Melabuild – Page 6

Supporting Good

February 12, 2022 By Melabuild

In these crazy times we live in and our purchases of life’s necessities often supporting crazy things, it’s good to know that as a Melaleuca customer, you are supporting good in addition to getting great products. The Melaleuca Foundation was created in 2001 shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11th to help provide aid to families and individuals who had fallen through the cracks after the tragedy and were in need of financial support.

Melaleuca was founded with “enhancing lives” as a core value backed up with action in their business practices. The Melaleuca Foundation is a natural extension of the values that define Melaleuca. Whether it’s responding to natural disasters with relief, supporting and collaborating with other non profit organizations, or creating the most unique orphanage in the world to provide a caring and loving environment for orphaned children in Ecuador, Melaleuca is responding to human suffering with hope and much needed help.

Find out more about the Melaleuca Foundation and enjoy knowing that while your own life and wellness are being enhanced with safe and effective products, Melaleuca is doing good here and all over the world.

Image source: Melaleuca Foundation

Loyalty Incentives Enhanced

January 12, 2022 By Melabuild

Beginning this month, well, really next month for early shoppers like us since January is the introduction / transition, February will fully usher in the revised loyalty incentives from Melaleuca. The former incentive was called Loyalty Shopping Dollars which is changing to Shipping On Us. Maybe they just didn’t like the fact that a joke could be made about earning LSD with your Melaleuca product orders.

Loyalty Shopping Dollars for several years now have been credited with each order, activated by watching short Learn to Earn videos, then redeeming the cash value on product orders. Now it’s simpler.

I have always felt Melaleuca’s LSD was good stuff and it helped me appreciate the thinking and R&D behind their products. But seriously, the new incentives cater more to the fact that not everyone shares that level of interest or wants to watch the videos, and, even allow for guilt-free procrastination by removing the 5% extra savings you could previously get by ordering before the 20th of the month. Now you don’t have to learn anything or get up off your butt to order early. It’s easier and it’s automatic with each product order. Even the busiest among us and those with the shortest attention spans can take advantage of it.

Being a Melaleuca customer requires no minimum orders if you don’t mind paying full price and that remains the same. To qualify for 30% to 50% savings you must maintain a 35 point or more (about $60 to $70) minimum monthly order exactly as before—a requirement clearly covered when joining the shopping club, and outlined in my Melaleuca Points and Pricing featured post. If your monthly orders are at minimal levels, things for you will change very little. But since even empty nesters like us can and do go easily well above that 35 point minimum, the enhanced savings add up faster.

Melaleuca has initiated a standardized shipping of $10.22 which most customers should welcome after never knowing until checkout exactly how much it would be. This fixed rate will be just slightly higher for minimum orders but significantly lower for larger orders. The best news is you can get either 100% shipping reimbursement or a 50% shipping reimbursement based on the following: Orders 39+ points get the 50% rate of $5.11 but orders 44+ points get the entire $10.22 back which equates to free shipping. Since larger orders previously had higher shipping costs, that means additional savings above the free shipping.

By comparison, a 45 point order placed on or before the 20th of the month would have earned $6.75 ($4.50 after the 20th) in Loyalty Shopping Dollars under the previous loyalty incentives instead of the $10.22 in free shipping under the new incentives.

The Shipping On Us dollars are automatically applied as loyalty incentives to use on your next order, regardless of the time of month you order, and the only action required is clicking a checkbox to redeem them. It’s an additional solution to help make our busy 21st Century lives at least a little bit easier—and save money.

Melaleuca’s Biggest Obstacles

December 10, 2021 By Melabuild

Joining the Melaleuca shopping club ought to be a no brainer, but misconceptions can and do get in the way, and prevent people from taking advantage of a very good opportunity and enjoying the benefits. The reasons for joining are covered all over this site so I’ll only highlight the leading barriers I’ve observed but in no particular order of occurrence frequency.

Some of these are:

False perception that Melaleuca is a multi level marketing (MLM) company
Valid reasons to not like MLM (a dislike that I very much share)
Resistance to change
Not realizing how much money is being spent and the “hidden costs” with the traditional retail model

Associating Melaleuca with MLM

First, Melaleuca does have an incentive model for sharing Melaleuca and their products with others. This can easily lead to the assumption, “Oh, another one of those.” The collateral damage done through tactics employed by the plethora of MLM’s out there, and the people promoting them, has created good reasons to RUN when you are approached by one of their disciples.

