Ecocentric Mom: Mom Box, $25/mo, beauty & lifestyle
I paid: $0, with an expired promo
Box retail value $49 , My value $16.5
Ecocentric Mom is a monthly subscription box that sends out natural and eco-minded items for moms and kids. They offer three boxes, one for pregnancy, another for mom & baby, and another for all other moms. This is a review of the latter, the Mom box. Each Mom box comes with five to nine sample and full size items, and include beauty, bath & body, health & wellness and home items and snacks. Boxes are $25 a month, less for longer subscriptions, and you can also subscribe to receive a box every other month.
Items come in a brown box with pink printing. I guess that’s supposed to make it look more ecological, but the box was too big for the items included and more than half of it was packing material (the items shown are sitting on about an inch of paper stuffing). Perhaps they should look into getting a smaller box.
Each box comes with a card listing the items. It includes info on the products, the url of the manufacturer, the price of the full size item and the reason why they chose it. What they don’t include is information as to where the product was made.
My box included seven items: one makeup, three skin-care, two snacks and a little towel. The total value of the box was around $50, but my personal value was closer to $17. That’s because most of the value of the box fell on an eye pencil and a sample of a very expensive cream neither of which won me over. All in all, I would have loved this box if it had a similar retail value but it was made up of lots of other small/inexpensive items or if the main items were more useful. As it is, I unsubscribed. Indeed, I have so many beauty products right now that I’m taking a break from beauty boxes (other than Birchbox).
This is what I got:
Logo a Go Go to Towel by People Towels, $4
This is a towel the size of a wash cloth. It’s made of 100% organic, fair trade cotton, it’s pretty thin and a bit rough. At first I thought it was a kitchen towel.
The idea with these towels is that you will bring them along with you and use them instead of paper towels at public restrooms. The idea is great in theory, but there is a reason why we don’t already do that with regular wash cloths: nobody wants to carry a wet towel in their purse. So this will only work if they both do a good job of drying your hands while somehow not becoming too damp.
I tried it straight out of the box, and it didn’t do a particularly good job of either. But often times towels need to go through the wash once before they become absorbent, so I will give it another try after I wash it. I must say, though, that I like the idea and I will add this or another wash cloth to my purses. Many public bathrooms, after all, have hand driers rather than paper towels, and those never seem to finish the job – this could be great to use as a last step.
Anyway, this was a hit for me.
Lasting Smiles Organic Lip Balm, .15 oz (full size), $5
Lasting Smiles is an organic and fair trade certified lip balm. The company that makes it uses some of the proceeds to fund cleft lip surgery for poor children in the countries from where they source their materials. The lip balms are made in the USA from pretty standard ingredients: coconut, sunflower and jojoba oils, beeswax, shea and cocoa butter with vitamin E added.
My lips are always dry, so I’m always glad to get lip balms. This one I kept to be used as a stocking stuffer (perhaps for myself), so I can’t comment on how much I like it. I do like the cause behind it and it seems fairly priced.
Silk Therapeutics Silk Nourishing Moisturizer, 5 ml sample, $15 value
I’ll admit that what most fascinates me about this moisturizer is not the fact that it actually has silk in it, but that it contains sodium hyaluronate. I had to look that up and it turns out it’s a chemical (salt, whatever) found in found in various connective, epithelial, and neural tissues in the human body. They use it medically to treat knee and eye problems – and fill in wrinkles.
I was thinking of swapping this, given it’s $15 price tag, but I may end up trying it. I’m not impressed by how small the sample is, though it should last for 7-10 days, according to the manufacturer. I’m sure that in that amount of time, it won’t make that much of a difference for me.
Ellovi Mint Chocolate Butter Mini in mint chocolate, .5 oz, $3.5
This moisturizer is made with just six natural ingredients “so pure you can eat them,” mango, Hawaiian coconut, African shea, European cocao, peppermint, and non-GMO corn starch. Of course, I had to try their claim, plus I was hungry. It had a mild minty taste, as one would expect, but lacking sweetness, I don’t think you need to worry about anyone spreading it on their toast. I did try it on chaffed areas of my skin and it worked very nicely.
Update: I’ve been using this butter on my lips after I developed a cold sore, and it’s done a great job of keeping my lips moist while not aggravating my cold sore (which seems to be healing quicker than usual, but that may be a coincidence). Ellovi also makes lip balms, but this butter is significantly softer (lip balms usually have wax to harden them) so it is much more pleasant to apply it to an injured body part. I have also used it on a scratch on my face and it felt very nice.
Made in California.
Ecco Bella Soft Eyeliner Pencil in Cocoa, 1 g (full size), $17.5
This eyeliner gets mixed reviews on the Ecco Bella website. On the plus side, it is made with vegetables waxes and natural ingredients, on the minus side, it doesn’t seem to slide well. In any case, it’s brown and I only use black eyeliners, so it’ll be swapped. It’s made in Mexico.
Bitsy’s Brainfood Smart Cookies in orange chocolate beet, 1 oz, $1
I love the idea of these cookies, but I just hated the flavor. They started well enough, with just a sweetness bomb, but as that went away it left an earthy aftertaste that I didn’t like at all. That said, my oldest daughter was OK eating them, while my youngest one spit it out.
Manitoba Harvest Hemp Hearts, 2 oz, $3
I had never heard of this product before, but after reading reviews of it online, I’m excited to try it. You can add it to salads, oatmeal or other things, and even bake with it. It has some sort of flavor – I haven’t tried it yet -, but most importantly it’s packed with nutrients: protein, magnesium, zinc, iron. It’s pretty high in fat, but you don’t need much.