I Cleaned My House Using Only Blueland Products for a Month

Dinner’s over, and it’s time to tend to the mess. You wipe down your counters with the last spritz of your surface cleaner, toss the bottle, and try to ignore that nagging feeling as you close the lid on your trash can. But it doesn’t go away. The plastic bottle that spent a few weeks on your counter was made from crude oil that formed over millions of years, and you just can’t shake the feeling that the bottle might spend millions more in a landfill—even if you put it out with the recycling.

This is what Blueland strives to fix with its subscription-based line of eco-friendly cleaning products, all wrapped up in sleek packaging that’s made without single-use plastics. And while I’m sure you'd love to join them in destroying the planet a little bit less, we all know it’s not going to happen if the cleaning power and value can’t stack up to the supermarket stuff. In this Blueland review, I’ll tell you which of their products are worth signing up for and which you can skip.

I was already a fan of Blueland’s plastic-free laundry and dishwasher tablets and have been using them for years, happily doing my part to save humanity with every load. Hyperbolic? Never! But remember the panic over teenagers chowing down on detergent pods? Even if you didn’t join in, you might be unknowingly consuming a lot more laundry pod than you’d care to. That’s because most detergent pods are wrapped in polyvinyl alcohol, or PVA, a dissolvable plastic.

According to a 2021 study (partially funded by Blueland), PVA doesn’t biodegrade as well as it could, with some 11,000 tons of the stuff not spending enough time in wastewater facilities to be properly broken down before the microplastics eventually rejoin our freshwater supply. At this time of writing, the EPA still holds that PVA is safe to use, but I’ve spent enough time around "perfectly safe" leaded gasoline fumes in the ’80s to guess that that position might change.

At 35 cents per tab versus 27 cents–40 cents for competitors’ PVA-laden laundry and dishwasher pods, the value proposition of Blueland is clear: I make absolutely no personal sacrifice in the name of a more earth-conscious lifestyle. But what about the rest of the Blueland line? They have a whole range of eco-friendly cleaning supplies that tackle countertops, armpits, and more. I spent a few weeks testing them to find out if I could swap out all my prior favorites for a 100% Blueland house.

Hand Soap

Blueland’s foaming hand soap starter kit includes a hefty glass “forever bottle” and three dry soap tablets. Dissolve a tablet in the reusable bottle with some tap water, and you’ve got foaming hand soap for weeks. Will I keep using this? Yes. The unscented soap passed the relatively easy bar of “cleans hands,” and the tablet refills are less expensive than other hand soaps I’ve used. That’s one less disposable, single-use plastic bottle going out with my trash.

Dishwasher Tablets and Dish Soap

Much like the hand soap set, the dishwasher detergent starter set comes with an attractive reusable “forever tin” to keep the refill tablets safe and dry. The Blueland dishwasher tablets are made with plant-based ingredients, and they blast away grease as well as anything else I’ve tried.

For my pans, chef’s knives, and dishwasher-fearing novelty mugs, out came Blueland’s dry dish soap dispenser. It looks a bit like a rubbery cocktail shaker, and once I shook out a teeny hill of powdered soap onto a wet sponge, suds formed quickly to handle every dirty dish in the sink. I’ll still want to break out the Bar Keepers Friend to turn blackened pans back to silver, but otherwise count this as another conversion. I look forward to never buying liquid dish soap ever again.

Laundry

I already swear by Blueland’s laundry tablets. They cost much less than any laundry pods I can pick up in my neighborhood, and they’re the first dry detergent that has never failed me in a cold wash cycle.

If only I had been enjoying Blueland’s dryer balls this whole time too. They’re easily my favorite discovery from my time as guinea pig for the Blueland line. Yes, these felted softballs reduce wrinkles, but the real miracle is how much they cut down on dryer time—especially when it comes to heavy, absorbent items like bath and kitchen towels. Goodbye, dryer sheets and extra hours spent at the laundromat.

Toilet Cleaner

Instead of shooting an inverted jug of liquid chemicals around the inner lip of a toilet, Blueland had me plop a fizzing cleaning tablet to dissolve right into the bowl. Many days after a quick and breezy scrubbing, the porcelain of my commode remained white and bright, and it had a lemon-cedar scent that I strongly prefer to the eye-watering aroma of bleach. You’d never know it’s the spot in my house where people are allowed to poop. Another win.

Spray Cleaners

All spray cleaners are mostly water, and none of them are magic. But Blueland’s original product is excellent. I was happy to supply my own tap water to combine with Blueland’s cleaning tablets inside the starter kit’s sturdy, reusable Tritan plastic bottles rather than encouraging the shipment of dilution around the country. The multi-surface cleaner spiffed up my kitchen counters with fewer spritzes and wipe passes than other eco-friendly brands I’ve tried, the bathroom cleaner carries a whiff of eucalyptus and mint, and the glass cleaner left no streaks on my mirrors and even got the smudges off my eyeglasses.

Personal Care

Here is where my “This works great, I’m converted forever” train comes to a stop. Blueland’s body wash comes in their familiar arrangement of powder + water + reusable bottle, but a lather required more soap than I’m used to, and the scent packed a nose wallop so cloying, I rinsed it all off as fast as possible.

The facial cleaner is made of mild hypoallergenic ingredients and worked fine for me, but I don’t have a particularly tricky face to clean, so it’s not much of a trial here. If you’re pickier about face cleanser than I am, take a look at their ingredients, and maybe call your favorite dermatologist for advice.

Cleaning Tools

To round out my test of Blueland cleaning products, I tried the “pop-up sponge” (as in “add water to pop up the thin, dehydrated sponge brick”), the scrub sponge, and what it calls a cloud cloth.

The sponges successfully shuttled around soap and water, scrubbed off stuck-on food, and didn’t fall apart. Good job, sponges. You sponged. The cloud towel is a reusable absorbent cloth that promises to replace up to 1,500 paper towels. Unfortunately, I found it quickly saturated with filth, took more time to clean than the surfaces it wiped off, and was then slow to dry. If I only had to use one paper towel a day, maybe this could replace them, but for now I’ll stick with a stack of dish towels.

The Bottom Line

Even if you aren’t particularly worried about single-use plastic waste or frightening lists of ingredients, Blueland’s offerings are inexpensive and effective, and they take up very little space in your home. Subscribe to the ones you love, save even more money, and enjoy knowing that the packaging won’t pile onto an ever-towering landfill somewhere. All of it can be recycled or composted—just be sure to check the labels to see which empty packs can be turned into dirt in your backyard versus those destined for an industrial composting facility.