make their own dilutions in plastic bottles (or glass, for a higher price) that come with the starter kit. The cleaner that requires the least amount of concentrate to create a cleaning solution is the line’s Streak-Free spray, meant to clean glass, mirrors, and windows. To make this solution, the instructions say you only need to add one drop into the 24-fluid-ounce spray bottle of water. The brand recommends using distilled water to avoid mineral rings.
The All-Purpose, Foaming Wash, Bathroom, and Laundry solutions are all made according to marked lines on each cleaner’s respective bottles. Some, like the Bathroom spray, require a little more of the concentrate than others.
After you’ve made all of your bottles, Branch Basics says you can replace “all of your toxic cleaning supplies” with them. One bottle of the concentrate is supposed to be enough to make three bottles each of the All-Purpose, Glass, Foaming Wash, Streak-Free, and Bathroom cleaner, plus one bottle of laundry detergent (for 64 loads of laundry), all for $55 (the initial cost of the kit with the plastic bottles is $75). But in my own calculations, I found this wasn’t the case (more on that below).
According to the Premium Starter Kit user guide, you can use at least one—but often several—of the dilutions to clean a lot of things around the home including wood, natural stones like granite and marble, fruits and vegetables, stainless steel, and dentures and retainers. (Though it caution against using the concentrate on brand-new dentures or dental appliances, instead recommending you wait one month “for the appliance to be cured.”) The actual list of surfaces that each product in the starter kit can clean is extremely extensive, covering just about anything that could possibly need cleaning.
According to the brand, the only surface you shouldn’t clean is a hardwood floor with a natural oil or wax finish. It also warns that you should test a small hidden area of fabric, carpet, upholstery, and wood surfaces before cleaning with the concentrate.
