Doing More with Less

I do not like to watch the news lately.  Everytime I turn it on, there is more news about how the economy is getting worse and worse.  It’s depressing I tell you!  It’s a good thing we don’t have to buy so many of those pricey cleaners.  Yep, that’s right.  Remember that the greenest method of cleaning your home isn’t with an expensive natural formulated cleaner that you would buy at the store.  If you really want to be green (in your home and in your wallet), make your own cleaners.  I have gone over this before but was so excited to find some new “recipes” and facts to spur my little MEEPs onward and upward.

Here’s my next challenge for MEEPs and anybody else who wants to try.  Do not purchase any of the new “green cleaning” products from the store.  Make your own using some simple ingredients.  You will not be contributing to the energy costs and wastes created throught the processing of store bought cleaners.  You will not be supporting the production and use of yet another plastic container.  You can reuse one that you already have. 

More importantly to most of you, you will save on your grocery/home budget in a HUGE way!  For example:  A typical bathroom cleaner would cost $3.19 and the homemade version costs $.15.  That’s a 95% savings.  Window cleaner costs about the save.  That would be another 95% savings.  How’s that for a start?  You can use the savings that you get from making your own cleaners to buy increasingly costly food and gas.

A “Less Streaky” Window Cleaner:  1/3 Cup White Vinegar, 1/4 Cup Rubbing Alcohol (aids in evaporation to prevent streaking), 3 1/2 Cups Water, 1 Clean Plastic Spray Bottle (reuse an empty one).  Mix all ingredients in the spray bottle.  Shake well.  Spray on glass surface.  Wipe with a crumpled already read newspaper. (when done, throw the damp newspaper out in the recycle bin to dry) 

Citrus Disinfectant:  Comparable to those commercial orange cleaners.  Peel from 1 orange, lemon, grapefruit, or lime.  3 cups White Vinegar.  1 clean quart jar with lid (such as a ball canning jar).  1 clean 32oz spray bottle (reuse an empty one).  Combine the citrus peel and vinegar in the quart jar.  Place lid on jar and store in a cupboard for 2 weeks (yes, you will need to plan in advance.  Convenience really does cost a little in some situations)  Shake occasionally.  Remove the peel from the jar and strain the vinegar.  Put the vinegar back into the jar.  To use as a spray cleaner, put 1 cup of vinegar into spray bottle and add water to fill.  To clean linoleum floors:  add 1 cup of the vinegar mixture to 2 gallons of water.

Fresh Smelling Multipurpose Cleaner:  Nice clean smell and inexpensive.  3 1/2 cups water.  1/2 cup white or apple cider vinegar.  1 teaspoon Borax (in supermarket detergent section).  1 teaspoon washing soda (in supermarket detergent section).  1 teaspoon liquid castile soap (at health food stores).  1 clean 32 oz spray bottle (reuse an empty one).  Fill spray bottle with hot water.  Then add the other ingredients.  Shake well.  Spray on countertops, appliances or fixtures, and tile or painted surfaces.  Wipe with a clean cloth (I like to use old burp cloths) or a damp sponge.

 

 

 

How to be MEEP

Hi MEEPS!  I am so glad that you joined me for my first post on becoming a MEEP (My Everyday Earth Partner as explained here).  We have a great group going!  So far, it’s just me and my cat.  We really need your help to boost this group to the top of the environmental pyramid! 

Our first action today to become Everyday Earth Partners is to really give a big message to non-ecofriendly corporations and manufacturers.  It’s going to be tough.  It’s going to be brutal.  But best of all, it’s going to be stealth.  Those big dogs will never see us coming.

Try and guess what we are going to do?  Nope, we are not going to only shop high end designers who are making $150 dollar organic jeans.  We are not going to throw out all of the non-organic food currently in our cupboards and head to the health food store to buy all new.  We are not going to write letters or prank the CEOs. 