Melaleuca is a consumer direct or manufacturer direct product company. When you sign up you are joining a “shopping club” where you shop from home and buy directly from Melaleuca. If you share Melaleuca with others, Melaleuca will pay you but there’s no requirement to do that. In fact, only about 20% of Melaleuca customers actively enroll other customers and the 80% who don’t are just as appreciated and valued as the 20 percent.

Melaleuca is a quality product driven, customer satisfaction driven company—not a go out and recruit everyone you meet company.

Resistance to Change

People are naturally creatures of habit. But the Melaleuca model is very unconventional and requires a change of habit. Knowing that people find it hard to leave their comfort zones, Melaleuca has created numerous incentives, and broken down barriers, to reward new customers who do nothing more than give the company the opportunity to prove they are worthy of being given the opportunity.

Unless you’re a rescued Melaleuca customer, you’ve been very much conditioned to accept the retail model without questioning it, and those profiting from that model want very much to keep it that way. It’s worth mentioning that 96% of those who overcome their apprehension and give Melaleuca a try, reorder. If only 96% of those presented with the opportunity would resist their resistance, they’d have a better life but it is what it is.

A Few Points About That Conventional Retail Model

One of the primary barriers I’ve observed to recognizing the value Melaleuca offers is people not realizing how much they’re really spending. Melaleuca is not going to totally replace the retail store model but very few people have any idea of how much money goes toward purchases that Melaleuca can replace. Those costs are hidden inside of the sum total spent at the store. Most people could probably tell you their “grocery budget” but not the amount spent on purchases that can be replaced with Melaleuca products.

I call this a barrier because in order to qualify for the 30% to 50% discount on Melaleuca products, you need to purchase roughly $60 to $70 a month with Melaleuca. This often causes an initial resistance unless someone is willing to actually evaluate retail store purchases; a process almost guaranteed to cause a bit of shock. Then the $60 to $70 a month is a non issue. We’re empty nesters and have no problem whatsoever exceeding the requirement, and never have since 2006, 15½ years as I write this.

NOTE: I outlined this in more detail here which mentions the benefit of receiving up to 15% additional discounts over and above the 30-50 percent.

If you regard the conventional retail model and conventional wisdom as tried and true based on widespread acceptance, you’re standing on logic fallacies of epic proportions. There is no actual wisdom. It’s propped up by the “we’ve always done it this way” logic that’s left a path of mass destruction in its wake. When you buy products from the store that you could be getting from Melaleuca, you’re pouring your money into an inferior, inefficient, wasteful, and grossly expensive vortex that could never survive if enough people question it.

The traditional model has at least one thing in their favor though, deep set thinking takes a while to die.

The products people purchase through the retail model are up to 63% of the price paid just to get them on the shelf. That leaves less than 40% for any value or product quality. No wonder 96% of people who try Melaleuca products order again! Without having to increase their budget, Melaleuca customers enjoy safe and radically better product quality, inherent health benefits, and generate a seriously reduced volume of trash from discarded packaging.

I should end by pointing out that the conventional retail model is fine for groceries and other items, but the Melaleuca model for the products they sell is so far superior, it renders the traditional model woefully flawed and obsolete.

Impossible Laundry Stain Removed

November 12, 2021 By Melabuild

More accurately, reduced to not likely noticed. This story begins when we get a message from our son asking about getting a stain out of a brand new dress shirt. Upon wearing it for the first time, he had apparently leaned up against something that left an incredibly nasty stain and a few smaller ones. He didn’t know when, where, or how, but had several comments informing him of the obvious and outstanding blemish before he was able to change.

He brought the shirt to us and I couldn’t tell what the stain was but it looked (and was) worse than the tarry, oily goo you could get from a grill like the cleaning demo I featured at the beginning of last summer. But the pattern meant a fairly large surface surface area was encountered and he was at a loss to recall anything that might have been the source. It was black, had about 4-6 streaks plus a few spots, and was thoroughly infused into the high grade white fabric.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to be successful at removing this stain, so I unfortunately did not photo document the project. I do however have the process used which could be helpful if you ever have such a need to possibly salvage an expensive article of clothing that’s been assaulted with an “impossible stain.”

