Mother's going GREEN Day 110 - Colds, Colds, Colds... and Flu

Well it would seem that it is not cold or even flu season yet. But this morning I woke up with a cold. In the old days I would grab the Contact C and what ever cold medicine I could get my hands on to help alleviate the symptoms. IN the past I have found that while they alleviate the symptoms - they also make the cold or flu seem to last longer.

This time I figured I was not going to do that and try and cope with the cold naturally - which means rest and drinking fluids. Thankfully my husband was home today and I got to do just that. REST. I slept most of the day and drank hot lemon and honey water - which does wonders. Not too mention the good old Chicken Noodle Soup. I must say I feel 80% better and I feel the cold is almost over.

It would also be great and natural to prevent the cold from ever happening to begin with and that requires a nutritious diet, sufficient sleep and exercise. Being a mom it is not always possible to get the rest I need. I try eat healthy and do some exercise. But I will admit leading up to the cold I did feel very tired - I was not getting enough sleep. While am not about to trade in my infant for sleep - I will just deal with the cold naturally and get on with it.

No more over the counter or prescription drugs for my colds or my families colds. (Excluding my husband of course - I am sure he will still fill his body with the anti cold drugs - but hopefully I have shown him the alternative way to deal with them.)

I will though take tomorrow off from blogging - just to give me some extra rest. Until Tuesday - I will rest well.

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.