Lakeland Spring 2012 “around the home” catalog – Preview

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The latest Spring 2012 catalog from Lakeland is about to drop thought your letterboxes. As a writer I have had the privilege to get mine earlier than the rest for a sneak preview.

This catalog is, primarily, geared up to one of the main annual tasks around the home in Spring, namely that of “Spring Cleaning”.

This is – once again – a catalog jam-packed full with great ideas and tools, with a fair few, once again too, falling in one way or the other under the “green” and “eco” label; at least as far as I am concerned.

Cleaning is not a task that most people – aside from, maybe, professional cleaners – relish and spring cleaning, the big clean, definitely falls into that category of not relished tasks. Therefore anything that can make that task and that of daily cleaning easier, less arduous and more fun is, I am sure, most welcome by all.

As said, every aspect of cleaning is covered, as are related tasks, from floor and carpet sweeping and cleaning, and keeping them all clean, via furniture care, dish washing to laundry and more.

On the “green” side we find – on page 11 – help with our daily floor and carpet sweeping tasks in the form of the Bissell® Natural Sweep manual carpet sweeper, as well as in the form of the Gtech® EcoCharge Floor Sweeper, the SW20, reviewed some time late last year in the “pages” of this here Blog.

On page 18 and 19 you will find some great looking brushes made from natural materials, that is to say goats' hair, and real wood in two out of three instance, whether it is for dusting your Venetian blinds, your radiators or for remopving cobwebs.

Micofiber cloths are everywhere and the E-Cloth range, which seems to be expanding further each and every time (or is that just me?) can be found on page 26 and 27 of the catalog.

New in Lakeland's range in this catalog is the Astonish® cleaning paste which, so I understand, does a great job in cleaning while being gentle to hands and the environment. This can be found on page 32.

This is but a small selection of what caught my attention and only a very tiny selection of what can be found in the catalog.

Along with that catalog arrived a Spring 2012 Gift Ideas catalog and there will be lots of it in there that, I am sure, will make you smile.

One things that caught my attention in that catalog as to green and eco if the Power 'N Go S-200 Solar Panel on page 28. I shall try to endeavor to get my hands on an example as sample for a review. So keep a look out for that.

© 2012

Lakeland Late Spring 09 Catalog just arrived

A little preview

by Michael Smith

Lakeland's Late Spring 09 catalog dropped onto my doormat here the other day and it is brim full with great ideas for the home, and there are also lots of items on how to green your home as well, though we are not talking paint here.

In the “laundry” section of the catalog we have Ecozone's Ecoballs, Soap Nuts and a few other items of environmental friendly products for doing the laundry. A number of non-power drying solutions for the laundry can be found in that section too, such as proper clotheslines and the fold up things. Drying clothes the natural way outside in wind and sun is the best way to go, for both your clothes and the environment.

We then come to the kitchen section where we encounter the Ecoclean range of cleaning products and then the various compost crocks and compost caddies, etc. intended to keep veggie peelings and such out of the landfill by redirecting them to to your composter and finally into your garden.

In addition to that here we encounter also the Eco-Blend bin liners and also the collection of recycling bags intended to separate your cans, bottles, paper, etc.

Further then in the “clean & protect” section of the catalog the Eco marked Mabu multicloths also look and sound rather impressive.

In this section you can also find some of the good old tried and tested cleaners, such as, for instance, “Bartender's Friend” and many others.

Then we finally arrive at the “living” section where the first green thing one encounters are the IntelliPanels designed to control all your TV, Multimedia and PC power, taking them off standby when you turn the screen off, and with the PC, I assume, this to mean the PC, which then will turn off all the peripherals plugged into the strip. We all know how important it is, I am sure, to turn off the appliances and not leave them on standby. Laving TVs and PCs and such on standby costs a staggering £740 million a year all told. That is a lot of energy that is wasted. Well, worry no more. Help is at hand.

Further on in this section we then find the environmentally friendly ways of protecting clothes, and especially wool, against moths by means of natural wool protector sachets and cedar wood balls for moth protection. Moths do not like certain smells and will therefore no damage the clothes. Cedar smell, on the other hand, is rather pleasant, in my opinion, to the human nose. Those can be found on page 67 of the catalog.

On page 84 and still in the same “living” section we then find a nice selection of different reusable shopping bags, including the old, as in from the good old days, shopping net or string bag.

As I have said in a previous article, the string bag, the shopping net, so familiar in the days of my childhood, is sure making a comeback and ti was about time too that we cam back to our senses and did what our parents and grandparents did when they went shopping. They took along a bag or two or even more for the very purpose of buying the supplies. This was, I know, before the advent of the free plastic bag.

And this, folks, is just the green items in that catalog. It is jam-packed with great ideas for the home, from laundry to living and everything in between.

© M Smith (Veshengro), 2009
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