Articles By

Katrina

Why you can trust what I write here

I’m Katrina. I’m a primary school teacher, a mum of two boys, and one half of The Eco-Friendly Life with my husband Al. We’re in Australia, and we write for readers everywhere — which means we check what’s actually available where you are rather than assuming everyone shops in the same country we do.

Teaching primary school shapes how I write. Spend enough years explaining things to young children and you lose patience with jargon very quickly. If a claim can’t be made plain, it usually isn’t properly understood yet — by me, or by whoever wrote it in the first place.

I want to be clear about what I am and what I’m not. I’m not a sustainability consultant, a dermatologist, a nutritionist or a textile scientist. Where a subject genuinely needs one, I’ll point you to the primary source and to a professional rather than pretend that reading about it makes me qualified.

What I do have is a decade of working through this in a real house with real children. We started where most people start — ordinary supermarket products, chosen on price and habit. Then we went through a phase of making things ourselves, which worked for some jobs and absolutely didn’t for others. Now we buy selectively, after checking the claims rather than trusting the label.

Two boys five years apart meant making most parenting decisions twice, with a real gap between them. Cloth and disposables. The shampoo bar that worked, after three that didn’t. Buying considerably less the second time, having learned how much of it goes barely used.

That progression is the useful part, and it’s why I write here. Most people are somewhere on it.

If something I’ve written is wrong, please tell me by emailing support@theecofriendlylife.com.

I’d genuinely rather fix it than defend it.

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