About Good Default
Good Default is a newsletter and a free, searchable product catalog with a single mission: better household defaults for families who want sane, safer swaps.
It started as a personal list. Every time I found a frying pan without forever chemicals, a sippy cup that wasn’t “BPA-free” marketing theater, or a detergent that didn’t coat my baby’s clothes in undisclosed fragrance chemicals, I wrote it down. Friends asked for the list. The list became GoodDefault.com. This publication is the research behind it.
What you’ll find here
Room-by-room swap guides — kitchen, laundry room, bathroom shelf, kids’ table. What’s in the conventional product, what we use instead, and why.
Label-reading skills — how to spot fragrance loopholes, bisphenol swaps, PFAS tells, and heavy-metal risks in fifteen seconds, so you don’t need to memorize brands.
DIY recipes when DIY wins — and honest “just buy it” calls when it doesn’t.
The catalog — every recommended product, comparable, searchable and filterable at GoodDefault.com.
How products make the list (and get removed)
Every item is something my family actually uses. I prioritize independent testing where it exists (heavy metals, PFAS), full ingredient disclosure, and materials with nothing to leach — glass, stainless steel, wood, uncoated iron. Products come off the list when they reformulate, when better testing emerges, or when something better replaces them.
No sponsored placements, ever. No brand can pay to appear here. Some links are affiliate links — they cost you nothing and support the work, and they never influence what makes the list.
Who writes this
I’m a former engineering director turned stay-at-home mom. The career left me with a habit I can’t shake: I don’t take a claim at face value, I go find the test data. Everything here is researched like an engineering decision and tested in a real house, on a real budget, with a real toddler.
A note on tone
Grace over guilt. The goal is never a ‘perfect’ home — it’s a steadily better one. Swap what you use most, replace things as they run out, and don’t let anyone (including me) make you feel behind.
Contact
Reply to any email — I read every one, and subscriber requests drive what I research next. Product suggestions and corrections are always welcome.
