Ok, so I was on Facebook perusing the status updates and a friend shared a link to The Urban Farming Guys website. I loved everything about The Urban Farming Guys purpose and passion for what they are doing. They seem like a great group of families trying to get back to where their food comes from, and turn around a struggling inner city neighborhood at the same time. I watched their video on how to make homemade laundry detergent and I was hooked. We are a family of 5 now so our laundry workload has increased and I thought I’d try it out. I decided when I was done with my $12 a bottle eco-friendly laundry soap I would make up a batch of detergent. It really was easy to make. Since we have an HE washer I cut the recipe in half and made a little less than 5 gallons. I used the Dr. Bronners Castile soap instead of Fells Naptha, but everything else was the same. We’ve got some sensitive skin issues in our house so I was a little afraid of the lye soap. So far we’ve been using it for over a month and it works great! I might make it a little more concentrated next time, but I love it.
The Urban Farming Guys: Laundry Detergent for 20 Cents a Gallon
Reel Mower – Gas Free Lawn Care
Well summer is now in full swing and we have decided to give green lawn care a try. We’ve used corn gluten as weed control and other all natural products in our yard and garden. Now we are giving the old fashioned push mower a try. Some of our neighbors have gas and man-powered reel mowers already and we wanted to try it out. Jon always wanted to be able to mow the grass and not wake up our kids while they nap.
I really like our new reel mower we purchased from ecomowers.com They had a great deal on our model and offered free shipping. We purchased a Sun Lawn LMM 40 reel mower since it was one of the few mowers that can tackle bermuda grass. It weighs about 17 lbs. so I can carry it no problem, has nearly a 16″ cutting swath, and mows the grass as low as 0.4 ” to 2.2″ high. There is an optional grass catcher attachment you can get and collect your clippings for composting. I really like how easy it is to push and Matthew loves holding the lower handle and pushing it too. I love that I can now mow the lawn and not have to wait for Jon to do it. Sometimes he travels for work and I am forced to do the the yard work. I can not operate the gas powered mower, but with our new reel mower it’s a breeze. The only problem we have had is that we use pine bark mulch in our landscaping and that will stop the blade from spinning so you have to keep your lawn mulch free. Another issue is an unlevel lawn can also stop the blades. We sanded our lawn for the first time this spring and that seems to help with the uneven lawn. I think if we sand again next spring our mowing will be smooth sailing.
Birth Defects and Pesticides
Since it is finally Spring here in GA I’ve been working outside a lot with our boys. They have been great little helpers pulling weeds and planting in our garden. This year we tried corn gluten as a pre-emergent weed control and fertilizer. I’m not sure it did a great job as far as weeds, but it definitely made our rye grass look great.
Anyway, I was cruising Web MD the other day and I saw this article that really made me think. This is the time of year when everyone is putting down their lawn chemicals for weeds and farmers are getting their crops ready. Many people have heard the correlation of birth defects, cancer etc. with people living on or near farms using traditional agriculture methods (chemical herbicides/pesticides). There is a new study out that says that it isn’t just people in rural areas that are exposed to the chemicals. Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) sampled water in streams that feed nearly 50% of the nations drinking supply. The NAWQA found that pesticides were in their highest concentrations during the months of April through July. It was also determined that women who conceived during these months were 3% more likely to have a child with a birth defect, pregnancy complications or miscarriage. The babies conceived during this time were at a higher risk of a wide range of birth defects including Down syndrome, cleft palate, and spina bifida. The author of the study also said that 3% could also be a gross underestimation due to inconsistent recording of birth defects from state to state. I know what you are thinking. This is just another wacky study out there to make everyone be afraid and it doesn’t really mean anything. The following quote from professor Paul D. Winchester, MD, is what really made me take this study more seriously: “This study does not prove that pesticides cause birth defects, but we set out to show that they did not and we were not reassured.” Something to think about for sure. Click the title of this post if you want to see the article on the study.
