Repell-em Blog

Repell-em is undergoing a name change:  soon we will be known as Eco-Smart Plastics.

We are, as you no doubt know, a company that makes 100% natural, biodegradeable plastics: Repell-em scented products that repel almost any and all insects and animals, and Eco-smartbags, our unscented trash bags, among others.

Because Eco-Smart has proven itself to be a genuinely GREEN business, consciouentious consumers have really started to take notice, and beginning this January, you will find Repell-em and Eco-Smart in several more fine stores, in the GREEN section!

You will still be able to find Repell-em products in fine sports and camping stores such as Cabela’s, too! Of course, you can ALWAYS find Repell-em and Eco-Smart products online, too: right here in our store.

And hey!  We’re having a SALE!

Not only that:Eco-Smart Plastics is gearing up for another BLOG CONTEST!  Watch this blog closely for the announcement!  ( BIG prizes, folks!)

Repell-em products are made of 100% natural ingredients, such as lemons, apples, citronella, peppermint, rosemary, cloves, geraniums, and a little mineral oil.  There is not a single drop or dot of anything poisonous, and absolutely NO Deet, in any Repell-em product.

Deet can be dangerous, both to human skin and to the environment.  Deet is poisonous, and hazardous if taken internally.  It’s a pesticide, not a repellent.  It’s made of chemicals.

Repell-em is absolutely harmless, even if your child puts it in his mouth.  Repell-em doesn’t even harm the insects or animals; it just REPELS them!

Smart parents don’t keep dangerous poisons in the house, but with Repell-em products, parents don’t need to worry at all about their children getting into the Repell-em.  It won’t hurt them.  And using Repell-em trash bags, tablecloths, and camping extras will actually help keep your children SAFE, because the insects and animals won’t come near them!

I just set my trash out on the deck - four bags of garbage, sitting out on the deck, way out in the country, right next to a rather large woods.

Ordinarily, the smell of the garbage would lure every possum, raccoon, skunk, deer, fox, and insect to my patio door and I would spend an hour or more the next morning picking up the remains.

But now I use Repell-em trash bags, and I don’t have to worry about animals or bugs at all any more.  My trash will be, in the morning, exactly as it is right now.

Repell-em trash bags are red, which animals can’t see well, and they are made of 100% natural ingredients, the combination of which repels almost all animals and insects completely.

I love you, Repell-em products.

I have two cats, and keeping them out of the trash used to be an ongoing trial in this house.  They went after the garbage in the kitchen wastebasket constantly, and when the bag was full and I tied it off and put it on the floor before tossing it out on the deck before putting it in the back of the pickup truck before hauling it off to the dump (Are you following me?  You’re not lost, are you?) the cats would bite and tear through the bag to get to the yummy spoiling goodness inside.

Ever since I started using Repell-em trash bags, the cats have left the kitchen trash completely alone.  They don’t smell it and they don’t see it.  This is a wonderful thing for me, because picking up trash and bits of garbage the cats left strewn about on my kitchen floor, and constantly re-bagging the garbage because the cats tore it apart, was really getting old.  REALLY old.

Now, nothing bothers the kitchen trash, and nothing bothers the tied-off trash bags no matter WHERE they are.  Using Repell-em bags in my kitchen not only keeps the animals away from the garbage, it also keep the insects out of my kitchen!

Thank you, Repell-em!

I’ve posted before about how a baby’s nursery is safer with Repell-em products to keep away the insects that feed on waste, etc.  But what many people don’t realize is that the entire house is safer for your children when you use Repell-em products!

It’s not just the kitchen that benefits from Repell-em, either - it’s the whole house!  Repell-em trash bags in every wastebasket, little strips of Repell-em around the crib legs and rocking chair legs, a few pieces of shredded Repell-em down in the vents so that when the heater or air conditioner come on, the Repell-em “essence” is blown through the air, and many other ways, are all beneficial to the health and well-being of your children and everyone else who lives in the house.

Even if your infant or toddler puts the Repell-em bag in his/her mouth, it won’t harm the baby.  Remember, Repell-em products are made of 100% natural ingredients, and while the smell and taste are repugnant to insects and animals, to a person, the bags smell good and don’t taste all that bad, either.  But if you find your baby chewing on a Repell-em bag, don’t panic because the ingredients in the bags will not hurt the baby in any way.  Be careful of choking, but don’t worry about poison.

A household that uses Repell-em products is a household that is more child-friendly, more child-safe, and much more relaxed than a household that does not use Repell-em.  Without Repell-em, homeowners are forced to use dangerous chemical substances to repel insects, while those who use Repell-em are using a completely harmless product that also smells good.

I read in a gardening magazine that putting a brightly-colored cloth on a pole and placing it in the middle and both ends of your garden will keep away the animals.  I’m going to try it this year, because last year, the deer ate almost everything!

