Mother's going GREEN Day 58 - Some Updates

I thought I would let you know what has been happening with our changes that we have made so far.

Our garbage is now a bag a week. Not a big bag, but 20" by 21" bag - so in a month we fill one garbage can for pick up. Which is great. I made the challenge of 1 can a month.

Our worms are eating a lot of our produce waste and already we are seeing the compost develop. They are so low maintenance it is unbelievable. No smell and very few fruit flies which is great.

Also, since our dryer broke awhile back we have been hanging our clothes out to dry. The drier has been fixed, hopefully it is working as I have not yet used it again. It still amazes me how the stains come out of the cloth diapers. I get all excited now when I have a badly stained diaper as I want to see if this stain is too tough for the sun. Haven't had one yet.

I am also very happy with our switch in body wash. With the old stuff (the chemical stuff) I would always break out in little blisters on my arms after being in the sun. This would happen every summer when I ventured out into the sun. Initially the doctor said it was an allergic reaction and to change soaps. I did but the same old thing. Then she said just wear sunscreen and you will be fine. Whatever.... that was about 3 years ago. Now having switched to the natural chemical free body wash - I have no side affects from the sun. Coincidence, I think not.

Our walking everyday is great I have lost about 5 pounds of my post pregnancy weight in the last week and probably saved that in gas too.

Our vegetable garden is great - we are already eating lettuce and Swiss chard from it. I can hardly wait for the tomatoes to come. It looks like we will also have an amazingly large pumpkin for our jack-o-lantern come Halloween. The strawberries and blueberries get eaten by the children as soon as they are ripe. So nice for them to pick a fresh snack in the garden while they play.

Going green is not difficult - in fact rather simple - you should try it too

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.

Mother's going GREEN Day 29 - Greening the Laundry

In a previous post I spoke of the hazards and dangers of laundry detergent (see day 5 - Ignorance is Bliss).

So it has been just over three weeks of using my natural laundry detergent and it is great. My whites are white (maybe not whiter) my colours are bright enough (maybe not brighter) But they are naturally clean and 'green'.

For my tougher stains I am also not using a chlorine bleach but and oxygen bleach as with the laundry detergent it has zero chemicals and breaks down into oxygen and hydrogen when mixed with water, otherwise known as an oxygen bleach.

And for those softener sheets (which by the way are too loaded with chemicals) I read somewhere on the Internet that a ladies dog died from eating it because of the chemicals, I know our dog once chewed one up and it was sick for a week not too mention that they are not biodegradable so I have switched those too. I am now using a cloth type thing that you can reuse for 500 times (after that I will probably use it as a rag - it is the stripey thing in the picture) but at least it stays out of the landfill. Using these also allows me to feed the lint from the dryer to my worms - since it is chemical free.

The above listed items I picked up from the local grocery store in their organic 'green' section.

Using 'natural' products is not the only way you can green your laundry:

• Use high efficiency washer and dryer (uses less energy).
• Use the COLD wash and rinse cycle (uses less energy to warm the water - and your cloths get just as clean).
• Ensure you wash a full load (no point just washing half a load) In our house I have 2 piles of laundry (whites and pastels colours & black and bright colours) ensuring full loads and I have never had my whites turn pink or any other funky colour.
• Ideally you should dry your clothes outside (no energy usage except sunlight which too is an excellent natural bleach) Having grown up in South Africa this was the only way we dried our clothes. Very few people had dryers and I only saw them in Laundromats.
• I am still using a dryer though - it has been wet and miserable here. But I use the least amount of time necessary to get the clothes dry and I use the low heat setting - if by chance they come out a little damp, which they sometimes do, I just hang them and let them air dry. I am not too sure either how my husband will take it "airing our dirty laundry" in the garden so to speak - baby steps - remember he still struggles on days with the NO plastic bag idea.
• Ensure too, that your lint catcher thing is always cleaned (clean it after each load) this keeps the machine running efficiently thereby using less energy.