Mother's going GREEN Day 89 - Greening your Clothes

Clothes - most of us want to look good and therefore we buy nice looking clothes to wear and I am no exception to that.

I will admit that I do not regularly visit the thrift stores in search of clothes. Not to say I have never been - I have and my last pregnancy wardrobe was made up of 95% thrift store finds and this was before I went green. I guess by my third pregnancy I did not want to pay those high prices attributed to maternity clothes when you only wear them for about 9 months. This last pregnancy I was also a little smarter as I know it takes some time for me to loose the pregnancy weight I also just purchased extra large normal clothes ( like track pants, yoga pants, sweaters - things with a little stretch to it) that way I was not stuck wearing maternity clothes after the baby was born. Some of the clothing because of the stretch factor can still be used well after I have lost the 'baby fat'.

I think this greening of clothes is going to be a little more challenging for me - I mostly now shop for my children and they tend to grow out of their clothes so quickly. I am going to make a resolution of sorts to go a little more greener with their clothes:

-- I will attempt to purchase organic fabrics or natural fabrics like cotton and hemp

-- For their romp around everyday clothes I will visit the thrift store more often (we have a great local kids only thrift store in town with a huge selection)

-- Instead of purchasing gloves and mitts every new winter season - I will invest a few extra dollars and get them a good eco-friendly fair traded set which then can last several years.

-- I will also be reusing some of their summer clothes for winter. T-Shirt can be worn over long sleeve cotton shirts. For girls shorts and skirts can be paired with leggings or tights for a funky look.

-- I will also be handing down more of their clothes. No need to get rid of the 'boy' jean shorts when really a pair of jean shorts is just that jean shorts that can be worn by a little girl. Same goes for regular jeans. With my two girls this will be easy as I can keep the clothes for the little one. In fact our church minister asked when I wanted to get my baby baptised and I replied - well not quite yet as I want to reuse the dress my other one wore and she needs to grow a little so she can fit into it.

-- Once the clothes are done in our family I will as I have always done donate them to charity.

For myself - I tend not to buy that many clothes for me anymore. I have always bought clothes that last through the fashion trends and I have some items in my closet going back over 10 years, with proper care and handling they can last another 10 years. As I type this I think of my favourite wrap skirt - it used to be my mom's then it was given to me and that was a good 20 years ago and I still love it. Because it is a wrap skirt it has always fitted me as I have gained and lost weight through all my pregnancies. Then there is the button up cardigan I purchased a a thrift store for $9.00, 15 years ago - it is still one of my favourites and still looks as good now as it did then. One of my favourite things to do to clothes to is to re-invent them. I am lucky enough to know to sew and have often changed an item of clothing after I got bored with it. An ankle length skirt becomes a short skirt - pants can become capri's or shorts etc.

So I guess I have been on the right track all along - I just now need to ensure that any new items I purchase are either recycled (thrift store) or environmentally friendly and are fair trade.

Shopping for my husband clothes - well I do not do that - so hopefully he will read this post and take a few hints.

Well, I started off this post thinking that it might be a challenge for me to go green with the clothes but it seems at least for myself I am doing a pretty good job already and that I just need to work on the shopping for my kids clothes.

After my post yesterday - I found so many cool online green and fair trade stores that I will be adding them to a list on the right for easy access to all.

Mother's going GREEN Day 43 - Drying our Clothes

Again, you may note that I am posting a day later for day 43. Internet is still intermittent - but I see crews in the neighbourhood working to get it fixed. Today I post for Tuesday July 8, 2007.

As I had noted in an earlier post on Day 29 - Greening your Laundry - sunshine is the best way to dry your clothes. I also mentioned that my husband probably would not be open to the idea of hanging our clothes outside to dry. How things change in a few days.

On Monday - the same day our power went out - well our dryer broke too... It is still under warranty thank goodness and we are waiting for a repair man to come and have a look at it. Until then those cloth diapers still need to be washed and dried - so by default my husband has no option than to have them drying outside. I set up a nice little area on our front deck (it gets the most sun) and it is not visible from the street - just a visual bonus. My husband was impressed by the set up and announced "Hey, why don't we dry all our clothes outside on a sunny day - they will smell so good and we can save energy. Now that's something for your blog" Sometimes we (wives & women) just have to let them think it was their idea while we are already 3 steps ahead. So it was decided drying our clothes outside - weather permitting. Victory for mother earth.

Now let me tell you how impressed I was with drying the diapers in the wonderful sunlight.... words just can't express my amazement. One of the blogs I read regularly: Jolly Good AND Green suggested that sunshine is probably the best natural bleach out there and she goes on to explain how the stains came out of her babies diapers by hanging in the sun. I had to try. Cloth diapers get stained - you wash them and they are clean but stained. Yes throw in some natural oxygen bleach - but they are still a little stained. Put them in the sun to dry and those stains that you thought would never come out are GONE. Yes gone completely gone - not a hint of a stain even on the badly stained diapers. Just gone. If you don't believe me just try it yourself. It is miraculous - IT IS THE POWER OF THE SUN.