The Home And Happiness Botanical Handbook: Plant-Based Recipes for a Clean and Healthy Home

by Pip Waller

Infuse your home with herbal happiness using this book of ethical, empowering and eco-friendly botanical recipes. 

Whether you live in a small apartment, in a boat or a van, or in a spacious family abode, a home is a sanctuary that provides us with the space to unwind, recuperate, and look after ourselves. This inspiring vegan and cruelty-free guide teaches you how you can nurture and take pride in your home and self-care routine by creating your own, botanical products, all while protecting the earth. Say no to toxins, and hello to herbal alternatives!

Packed with over 180 non-toxic home cleaning and happiness enhancing recipes, this eco-conscious book is a sustainable, soothing tonic for planet conscious home lovers everywhere. Recipes include eco-friendly laundry and home cleaning products, charms to cleanse the home of bad energy, and miscellaneous oddities such as boot cleaner, harm-free herbal mouse deterrent, and eco sudsy car soap!

By sourcing and mixing your own heavenly, herby lotions and potions, you enable yourself to become more present in everyday tasks, to put more love into what you are doing, and to make the process of looking after your home less onerous, and more mindful. So boost your mood, love our planet, and take pride in nourishing your home and soul with this beautiful book of botanical bounties.

• ISBN13: 9780711256712
• Publish Date: 12 January 2021 (first published 27 October 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: The Ivy Press
• Imprint: Leaping Hare
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 144
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Home And Happiness Botanical Handbook is a technique and recipe collection for plant based cleaning and health products by Pip Waller. Due out 12th Jan 2021 from Quarto on their Leaping Hare imprint, it's 144 pages and will be available in paperback format.

There's (rightly) been a lot of focus on limiting consumption and exposure to harsh household chemicals. This book has a lot of good gentle advice and ideas. It's logically formatted and written in an accessible and understandable style. I was also glad to see useful recipes with zero pseudoscientific emphasis. The book is full of safe and natural suggestions for everyone, no matter what lifestyle they're in. (Not all of us are Martha Stewart, thank goodness). Some of the techniques are more involved and require acquiring/borrowing/bartering some more advanced equipment, but a lot of the tutorials will be achievable by anyone.

The recipes include ingredients which are relatively easy to source and should be easy to find in most places. Recipe ingredients are listed with both metric and American standard measures. The recipes are arranged thematically: household products, room sprays, potpourri, eco-laundry, garden & houseplant helpers, on the road, pet items, inks paints & dyes (spiffy oak gall ink recipe can be found here), and oddities.

The author has also included an herbal, a resource/bibliography list for further reading,and a cross referenced index. The book throughout, including the recipe sections is well illustrated with clear and attractive tutorial and recipe graphics which add a lot of nostalgic retro vibes.

All in all it's a good beginner to intermediate handbook for natural DIY products (including some wood stains which I haven't had the time to try out yet).

Five stars. I would highly recommend this one to SCAdians, re-enactors, calligraphers, maker's groups, library acquisition, homesteaders/smallholders, self-sufficiency fans, and the like.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.