You might know this. In the drugstore you turn a cream around and read the INCI. Over the years you have learned what you want in it and what you would rather avoid. And then you come home, pick up the cleaner for the kitchen counter and find out that you do not know what you are using to wipe the board on which you will soon be slicing bread.

This question kept us awake at night. And the answer to it is the reason why Handymade is entering the world of eco-friendly household care.

It started with cosmetics

You have known Handymade for years as a world of cosmetic raw materials. We sell oils, butters and active ingredients and from the beginning we have been adding something extra: an explanation. We taught you to read cosmetic INCI and to understand what each component does in the formulation. Many of you now blend your own creams and can no longer be fooled by marketing tricks in the drugstore.

One firm principle grew out of this work. A product is only as good as its honest formulation. Not the packaging. Not the advertising. The formulation.

A cream has to tell you everything. A cleaner does not have to.

When we applied this principle to the shelf with cleaning products, we were in for a surprise. The difference you feel when you turn the bottle around is not a coincidence, it is how the rules are set. European legislation requires cosmetics to state every single ingredient on the packaging. For cleaning products, categories and percentage ranges are enough, something like “less than 5 % non-ionic surfactants”. The manufacturer is obliged to publish the full list of ingredients on their website, but hardly anyone looks for it there and even fewer people actually find it.

The result? You know everything about the cream you apply to your face. About the product you use to wash the dishes you eat from, you know almost nothing. Yet dishes from the dishwasher are the only surface in the home that we eat directly from. Clothing washed in a laundry gel is worn on the skin from morning to evening. We sleep all night in our bed linen.

For us, this difference stopped making sense. There is no good reason for it. Only habit.

The same philosophy, a new category

We have been working internally on the development of cleaning products in our laboratory for two years now. And we did not start from zero: the chemistry of cleaning is closer to cosmetic chemistry than it seems, and we know many ingredients from our own formulations intimately. We also use mild surfactants that cleanse gently and are biodegradable in our new household products. Compatibility of ingredients, chelating systems, stable pH or preservation at exactly the dosage the product needs: principles we have applied in cosmetics for years are now entering household care.

In practice, this means three commitments. With every product you will find a complete list of ingredients with an explanation of why each one is there, not buried in a PDF at the end of the internet, but directly next to the product. We do not put anything into the formulation without a real function, no ingredients just to make up the numbers. And if a product contains a preservative, you will know why right next to it: a water-based product would spoil without it, so we preserve exactly at the dosage that is necessary and we always name the ingredient.

One word on the label is not always the same thing

When reading the composition, it is good to know one more thing. Even if two products state the same ingredient, it does not mean that the same thing is in them. The same raw material is produced in different qualities: technical grade from large-volume chemistry and premium quality with documentation look exactly the same in the ingredient list. They differ in purity, origin of the inputs and content of impurities. One word on the label, in the formulation two different worlds.

Raw materials are our home turf. We have been buying them and comparing suppliers for years, so we know for each one what is standard and what is top quality. We choose the latter for our formulations: glycerin in pharmaceutical quality, mild sugar surfactants, enzymes from a European manufacturer among the world’s leaders. And for every raw material we have documentation down to the specific batch.

Many of these raw materials can also be purchased from us individually. Our cleaning products therefore do not originate from what was cheapest in the price list, but from what we trust so much that we sell it under our own name. That is the added value you cannot buy in a regular drugstore.

Why every line has a Pure version

Try to count how many scents you have already encountered today. Shower gel, shampoo, fabric softener on your T-shirt, cleaner in the kitchen, candle in the living room. Each one is pleasant on its own. Together, however, they create a constant noise that we no longer even realise, and yet it accompanies us all day and affects how we feel.

That is why we decided that every one of our lines will have a Pure version, completely without fragrance. For people who want fewer scents. For sensitive households. Also for those who simply want their perfume to have no competition in the wardrobe. And where we do add fragrance, we dose it sparingly and thoughtfully: with the ironing spray we adjusted the fragrance so that the fragrance allergens remained below the threshold of mandatory declaration.

Fragrance should be a choice, not a default setting.

A fine mist with a wheat protein copolymer smooths the fibres, the iron glides more easily and ironing is shorter. The entire composition fits into one sentence: demineralised water, a protein component that does the main work, plant-based ethanol for quick drying, a citrate system for stable pH and a preservative.

Available in three versions: Pure without fragrance, Cotton Dream and Summer Vibe.

That is exactly why we took great care with it. We are the only ones to offer an ironing spray with 98 % content of ingredients of natural origin, the Pure version even has 99 %. For each ingredient we can say why it is there. This is exactly what cleaning chemistry according to Handymade looks like.

This is just the beginning

We have a complete range of household cleaning products ready in the laboratory. We will be introducing and presenting them gradually, next we will look at the dishwasher and at laundry. We will show you each product together with the raw materials from which it was created: ingredient by ingredient.

Frequently Asked Questions

A promise to conclude

We will not be the cheapest shelf in the drugstore and we do not want to be. We promise something else: with every bottle from Handymade you will know what is in it and why. Feel free to start with a small step, even with one product, and judge for yourself whether an honest formulation can also be felt in the result. And do not forget to let us know how satisfied you were with it.