How She Does It: HAVEN Cleaning Products Founder Kayce Thompson-Russ

I'm a huge admirer of new cleaning products line Haven; on the inside, they're filled with powerful yet benign cleaning ingredients, and on the outside, they've got some seriously well-designed packaging. Haven was just featured in New York magazine's Best Bets, so I know I'm not the only one looking for eco-friendly products that mean serious business when it comes to cleaning up. Kayce's delightful concoctions bust dirt & grime with 100% safe, natural ingredients like baking soda, castile soap, citric acid, witch hazel, and vegetable glycerin.

This special How She Does It offers a look into Kayce's inspirations, motivations, and mission to make cleaning products truly clean. 

You come from a family of farmers who spent their lives growing whole ingredients and sharing them with the community, and you grew up watching them lead sustainable, natural lives. What’s the biggest lesson they taught you, and how does it fit into what you do every day at Haven?

The biggest lesson they taught me was that the most important and meaningful parts of life are the relationships you build with others through kind, selfless acts. They're really the reason why I'm so connected to the idea of home. Home is about so much more than personal possessions, it's a fundamentally important feeling. It's a space where you're most comfortable and most like yourself because it's carefully filled with the people and things you love. That's why it was important to me to create products that honored the safety of this space by caring for it with natural ingredients and making it easy to lighten the environmental footprint your home leaves behind.

Haven's Clean House Starter Kit includes All Purpose Cleaner, Air & Linen Spray, Furniture Polish, Hand + Dish Soap, Scrub, Canvas Cleaning Tote, and Pop Up Sponges

Though many self-described green products are better than their mainstream counterparts, they still leave much to be desired ingredient-wise. What does Haven leave out that others might be frustrated to find other ‘green’ products leave in?

While I respect chemistry for lots of reasons, I feel that the synthetically produced versions of the natural ingredients we've been using for thousands of years, like soap, are unnecessary. It's much cheaper to put irritating synthetic soap (like Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and its variations) in a product than to buy the organic natural oils and saponify them. Although we've been making it the natural way for so long and know that the resulting product doesn't hurt us at all, we're finding that the longterm effects of constant exposure to synthetics are wreaking havoc on our health.

Another major problem is the use of synthetic fragrance. While reading "fragrance" as an ingredient can seem benign, loose labeling regulations allow this one little ingredient to hide lots and lots of other secret, petroleum-derived ingredients that can trigger asthma, allergies and skin sensitivities, as well as pose serious cancer risks. Several "green" brands use synthetic fragrances and the most common complaint I hear from people who are adopting Haven products are past woes related to overpowering chemical scents that caused severe irritations.

 My hope is that I can not only provide people with incredibly natural products but help them learn to identify and avoid potentially hazardous ingredients on their own.

 I think a lot of people are still stuck on the idea that all of those crazy-sounding chemicals that have been created in a lab are somehow better at cleaning than natural ingredients, and that totally natural cleaners don’t work as well. Why do you think this is, and what’s your take? 

We're a society of very busy people, so we've come to rely on prepared products to do most of the work for us and our expectations of these products are very high. We're accustomed to living this life of getting what we want immediately with very minimal effort and are constantly blasted with advertising for products that promise to, say, melt soap scum off your shower without any scrubbing. 

For commercial shower cleaners, that price comes in the form of gasping desperately for air and running maniacally in and out of the bathroom to get away from the fumes that result from one "cleaning" session. 

While the chemicals might do what they say they'll do, these are incredibly toxic products and I honestly can't understand how it's legal to manufacture and sell what is essentially poison and call it a cleaning solution. These ingredients aren't necessary if you're willing to exert the smallest amount of effort and I think that's where people's perception of green products gets skewed. We want the product to do all the work for us but, as a result, we've come to have a unsustainable reliance on very dangerous chemicals.

It works even better than a commercial cleaner and takes me half the time because I'm not running between the bathroom and an open window. This cost/benefit analysis is something we don't really take the time to do in our daily lives but that's changing. More people are beginning to take stock and it's an incredibly exciting time. I'm working hard to make Haven a part of the catalyst that brings this wider cultural shift.

Haven's Kitchen + Bath Soap set is a fantastic gift - it comes with beautiful recycled amber glass dispensers that can be used forever
 

The time for spring-cleaning is here! What are your best tips for getting the job done?
I think that spring cleaning (and cleaning in general) can definitely be enjoyable! My advice for getting your seasonal cleaning done is to focus on organizing and purging in a sustainable way, utilizing items you already have in your home creatively instead of tossing out old things and buying new ones. That's how we accumulate so much stuff to begin with!

Put your energy into up-cycling, recycling and donating. See if a coat of low-VOC paint or cool new pull knobs will refresh an old piece of furniture that you can use in a new way. If you do want to get rid of things, give them a shot at new life by calling The Salvation Army and scheduling a time for them to pick up your old items for free.

You can also make the purge fun by organizing a great clothing swap with friends. A recent swap I went to incorporated home goods in the mix and it was an awesome, fresh new spin. Finally, try not to overwhelm yourself by cleaning and organizing everything at once; tackle one or two manageable projects each weekend and you'll be amazed what you can accomplish in a month!

Haven's All Purpose Lemon & Mint cleaner

Starting your own business is an act of bravery! What’s one sign you’ve gotten lately that you’re on the right track?

I think any entrepreneur's biggest fear is that people won't care all that much about what you're doing, that you'll be the only person passionate about the idea. For me, the most amazing part of this journey has been the support of my customers. That people can get really jazzed up about home care products has been a clear indication to me that I was doing something right.

While it's important that the products are beautiful, natural and effective, what people really connect with is the soul behind these goods and values that they can align themselves with. They can see that I'm working hard to build a company that's incredibly sustainable and focused on making the world a safer place and have given me a support network that's been, far and away, the most rewarding part of founding Haven. I no longer feel like I'm going it alone and there's no bigger motivator than that.

You are one crafty lady – I love your blog! What’s a favorite DIY you’ve done lately? 

Why thank you! The most fun part of my job is definitely the creation I get to do every day. It's exhilarating to learn how to make something new, especially when it ends up being way easier than you ever expected it to be.

While some products do require a new skill set to get right, other things are so basic that it blows you away. I recently started making my own chap stick (be on the lookout for a new blog post!) and will never go back to a commercial brand. It took all of 15 minutes and four ingredients to make and I'm already fielding requests from friends who want their own batch.

What do you guys think? I know I was relieved when I ditched the Tilex and could finally breathe freely while cleaning the bathroom.

I couldn't agree with Kayce's approach to her business - and to life - more! Here's to a truly clean home. Visit HavenClean.com to purchase Kayce's goodies and read her blog.

 

Comments

[Noble]

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