Green Cleaning 2

The smells from the drain cleaners on the market can pretty much make me feel sick so I loved the fact that I can use just vinegar and baking soda. Pour 1/4 cup baking soda and 2/3 cup of vinegar into the drain and cover for awhile then follow with very hot water.
You can even use hot vinegar to remove paint from glass after you were just trying to do a touch up and ended up making a mess on the window. Use a cloth to wipe away the paint after applying the hot vinegar.
Brush your carpets with 1 cup vinegar in 1 gallon water for the color to see a new life given to them! Also, use vinegar (4 Tblsp with 1 gallon water) to rinse your carpets after shampooing to remove residue from the detergent and save some of the life in the carpet.

Yes I'm a Tightwad

Craigslist is my new best friend. I just found and purchased some items cheap!! A huge box of fabric for $20 and 40 lbs of canning tomatoes for $20. We just made pasta sauce and canned it along with a couple more just tomatoes. I'm so excited to do more! With so many ideas running through my head it's hard to figure out where to start.
I have also started planning meals for the whole week on Sunday and making things ahead of time. The recipe from The Tightwad Gazette 3 (which is actually found in The Betty Crocker Cookbook) for refrigerator dough is going to be used in almost every meal this week. Amy used it for doughnuts, rolls, and breadsticks. I have also found you can make so many things in the crockpot! I now use this a couple times a week and definitely on the days I know I'm going to be tired.
I have also made more of an attempt to get to garage sales. With a young child this can be difficult but last week went great! So excited for this week and hopefully it cools down a bit so I can enjoy it even more. I used craigslist again to find garage sales in my area and a few estate sales as well.
I would love to hear more ideas on tightwadding!

Preparing Food for Winter

Maybe you aren't a canner or you just don't have anymore more room for cans. Try freezing some of the excess from your garden! I just finished some tomatoes to freeze and it was so simple. You have to prepare the tomatoes just as you would for canning. Peel (which is easier if you put in hot water til skin starts to peel then place them in cold water and peel) then chop them up however you would like them and place into freezer bags.
You can even freeze fresh herbs! Place in freezer bags chopped or whole depending on how you think you will use them, make sure the air is out of the bags and place in freezer. I have even seen where some people freeze basil in ice trays with water then when frozen they take them out and put them in a freezer bag.
The amount of food you can freeze is pretty easy to judge just by what you can buy frozen at a grocery store. Obviously lettuce, cucumbers and celery wouldn't do well but carrots, peppers, tomatoes, peas...and the list goes on can be frozen. Who wouldn't want to eat the produce from the garden over produce bagged, froze, shipped, and from the grocery store. I'm going to need a bigger freezer!

Green Cleaning

I have found a huge spider in my house which if your anything like me, it would completely freak you out. I get the feeling that bugs are crawling all over me after I see any spider. This feeling made me go to find pest controls that are natural.
Ants for instance are just annoying. We haven't found alot of them but even a couple is too much for me when I have a baby crawling around that likes to put everything on the floor into her mouth. Put lemon juice on door thresholds and windowsills or really anywhere you might think ant might enter. You can also place lemon peel slices outside around your main entrances. This also works with cucumber.
Fleas will keep me scratching just thinking about them. Take the juice of 4 lemons and 1/2 gallon of water and wash your floors. Also, washing your dogs bed in salty water will help repel the fleas.
I haven't had many problems with mosquitos this year but if your out grilling throw some sage or rosemary on the coals to repel them. If your thinking of doing some landscaping marigolds would be great to add since they repel most insects from their fragrance.
I'm already itchy from just writing about these bugs!

Tightwaddery!!!

My newest kick besides trying to make things better for the environment is becoming a tightwad. Not only does this save you money but if you try to reuse everything possible rather than buying new you are making an impact on the environment from the amount of waste going out.
My family did a book swap and out of that swap I took The Tightwad Gazette volumes 1,2, and 3 which apparently was huge in the '90s written by Amy Dacyczn. She has some great ideas of how to reuse items, cook from scratch recipes, and crafts. She started with a goal in mind in her case a house and worked on saving enough money for that house which then led to just a whole lifestyle change. I'm not there yet but I have a goal and am slowly making the change to being a tightwad. It is very difficult when the rest of the world is all about spending money and not saving. I'll be putting up ideas of Amy's, mine and other people I get ideas from up every so often on how to save money.
I just made the switch to not buying wipes but using homemade. This one is hard if you have a sitter that is younger and doesn't know much about cloth diapering and expects store bought. I have dealt with this by buying a pack of wipes (with coupon) and only using them with the sitter so one pack will last a couple months if not longer since we don't go out much.
I am learning about canning and freezing food as I go. There are so many things that can be frozen that I didn't realize. This helps save on the amount of food thrown out! I just froze my first batch of tomatoes that i will use for goolash.
One main things that sticks with me from the books so far is that if you read your dishwasher detergent it usually doesn't say to fill the dispenser in the washer some say only fill halfway. I just started this and mine says to only fill halfway so make sure to read the directions on the detergent!
A lot of the things I already did are saving us money as well. For example, using vinegar to clean and in laundry. A bottle of vinegar is roughly around $2-$3 and I can use it for a couple months for everything. Same goes for the baking soda and lemon juice.  So many more ideas to come! And would love to hear some ideas from others!