Five things were required to accomplish this feat:

Several Melaleuca cleaning products
Time
Gentle scrubbing
Soaking
Patience

One really nice thing about Melaleuca products is the natural cleaning ingredients that are safe to use with any washable fabric. I started with the obvious, a full strength dab of Mela Power laundry detergent, sprayed some PreSpot stain remover on the shirt (spray bottle shown is an older design) and also used the PreSpot gel with brush top to work the cleaners into the stains in the fabric. I also sprayed Sol-U-Mel which I keep in the laundry area because it is so effective against oil based and/or gunky stains and messes. I mix the laundry room bottle at 50/50 water to concentrate ratio and didn’t resort to full strength for this project, although I probably should have.

MelaMagic heavy duty cleaner was also employed because of its power as demonstrated in my grill cleaning project. All of these were brushed into the stains using the PreSpot brush top bottle, then left to rest on the stains, brushed more, left to rest, and the process was repeated at least 3-4 times with small amounts of products added to keep everything wet. When I had achieved having the stains unnoticeable enough to be satisfied beyond what I expected to achieve, I worked them a little more and put them in the washer with Mela Power and Mela Brite Plus Oxi and just enough water to soak the shirt.

I soaked the shirt about 2½ hours then added some other laundry and ran the load. It should be noted that Melaleuca states on the Mela Brite Plus Oxi label that overnight soaking is neither required nor recommended. The actual work time was only a matter of minutes but it was most of the day for all the resting/soaking.

The result—the small stains were completely removed and the large and garment ruining stain was so faint as to be unnoticeable (the shirt has a subtle print pattern and the stain was just above the belt, both of which helped).

Interestingly, I read the care label after this success (like reading the instructions last) and found something very unexpected. Of course I knew it would say no bleach, which it did, but it also said no fabric softener or dryer sheets. I had already used fabric softener in the wash but opted not to put the shirt in the dryer in case we wanted to make another removal attempt. No damage was done to the fabric because whatever ingredients used in conventional products that made the manufacturer put that warning on the label are not present in Melaleuca’s fabric softener so we dodged a bullet. My son was happy with the shirt and brought it with him on his trip to Cancun.

This all took place last week but I set this post up for a week later on November 12 because that is his 27th birthday which makes for interesting timing (and you might notice I usually post somewhere around the 10th to 15th of the month).

Cut the Stench

September 14, 2021 By Melabuild

You may be thinking this post is about Melaleuca’s air freshener/home fragrance products, which would make sense, and I do expect to feature those since they are great products too, but this is about an unexpected benefit from a product you would use for entirely different purposes. This is actually about dish washing, and something with Melaleuca’s dish liquid not mentioned in any official literature, and not provided with the national brands we previously used.

Melaleuca’s EcoSense dish liquid accomplishes the task of superior performance all while using biodegradable ingredients, which is impressive enough, but like many of their products, it uses the natural wonder oil for which the company is named after…melaleuca oil. Also known as tea tree oil native to Australia, it’s a natural cleaner, antiseptic, anti fungal, and natural anti many things you don’t want.

Although other dish liquids may accomplish the goal of cleaning dishes, albeit with chemicals rather than natural ingredients, they don’t inhibit the growth of odor producing bacteria in sponges, which normally make sponges one of the worst choices for cleaning. Sponges are great cleaning tools but susceptibility to bacteria growth is their Achilles heel. Melaleuca’s EcoSense Lemon Brite dish liquid solves this problem so you safely get clean dishes and other kitchen surfaces with sponges that don’t create a stench or spread nasty bacteria while using them.

Regular use of Sol-U-Guard Botanical disinfectant in your kitchen and home adds even more bacteria fighting muscle. Enjoy real clean without resorting to caustic chemicals like chlorine that assault your health just to kill odors and bacteria. Melaleuca’s EcoSense Lemon Brite dish liquid adds another layer of protection, taking one of your most basic cleaning tasks to the next level without additional effort.

Summertime Favorite Recipe

August 10, 2021 By Melabuild

Although this post is off topic and has nothing directly to do with Melaleuca, people attracted to the Melaleuca model tend to be wellness minded. They enjoy things like great food and recipes, farmer’s markets, gardening, outdoor activities, etc. In that sense this is not off topic.

One of the highlights of summer, particularly August, is harvest time and fresh produce and herbs from gardens and farms.