OOOH!  I am so excited, you will never guess!  At least my cat (the only current MEEP to achieve lifetime member status), has not guessed yet.  We are going to do nothing.  That’s right.  NOTHING.  Put your pocket books away.  Don’t run out to that best Earth Day sale ever at Macys.  Don’t drive across town to get your one free reusuable shopping bag and burn a hole in the ozone with exhaust fumes.  Don’t deliver letters to congress people or sit on the computer emailing heart wrenching letters imploring companies to change.  Just stay home.  Stay home and be happy with what you have.  Stop buying crap you don’t need.  Stop worrying about if the tshirt you just bought from Walmart was truly made with recycled material but dyed with a nonplant based dying process.  Just stop.  Our houses are full enough and our lives are full enough of activity.  Earth toxic products only last on the market because people are buying them.

Stay home for one day.  Look at the trees.  Look at the sky.  Pet your cat.  Think about how much you contributed to the environment by just appreciating what you have and not wanting anymore.  Then get up and advise a friend to do nothing as well.  This will start a chain reaction of do nothing-do gooders that will save the earth everyday for the rest of the year.

Thirdly, don’t forget to be MEEP.  My cat and I are really nice and not weird at all.  We would LOVE it if you joined our group.  There are no initiation fees.  Just quiet appreciation.

 

Sunday Environmentalists

 It’s Sunday and hey, in case you haven’t crawled out from under your rock for the past month, Earth Day is this Tuesday.  Can you believe it?  Wow! It really snuck up on us.  Not a word from the media.  I am really surprised that manufacturers haven’t jumped on the boat to support Earth Day and go “green”.  It’s such a great opportunity to reach out to their consumer base to help change the world with selfless ambition (Can ambition ever really be selfless?).  I am really surprised that people have missed the boat on this.

Touch the screen….is it dripping with sarcasm?

I have to say that I can NOT take it anymore.  I don’t even know what to write about on my green blog.  I am so overloaded with the same info over and over and over again.  Use reusable tote bags for shopping, switch your light bulbs, blah blah blah.  Does anybody have any new ideas? 

Everybody has gone “Green”.  Even Clorox.  How many Clorox “Green Works” commercials have you seen this past week?  Funny thing, Clorox, if you really are interested in saving the planet, why don’t you stop making things with bleach?  I am sure that they are just wanting to sweeten the honey after scarfing up Burt’s Bees.

How about Walmart?  I wonder if they gave their workers around the world some of the 1 million reusable shopping bags passed out this weekend so that they could carry their only belongings around because they can’t afford a home.  It’s great that they want to be viewed as Earth friendly…how about people friendly?  And is anyone checking to see how all these reusable shopping bags are produced?  I am sure that everybody is using 100% cotton or another organic fiber because it’s so cheap and would really enhance the profit margin.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a little bit of “green washing” going on around here. It’s driving me crazy.  Big Binder even told me she almost bought some Campbells soup because it said it was green.  You know how green it was?  The container was recyclable.  No kidding??  Soup cans…recyclable.  Now that’s a novel idea that no one has thought of before.  I am hitting my head on the top of my laptop screen right now.  Corporate America is so ridiculous to me.  Are there any “honest Abes” out there?  Are there any true idealists who will not bend to the almight dollar? 

 Hmmm…..how will we weed out the bad seeds?  Terrachoice offers a great little list as to how to spot some green washing.  There are other ways to detect who is a sell out and who is the real deal.  We will touch on those at a later time after my head is healed and my blood pressure has returned to normal.

Many are talking that “Earth Day is the new Christmas.”  Check out these 2 articles for examples:  here and here.  I am calling many of these corporations who tout “green” savings and Earth day specials as “Sunday Environmentalists”.  It’s a spin off of the “Sunday Christian“.  You know the people who go to church on Sunday but then go off and do random acts of sin without thought or concern throughout the week?  Well, these really smart corporations (and let’s face it, it is smart for their pocketbook) are one in the same with the environment.  For one day, they will give your reusable bags, show you billboards of the great green Earth with their logo on it, or hand you flyers with their latest sales on crap printed on recycled paper just to get you through their doors and purchase any item earth friendly or not.  Then come April 23 or maybe May 1, the tide will change for the next big sale.  Next thing you know, all the leftover ads and printed material screaming that they are saving the Earth are tossed out and discarded for Memorial Day specials.  And we begin again with the next biggest cause until Earth Day 2009.

