The first brand we tried was Mrs. Meyer’s and we immediately fell in love!

The Surface Scrub was the first MM product we actually bought - in the Lavender scent.  Lea really liked it, but she is a big fan of serious scrubbing – she cleans a mean shower, let me tell you!  Personally, while I liked the scent, I am really not a big fan of powder cleaners, so I just couldn’t get behind this product whole-heartedly.  I even left it behind in our bathroom closet when we moved out – but maybe it will inspire whoever buys our house (please oh please, someone buy our house) to try green cleaners, too! 

After the surface scrub, we tried the Counter Top Spray (again in Lavender scent) – and this product I absolutely LOVE!  I love the scent, which is clean and fresh but not overpowering.  Surprisingly even Lea likes it and normally she hates Lavender or anything even remotely flowery smelling!  More importantly, it cleans great and doesn’t leave behind any nasty chemical smells or residue.  I love knowing that the ingredients are natural and safe for the environment.  I used this stuff everywhere – kitchen, bathroom, random cleaning – and it always worked great. 

In fact, we used this so often that we ran out soon enough!  But rather than buy another bottle of the Counter Top Spray, this time we bought a big bottle of the All Purpose Cleaner.  This option is so cost-effective, we just refill our spray bottle using a little bit of the cleaner and water, and it works just as well as the spray.  The All Purpose Cleaner has instructions on the proportions to use, and this way we don’t have to buy multiple bottles (that we can’t recycle here in Alaska).  I wish all the products I buy for home and bath could be refillable this way!

There has been some concern in the past about MM and parabens but they haven’t used them in their products since January 2007 which is great news!

When we moved to Alaska, we were concerned about whether we would ever find our coveted cleaner again – but lo and behold we found it in several locations including our grocery stores as well as the local feed store (sells dogfood etc.). The feed store sells more MM products than we ever knew existed, so score one for Alaska! We may not have recycling but at least we can clean green.

 This one:

SIGG 1.0L Lifestyle 2006 Series I – Reusable Bottle - in the “curves (black)” style

Purchased (of course) from reusablebags.com – can’t say enough good things about that site!

Anyhoo – back to the product review.  I really love this bottle so far, and I’m happy with my choice.  I chose the 1.0-liter size, which holds 33oz – because it was the same size as my Nalgene bottles were (32oz).  SIGG carries a lot more colors and styles in their 0.6L (20.4oz) size, but I thought that would be too small for me.  I was happy to find a design that I liked in the 1.0L size, because I did want something fun with style and personality.

Here are my other thoughts on this bottle so far:

Pros:
- Good size – not too big and still holds plenty of water
- Stays cold enough for me (but I have developed cold sensitivity due to some recent dental work, so this isn’t as big a priority for me as it used to be)
- Water tastes great!  No icky plastic flavors – actually, no strange flavors, ever!
- Smaller mouth than the Nalgenes I had before – easier to drink from
- Lightweight aluminum

Cons:
- Can’t fit ice cubes in it (but see above – I haven’t really tried yet due to my coldness issues)
- For some reason, I keep forgetting to close the darn thing completely when I put it in my bag to take home after work – so end up with a bag full ‘o water!  However, I really don’t think this is the bottle’s fault, we should probably chalk this up to “user error” as they say in my industry (or PBKAC, or ID10T error, or… choose your clever acronym!)

All in all, I’m very pleased with this SIGG bottle and would definitely recommend them and/or buy another one in the future!

S0 – if you are still using those plastic disposable water bottles as your method of staying hydrated all day – consider your options and remember to REUSE! 
 

After banning nalgene bottle use (I still have them if anyone knows any fun things to do with them) I lived on bottled water. I know bottled water is bad – bad for you and bad for the environment – but it was the only way I could drink water. To my defense I would buy a large quantity of it and reuse the bottles for about a month before replacing them. Not an ideal solution but I’m a heavy water drinker (I also don’t drink the tap water from work) and I needed a temporary solution.

When we bought our wonderful reusable bags we both bought reusable metal water bottles too. I bought a 40 oz. Kleen Kanteen (because it was the biggest) and carmen got a Sigg bottle.

So far my bottle has several pros and cons.

Pros:

- holds a lot of water

- seems to stay colder longer than carmen’s Sigg bottle

Cons:

- water sometimes tastes metallic

- fell on the ground today when I got out of the car and got pretty dented which made me sad, especially since it’s steel!

- I don’t like the loopy lid but it’s only cosmetic and there are replacements available

Overall, I like my bottle a lot. One bottle usually lasts me most of the day, which is important, and it stays cold for about 5 hours without any ice in it.