However, my “scarecrows” won’t be made of cloth; I’m going to put Repell-em trash bags on poles and let them guard my tomatoes and green peppers.

Not only will the red Repell-em bag, flapping in the wind, keep all the animals away, it will also keep all the bugs away!

P.S.  I threw a Repell-em trash bag, full of corncobs and rib bones, in the back of our pickup truck three days ago, and nothing’s bothered it yet!

Spring is here, and it’s time to hang your heavy winter coats in the closet and forget about them until next winter!

Summer is also the season for moths and other insects that can damage your heavy woolens badly.  There are many ways to keep your winter clothing safe from insects, but most of these methods are expensive, smelly, and often downright dangerous!

Why not just slip a Repell-em trash bag over your winter coat before you hang it up for the summer?  Repell-em trash bags are fantastic suit-bags, for example; I’ve heard from many readers who cover their prom dresses with a Repell-em bag before hanging them away.

It’s also very effective to put a Repell-em bag over the top of folded sweaters before you store the box in the back of the closet or under the bed.

Clothing is expensive, and we certainly don’t want our hard-earned money devoured by moths, silverfish, and other cloth-loving little bugs.

With Repell-em in your closet, that just won’t EVER HAPPEN!

My daughter drove all the way down here today to “borrow” four Repell-em trash bags from me.  (I think I know what I’m getting her for her birthday this summer!)

She’s going to be out of town, and wants to set her trash out the night before instead of the morning of.  She can’t do that with regular trash bags because of all the dogs, cats, raccoons, and possums in her apartment complex.

That’s right; you heard me.  In southern Indiana, there are raccoons and possums  even in the city.  They’re everywhere. There is no escape from them.  And if you don’t play your cards right, they will tear into your garbage and spread it everywhere, causing you great hardship and even harsh fines if you don’t get it cleaned up absolutely right away.

My daughter doesn’t want to save her garbage for a week, and I don’t blame her - I raised her to not like to dwell in the midst of garbage - hence her 30-mile drive to get the Repell-em bags.

Where she’s going, there is a big Cabela’s,  so she plans to buy herself a package of Repell-em bags there.  I always order mine off the website, but Cabela’s does carry them.

(They’re on sale, on the website, right now!)

I gave my mother some Repell-em trash bags on Monday, and told her to go ahead and set out her garbage that night, because Tuesday morning is Trash Pickup Day in her neighborhood.

She shared the bags with the neighbors on both sides of her house.  So what we had, on Monday night, was three houses on one side of a street with Repell-em trash bags sitting on the curb in front of each of them.  Mom’s left-hand neighbor’s Repell-em bag was especially pungent because she had a family reunion over the weekend and her Repell-em bag contained a turkey carcass, among other things.

The people across the street from Mom saw their neighbors putting out their trash the night before and decided to do the same.  The only difference was, these people were using ordinary white trash bags.

The next morning, there was trash and garbage all over the block.  The “white bag” neighbors’ trash was EVERYWHERE, and the white bags were in shreds.  On Mom’s side of the street, six red Repell-em bags sat in front of three houses, and the Repell-em trash bags were completely intact.

Mom’s convinced, and so are her neighbors.  None of them has a computer, so when I place my next order, they want in on it.

You should do the same!

My mother belongs to a missionary society, and these ladies regularly pack boxes full of necessities and maybe a few luxuries to mail to the members of their church who are currently living overseas, most of them in very hot countries and with very few amenities to make things pleasant.

Mom was telling me about a letter they’d received from one of their missionaries, and in this letter, a lady was describing their never-ending battle with scavenging animals and insects. She told the church ladies that she and her family were always covered with bug bites, always itching, always shaking the sheets to be rid of the spiders and heaven-knows-what else. There is always a bug in everybody’s shoe, always an animal sniffing around the trash, and it was to the point that it was dangerous to let the children play outside. She described the stray dogs and coyotes, the raccoons and other wild and semi-wild and even fairly tame animals who made hash and hay of any trash or garbage. This lady lamented that even though churches sent really nice, expensive trash bags all the time, none of them could stand up to the insects and hungry animals of this area of the planet.

So, I gave Mom one of my boxes of Repell-em trash bags to pack in the missionary box, and I asked the church ladies to ask the missionaries if they would mind reporting back to me on whether or not the Repell-em product did the trick and kept the bugs and stray animals away from the bagged garbage.

When I hear, I’ll let you all know!

One more thank-you to everyone who entered the Repell-em contest; those of you who responded in time with your mailing information should be getting your sample very soon.

There will be another Repell-em contest in the spring, so keep watching this blog for details!

And hey, if you plan on sending a box of whatever to missionaries, friends, etc. who are living in a hot, insect-y country, you might consider putting some Repell-em products in there. I’m betting that Repell-em magic will make a world of difference to someone who is living a world away, trying to make the world a better place.