Vaccine for the Chicken Pox?!

So as my kids are getting older I'm noticing all the new vaccines kids have to get. Is it just me that finds this crazy?! I mean I didn't have that many vaccines and I'm fine. Take the chicken pox vaccine for example. When I was younger this was just a normal thing that everyone went through. You had the chicken pox and got out of school for a week. Now people look at it as a deadly disease compared with polio and measles.
I know there are people who can become very ill if they get the chicken pox but it was few and far between. With the vaccine now being mandatory for pretty much everyone in every state it seems to me that this could become like the measles where kids are getting vaccines which will protect them for a couple years but then college aged kids were getting measles years later and having re-immunizations for colleged aged people was required.
My other concern with this vaccine is that it is a live virus vaccine. So, your putting this live virus straight into your blood stream when if you were to just get the chicken pox your body has ways to defend itself against the virus before it gets to your blood stream. You would obviously get the virus still but to me thats just the natural course something like this should take.
What are the long term side effects this will bring to an individual and to the rest of the population? Is this going to become mandatory for everyone? I still have so many questions and I'm not finding the answers yet.

Cloth Diapers Part 2

So everyday I think I learn more and more about cloth diapers and everything that makes it easier. If this your first time using cloth diapers don't expect to know everything from the beginning you have to find what works for you and your baby.
I have found a website that has helped me so much! http://www.diaperjunction.com/ has helped me tremendously! And I would definitely tell anyone using cloth to check out their selections especially the hemp liners that make it possible to go all night in a diaper! They also have swim diapers which I just recently purchased that are absolutely adorable and you won't be spending all the money on disposable swim diapers. The flushable liners help with keeping the diapers clean and also not throwing the mess in the trash keeps it out of the landfills.
Seriously, anything you could want for cloth diapers can be found here if you are wanting to purchase. However, some items are able to be made by hand if you would rather go that way. Just having the options there make it easier! They even have more than just diapers such as breastfeeding, baby carriers, items for mom, wipes, wetbags and many more.
Have fun learning!

Baby Food

As you all know I am all about saving money and doing what is healthiest for my family. Well, as we are getting to new stages with our little one I now get to explore a little bit more in my money saving tactics.

We started baby food! Of course I have decided to make it all myself which really isn't complicated at all! You simply puree the fruit or veggies in a blender and store for either the day or for the next week depending on how much you want to make at once.

Fresh of course is always best. With vegetables you will just need to cook them and remember steaming them will keep more of the nutrients. Also, you will want to keep the water you cooked/steamed the vegetables in to help thin out the veggies (except for those high nitrate veggies such as carrots). Place the veggies in the blender and add the water until it is to a good consistency for your child. The fruits usually have enought natural juice to make it easy for your baby to eat.

To store you can pour the food into ice cube trays then covering it with foil and placing in the freezer. With that process you are able to take out and thaw only what you need. I have been using those small rubbermaid containers that are so small you really don't know what they are suppose to be used for. Well apparently I figured out what they are to be used for because these are perfect for if you are on the go.

We had baby food given to use which we will still use so that I can reuse the containers to store new food. We were also given a lot of baby cereal but it is also possible to make this yourself too! Maybe next time around I'll try it out!

Paper or Plastic?

So, we all get this question everytime we go grocery shopping, paper or plastic? Which is best for the environment? This is actually a trick question. Plastic can kill wildlife from it blowing around and animals eating or suffocating on the bag. Paper uses more energy to make. They both take about the same amount of time to break down in a landfill. Both can be recycled but it takes more energy to recycle plastic than paper. We use 12 million barrels of oil to make plastic bags in one year but we use 14 million trees for paper bags.

Now that you know a few facts its really up to you on how you want to impact the environment. The best option is obviously reusable bags and you can watch for sales on these and the price keeps going down. Also, some stores give you a discount or money for bringing back the plastic bags from their store.

What to do when you have those random plastic bags that end up at your house? Reuse if at all possible! I use them for trash can liners and always keep an extra in the diaper bag in case the wet bag gets full from the cloth diapers.

Organic Grocery List

While trying to stay healthy and away from pesticides many people are going organic. The prices however are sometimes stopping many other people! How can you decide what is worth the money and what you can go without? I have talked about the dirty dozen before but you should also keep in mind the clean fifteen. Write them down on a note card and keep it with you when you do your grocery shopping to keep your family healthy but still following your budget!

Dirty Dozen (keep in mind that they do update this list every year so it can be different then what you have seen before)

1. celery
2. peaches
3. strawberries
4. apples
5. blueberries
6. nectarines
7. bell peppers
8. spinich
9. kale
10. cherries
11. potatoes
12. grapes

Clean Fifteen

1. onion
2. avocado
3. sweet corn
4. pineapple
5. mango
6. asparagus
7. sweet peas
8. kiwi
9. cabbage
10. eggplant
11. papaya
12. watermelon
13. broccoli
14. tomato
15. sweet potato