Toothpaste Fail and a Giveaway

Around our house, we do a lot of things naturally. We eat a mostly organic/whole foods diet, we use natural cleaning products, and we don't take much medicine. One area of our lives I haven't overhauled (yet!) is toiletries. This is partly because I can get most of our shampoo, toothpaste, etc., for free or better using the CVS Extra Care Bucks program, and partly because I'm just used to conventional toiletries.

Lately, I have been looking into switching things over, beginning with toothpaste. I have been using natural, fluoride-free toothpaste for Katie as long as I've been brushing her teeth, but Ben and I use the regular ol' sweet fluoride toothpaste for ourselves. I've read about the problems with using these kinds of tooth pastes, but just hadn't gone ahead and made the change.

Katie recently discovered she can carry a stool around the house and reach all kinds of things she couldn't reach before. And, until the other day when I caught her swallowing toothpaste from a tube she had gotten off the bathroom counter, I thought I had just about everything 'bad' out of her reach. I wasn't sure how much she had gotten, though it couldn't have been much since I'd only had her out of my sight for a very short while. But, I was concerned nonetheless and went ahead and called the poison control center (for the first time ever). They said all I needed to do was give her some milk and she should be fine. The lady said the calcium in the milk binds with the fluoride and keeps it from being absorbed. Thankfully, Katie loves milk and that was that.

After that incident, I was especially glad when a box arrived from Tropical Traditions containing my next product to review--all natural teeth cleaner! I have used it, and it's definitely different than regular toothpaste. It tastes WAY different--it's not very sweet at all. When I first had it in my mouth, I honestly thought it tasted terrible, but within one tooth-brushing the taste grew on me and I don't mind it at all. It also doesn't foam up in your mouth like regular toothpaste, but as it turns out, foamy-ness isn't at all necessary to get your teeth clean. It does the job perfectly well, leaves your mouth feeling fresh and clean, AND if your toddler happens to swallow it, there's no need to call the poison control center. All the ingredients in it are perfectly safe for human consumption.

Tropical Traditions has kindly offered to send one of y'all some of their organic teeth cleaner to try for yourselves! To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post. The giveaway will be open until next Thursday, December 9.

For additional entries, you can follow me on twitter (@mrsmurch), follow Tropical Traditions on twitter (@TropTraditions), tweet about this giveaway and include @mrsmurch and @troptraditions (and a link to this post!), subscribe to the Tropical Traditions newsletter, and/or subscribe to the Covenant Homemaking RSS Feed. Please leave a separate comment for each entry!

Disclaimer: Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose.  Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway in return for the free product.