Hi. We’re Home Loving and we’ve got a little story to tell you. Size is a funny thing isn’t it? We’re programmed to go big or go home. We want to make it big. One giant step for man.
But, that’s kind of the attitude that got us into the environmental mess we’re in. So, you might find it refreshing to know that everything about Home Loving is little. We’re a family business. We believe small steps are worthwhile. We also believe in leaving very little evidence of our existence on this wonderful planet. And that’s where our story begins.
Small changes = big changes
We’re Ian and Tina and we started our self-employed business journey as mobile oven cleaners. In truth, we’d both had big jobs before that, but it wasn’t the life for us. Around two years ago, we came up with a little gem of an idea. The idea blossomed and became Home Loving, a little band of superheroes designed to make a big difference to cleaning.
Our mantra is if we all make small changes, big changes happen. And that’s why we value little things. Tiny steps towards a bigger goal.
Now, the irony of our launch being delayed by the biggest, baddest germ in history is not lost on us but we’re still here and we’re certain now’s our time.
It’s the little things
Our story is all about the journey we’ve been on over the past couple of years, finding out about carbon footprints, veganism, being animal friendly, recycling, reducing packaging and lots more.
It’s been an education, full of small steps forward (and a few back again) but we couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve achieved.
They’re our little band of superheroes: four products which, in their own little way, change the way we clean our houses and the way we keep our lovely planet clean too. Meet our Daily Surface Cleaner, Glass Cleaner, Stainless Steel Polish and Cleaning Boost. [link to website]
The process for designing, manufacturing and launching a range of healthy, green, friendly and safe cleaning products has been full of lessons and little details we’d never considered before. There have been some big hurdles – and we haven’t solved everything yet, but we’ve done enough to believe we can launch something which will put big smiles on our customer’s faces.
Most of all, we know it’s about the little things. And we need your help to make sure lots of us do little things because lots of little makes a lot!
A big realisation
One of our biggest learning points was striking the balance between recycling and the carbon footprint of manufacturing. Take our packaging: we started by instinctively avoiding plastic but soon realised a small detail had been overlooked: glass bottles leave a larger carbon footprint than plastic and it’s not so much plastic that’s bad, it’s more the way we use it.
So, we’re not anti-plastic, we’re anti single use plastic. It’s just a small difference, but a very important one.
Another big discovery was that the devil really was in the detail. The tiny elements of what is needed to bring together a product range that stands up to scrutiny involved a huge amount of tiny actions.
Take labels: do you know whether the products you currently use are environment and animal friendly? Do they use vegan glue and water-based ink on their labels? At Home Loving we needed to overcome these tiny challenges in order to get our much-prized vegan certified status, leaping bunny animal friendly badge and environmental credentials. Small marks on our product labels that were the result of huge effort and commitment.
A little bit of knowledge…
Part of our goal is to collaborate with others to do our bit in improving pollution and waste. We’ll be continuing to share more detail of our journey, and why we made the decisions we did, on our blog for those who are interested.
For now though, we have one small request. Order our products and add a small change to the big change that desperately needs to happen.