My one hope for Earth Day this year (and yes, I did take an online personality test at www.personalityzone.com and it said I was a full fledged idealist.) is that people will at least stop and think.  Then everyone on earth will hold hands, sing songs, and begin to do something that is kind to our environment every day all year long.  I will then have to create a new term.  I am tossing around “MEEP: My Everyday Earth Partner”.  More on that to come.

So how do you make Earth Day, Every day?  Here is just one list of things you can easily do to really make a difference.  Take care my MEEPs!

 

Essential Nonessentials

As some of you may know from this post.  I have been trying to find out some better ways to use essential oils.  I love essential oils.  Essential oils (EOs) are concentrated oils from various flowers, herbs, fruits, and plants.  Since ancient times, they have been used for their medicinal and aromatherapy properties.  There seems to be an endless number of scents and combinations you can use for various purposes.   The best part…they are known for their antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and antimicrobial properties.  A great, cheap and natural alternative to synthetic chemicals. 

However, I have been scared to venture too far into this because of cautionary tales of what to mix and what not to mix.  If you mix the wrong combination, you can end up with some not so enjoyable results (various toxicities, skin rashes, horn growth, etc).  So it has made me a little nervous to be messing around with these concentrated little gems when I have been either pregnant, nursing, or in the immediate vacinity of children and pets.  Basically, the past 5 years have been a wash with EOs at my house except for use in a couple cleanin sprays.

But now, I shall no longer be chained to my fears!  I will embark on this experiment.  Let’s hope it goes better than my experimentation with concentrated HCL in the lab years ago.  For those of you who haven’t heard this story, my sense of smell has been moderately altered from respiratory passages being burnt out from that experiment.  There are certain scents I have trouble detecting and my smell thresholds are off.  (Pair that with my mild color blindness and I am a multisensory mess!). Oooh, I was so young and naive.  Lesson learned:  If you are told to only use a chemical under a fume hood, don’t think that you can save time by just trying to hold your breath by the lab bench instead.  On a positive note, it taught me that chemicals can be very bad for your body.  Bad, bad chemicals!

Anyway, back to EOs.  First of all, remember this about EOs:  A little bit goes a very, very long way.  One drop is usually about equal to one ounce or more of the actual plant.  A small bottle may cost you a few buckeroos but it lasts a really, really long time.  Secondly, remember that as with any substance, at a certain amount EOs are toxic.  Do your research and follow any necessary precautions.  Better yet, if you are doing something really fancy with them, please contact a professional aromatherapist.

I will first address one household use for EOs…Air fresheners.  Some may argue that air fresheners are not essential.  I beg to differ.  Try living with the funky 5 over here at my house.  And no, I am not talking about our dance moves.  I am talking about our own essential aromas.  Mmmm…somedays I thank the good Lord that my sense of smell was altered before entering motherhood.

To create a room scent, you can diffuse it using an electric diffuser for aromatherapy and for air freshening purposes.  You can easily create room sprays for the same thing.  All you need is a small plastic spray bottle, water and your oils.  For example, citrus, cinnamon, or peppermint will help to eliminate food and cooking odors in the kitchen.  My personal new favorite use…put a few drops in your vacuum bag (I put it on my filter since I have a bagless) to freshen while you vac. That’s a ”2-fer-1″ deal for ya.

 

A recipe for a kitchen freshener is on this page 

Some air freshener recipes are here. and here.

Some blogs addressing EOs:  here, here, and here…..oh, sorry!  I just spent 2 hours reading random blogs and ended up here.  I love it!  I have no idea what the path was but if you know me, you know why I was so interested in this blog.  It’s like my past life and conversations as a biologist in industry came back to haunt me in a very amusing way.