Good Default: Why This Publication Exists
A searchable catalog of better household defaults, a newsletter of practical swaps, and zero sponsored placements. Welcome!
A few years ago I started keeping a list. Every time I found a frying pan that wasn’t shedding forever chemicals, a sippy cup that wasn’t ‘BPA-free’ plastic theater, or a laundry detergent that didn’t perfume my baby’s clothes with a legal black box of undisclosed chemicals — it went on the list. Friends started asking for it. The list became a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet became GoodDefault.com, and now the site has grown into this: a publication for the research behind the list.
What you’ll get here
Room-by-room swap guides. The kitchen, the laundry room, the bathroom shelf, the kids’ table. Each post explains what’s actually in the conventional products — fragrance loopholes, bisphenol musical chairs, PFAS coatings — and exactly what we replaced them with, after testing them in a real house with a real toddler.
Label-reading skills. I’d rather teach you to spot the problem in fifteen seconds at the store than have you memorize a hundred brand names. Posts like the toddler-snack label guide are about making you the expert.
DIY recipes when DIY genuinely wins. Tallow lip balm, whipped body butter, a two-ingredient all-purpose spray. When the homemade version is cheaper, cleaner, and takes twenty minutes, I’ll show you. When it’s not worth it, I’ll say that too.
The catalog, always. Every product mentioned in any post lives in the free, searchable catalog at GoodDefault.com — filterable by category, with notes on why each item made the cut.
What you won’t get
No sponsored placements, ever. Some links are affiliate links (they cost you nothing and help keep this running — I’ll always tell you), but no brand can pay to be on the list, and products get removed when they reformulate or when better testing comes out. I use everything I recommend. This list started as the one I made for my own family; it still is.
Who I am
I’m a former engineering director turned stay-at-home mom, which means I bring a slightly unreasonable level of research rigor to questions like ‘which salt has the least lead in it.’ Everything here gets tested in a real house, on a real budget, with a real toddler. This publication stays focused: better household defaults, one practical swap at a time.
Start here
If you’re new, these three posts cover the biggest wins first: Hidden Toxins in Your Skincare, The Truth About BPA-Free Plastics, and The Best Budget Glass Food Storage.
Grace over guilt, always. You don’t have to fix your whole house this week — you just have to make the next swap.