Being Green and Finding a Cure for Cancer
If you are like me then you have accumulated a few cell phones over the years. I’ve looked at our office closet and between Jon and I there’s probably 3 or 4 in there. What do you do with them? Where can you recycle them? Well I’ve got a great answer. I found this through my friend Katie’s webpage. She’s running in Relay for Life this May to honor her father who passed away from cancer on Christmas Day. It is so simple to recycle your phone and help out Relay for Life at the same time. You go to this website: www.cellularrecycler.com/acs. Fill out the form on the website. Print the UPS packaging label and ship off your old cell phone. They take the cash value of the recycled phone and give it to a Relay for Life team. How awesome is that? I don’t know of anyone who cancer has not affected. If you don’t know anyone participating in a Relay for Life team this year, then please donate it to my friend’s team “Kisses for a Cure.” You can save the planet and cure cancer all from the comfort of your desk in less than 5 minutes. So cool!
A Fresh Coat of Paint
I’ve wanted to repaint the trim boards & staircase in our house ever since we repainted the walls 2 years ago. Babies and lack of time always seems to intervene. Lately my neighbors have been working on revamping their homes and I am reinspired. So….. I went to grab our handy gallon of trim paint left over from our builder. I found a beat up/dried up ¼ gallon of paint. The builder used Duron paint on both the inside and outside of our house. We had a local Duron paint store close to the house, but it closed about a month ago. I’m guessing due to the housing market and economy crash. So I called our local Sherman-Williams to see if they could match our paint. They said to bring in the gallon and they’d match it. All of our builder paint is “custom” with some sort of chicken scratch code on the top of each can that only paint people can decipher. Sure enough I went to Sherman-Williams and they said it was a white semi-gloss with a shot of black. They could match it. Since Jon and I have been going as green as within our budget I asked about their new eco-friendly paint “True Green.” I figured if it was anywhere near the $45 I spent on the last gallon of custom builder paint then it was a go. After the paint guy quickly set us up a store account for 15% off he told me the total. He said it was $43 while he made a “this is too expensive grimace.” Whooohooo! I thought to myself. I wanted to try it out when I got home. Lucky for me both boys passed out in the car on the way home from the store so I quickly painted a section of trim while they napped. I must say it looks just as good as our previous paint and I can’t even tell where it ends and the builder paint begins. The best part is it doesn’t smell. You would never know I just painted in the house. I think this paint is great. It also goes for LEED certification points as well. Only time will tell how well it holds up to wear and tear and cleaning though. The next time you are looking to paint your place, go and check out the True Green paint at Sherman-Williams. It’s pretty awesome!
Reusable and Plastic Bags
OK I’m not going to preach to you why plastic bags are bad. I want to focus on what you can do to be better. I’ve been using reusable bags a lot this past year and I’ve learned a little bit about what I like and don’t like. I’ve purchased a few store brand reusable bags and they worked fine, but I kept thinking there must be another way. I’d always leave them in the car. They were these big bulky things dangling off my shoulder in addition to the diaper bag I’m always carrying these days. I found some bags I truly love. Everyone I know that has them LOVES them and I’m not kidding. I get comments every time I’m in the grocery store from one of the checkout attendants. My favorite reusable bags of all time is the Olive Smart Sack. It is 6 bags in 1 stuff sack. The Smart Sack that holds the 6 bags is smaller than the size of a water bottle so it’s totally portable. I keep mine in the diaper bag, but they work great in your cupholder. That way they are always in your car reminding you to use them when you shop. Each Smart Sack carries 6 colorful bags. Each bag can hold 20 lbs. I have personally used it to hold milk and orange juice or 3 juice containers in the same bag with no problems. These things are made of nylon and are very strong. Another great perk is that if you use them to carry meat or if they get dirty you just throw them in the wash. They come out looking good as new. Each Smart Sack has 6 colored bags and they can hold an entire cart worth of groceries. Many times I only need 3 bags so I can just grab my Half Sack (also made by Olive Smart with 3 bags instead of 6). I just love these bags. I’m not trying to just push a product though. If you’ve got bags you like better please share them with me. I’d love to hear from you.