In this post I will share our must do treat at its peak of perfection this time of year. I’ll share not just the recipe but helpful tips learned over many years that generate enthusiasm every time this treat is shared. It’s nutritious and delicious! Anyone who still thinks healthy eating can’t be desirable and exciting will be proven very wrong.

Better Ingredients Make a Big Difference

Before sharing the recipe itself, the selection of the ingredients will determine whether you enjoy a stellar experience or whether it’s less than stellar fare that’s good but not as great as it can be. The latter diminishes the experience. No self respecting Melaleuca customer would want to do that.

The primary ingredient is heirloom tomatoes. Whether you grow them in your garden or acquire them from the farmer’s market, go for wide variety. No less than six varieties should be used if you want to achieve a flavor extravaganza and eye pleasing appeal that makes the mouth water before you can even enjoy the first bite that will make your mouth water even more. Heirloom tomatoes offer a rainbow of color each with flavor, shape, meatiness and texture differences: deep red to pink, yellow, dark and deep purples (some almost black), white, orange, green, zebra striped in various colors, etc. Take full advantage of that. Be sure to include beefsteak tomatoes.

Fresh basil is the next primary ingredient. The basil needs to be fresh, and chopped while making the recipe, to release the locked in flavor for best results.

Balsamic vinegar is akin to the secret ingredient here. Although only a small amount is used in the recipe, the quality used will determine the outcome. If you can’t find an authentic, high grade balsamic vinegar in your local market, let me give a shout out to Old World Olive Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan where we live. Their 18 Year Traditional Balsamic is probably the best you can buy but for sure among the best. If you use anything of lower quality and tell me this recipe isn’t absolutely incredible, I’ll tell you that’s your problem.

Salt selection will also significantly influence your results. Coarse ground salt is highly recommended. Good choices include kosher salt and sea salt. Himalayan sea salt comes in a variety of colors and textures. I wouldn’t recommend smoked salts for this recipe but the different smoking techniques definitely lend well to meats and other dishes, but that’s beyond what I need to cover here. Just a good grade of coarse ground sea salt or kosher salt without smoking or extra processing will provide great results for this recipe.

Okay, Now the Recipe

Bruschetta (properly pronounced brew-sket-ah) with Tomato Basil Topping

1-2 French or Italian baguettes
6 cups heirloom tomato variety, washed and cubed/diced
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
¾ cup (approx loosely packed measure) fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 fresh lime
Coarse ground kosher salt or sea salt to taste
Fresh ground black peppercorn to taste

Slice baguette(s) into ¾” to 1″ slices (cutting the baguette at a 30ish degree diagonal angle makes for better presentation as shown in the picture above). Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper then brush or dip one side of slices with extra virgin olive oil (use enough bread to fill cookie sheets to capacity with the slices). Place slices oil side down on parchment lined cookie sheets, toast in oven preheated to 350° F until golden brown; approx 15 minutes but toasting time varies. Don’t worry that bread slices may seem dry/crunchy, that’s desirable.

If storing the toasted bruschetta slices, be sure to completely cool before putting them in an airtight container.

Combine next 5 ingredients in a bowl. Tomatoes do not require peeling. Dicing/cubing size is at your discretion but roughly ½” works well. See above for helpful info on heirloom tomatoes and especially balsamic vinegar. Recommended fresh basil leaf measure is loosely packed and BEFORE chopping. You may want to experiment on the amount of basil use but this recommended amount is a good baseline.

Next, squeeze fresh lime halves over mixture. This will permit trace amounts of rind oil to be extracted which adds extra character to the recipe.

Add salt and pepper to taste but again, info above is very helpful on choosing a good salt.

Mixture can be used immediately on cooled bruschetta. You’ll note the mixture is “watery” from the natural juiciness of the tomatoes but that is good since it softens the bruschetta slices. Don’t worry about leftovers. This recipe is great immediately and same day, but actually improves later as the ingredients in the mixture become more flavor infused with each other. It will easily keep for up to two weeks refrigerated.

For an extra touch you can sprinkle feta cheese or goat cheese on top as a decorative and flavorful addition but I’ve found this recipe so stellar as written that you won’t need this option except to add a bit more eye appeal and prestige (and there’s nothing wrong with that).

Yield is about 12 servings…maybe. This stuff is a hit every time so make plenty for generous portions and adjust up or down on recipe size to suit your needs.

Get a printable PDF of this recipe…