Now that I’ve sung the praises of my Olive Smart Sack reusable bags, let me tell you what you could do with the plastic bags you may already have. Let me first say I am not perfect. Occasionally, on my bolt to freedom to run errands (sans kids) I forget to bring my bags. Target plastic bags give you great ideas on how to reuse their bags. I personally reuse most of ours for litter box and dog land mines in the backyard. When we have extra bags I’ve run them to our local Wal Mart b/c they have a bin near the door or in customer service that will recycle them for you. Two weeks ago I worked the soup kitchen for my church in downtown Atlanta. We fed over 500 people that morning and they had to close the doors b/c we ran out of food. I have learned that the guests of the soup kitchen highly value plastic bags. They are like gold for them. So now I’ve been donating our plastic bags to our local soup kitchen. Whatever you chose to do, know that there are so many more options than just throwing them in the trash. We all can make a difference one tiny plastic bag at a time!
Candles
Here’s a little bit of information I found out about recently. Many paraffin candles have petroleum based products in them and some soy candles are made from GMO soy wax. Just a little something to think about.
Baby & Toddler Cookbooks
Here’s a list of some of my favorite cookbooks for baby and toddler cooking:
Simply Natural Baby Food by Cathy Olson (Matthew loves the apple oat pancakes!! Some of the ingredients are hard to come by, but this book is my most referenced baby cookbook)
The Petit Appetite Cookbook by Lisa Barnes
The Big Book of Recipes by Wardley & Moore
and my newest favorite Deceptively Delicious by Seinfield (love the chicken nuggets, mac & cheese #2 and the brownies are very good as well)
I am a composting genius!
OK so I know everyone has their “moment” every now and then…. blonde moment, senior moment, whatever. This weekend I had a moment. I figured out after 7 months of composting why I was getting composting tea all over my bin when I would turn it. Apparently what I thought were black drains going into the composting reservoir below the spinning bin were actually plugs. All of the composting tea I’ve made so far has just been puddling up and running off. None of it was going into the reservoir bin. I had been wondering why this was happening, but figured I hadn’t composted for long enough to get tea in the reservoir. So….now I have removed the 2 outer plugs so that the tea may drain into the bin. Hopefully I will have some great liquid food for my plants very soon……just had to pass this along so someone else might not make the same mistake. 
As for the compost in the garden, I swear it made our plants grow better than they would have normally. All of our tomatoes, squash, melons, etc. all look great! The tomatoes are ready for harvest and taste and smell wonderful. Jon keeps eating them every chance he gets. I keep eating all the cherry tomatoes before they even make it inside. Have a wonderful day and happy gardening.
Squeeky Clean Floors
It’s been a while, but I’m back. It’s a lot harder than I thought to start up an etail business while taking care of the house, two kids 2 and under, helping Jon through his MBA program, and his working full time at another job. Whew!
Anyway, I wanted to tell you about my favorite product for cleaning the floors. We’ve got hardwood, tile and carpet. My favorite piece of equipment to clean our hardwood and tile is the EnviroSteamer by Eureka. It’s the bomb! It will clean up all the dog drool, baby food, …you name it and it only uses water. It’s a steamer mop. You just fill it up with water and put on the cloth bottom (similar to a Swiffer) and push it along the floor. It dries so fast and looks great. No chemicals. It doesn’t get any greener than that. I’ve been using mine for about 10 years now and it still works great and I love it. You can find them at a number of big box stores like Walmart, Target, Lowe’s as well as online. I originally paid $50, but now I think they are down to <$40. Another product which is a good idea is the "O" mop by Method. It's like a Swiffer, but uses reusable microfiber cloth bottom with their hardwood cleaner solution. I like it, but I love my EnviroSteamer.
As for the carpet, ours gets unbelievable nasty so quickly. With 2 dogs, 2 cats and 2 kids I can’t say I’m too surprised, but it is still no fun to clean. Instead of us using a steam cleaning service with all their added chemicals we purchased a large upright steam vac. It wasn’t a cheap purchase ($300), but it’s worth it in my opinion. It’s great and I can use plant based cleansers to clean the carpet so no chemicals are left behind when you’re done. My favorite cleanser is called Second Nature ($10) and comes in a number of versions/scents from Walmart. For small jobs I use the Hoover Jr. steam vac and it is wonderful. It was my first steam vac purchase back when it was just me and my dog Bear to worry about. The Hoover Jr. has a really strong motor so the carpet is just barely damp when you’re all done. Now your floors are clean and green!
