Plastic.....is for Credit Cards, not Produce!

OK, so how many of you are like me and actually had to train yourselves to remember to CARRY and USE your reusable bags? I mean we all purchased them with all the best intentions of putting them into use, and most of us are truly passionate about making real changes in our lives that will make a difference in the world…..but of course if you’re like me you may suffer from what I like to call “Momheimer’s disease”. It’s similar to Alzheimer’s, but it starts to happen about the time you become pregnant and I hear that there is no cure, not even after your children leave home! Truth or fiction??? Either way, that is my story and I’m sticking to it! However, I have gotten much better when it comes to the carrying and usage of my reusable bags. In fact my son usually winces only slightly these days when he sees me pop open the trunk of my car and drag out a myriad of mismatched bags from my collection. Ha! He’s come to understand that this is the way of the world, or at least the way of our household and is becoming much more comfortable when the clerks at the store give me the “stank eye” for being the one to mess up their rhythm and actually USE the bags. Oh well, it has to be someone doesn’t it.

Well, it occurred to me a few weeks back that even with all my grand intentions with my reusable bags for toting my groceries to and fro that I was still using plastic bags for my produce. It hit me that in America they do not look kindly to “loose” produce, unlike when I lived in Italy and it was not an issue. However, in Italy they looked unfavorably upon people actually touching the produce, so they provide plastic gloves for you to wear in order to pick out your produce there, but do not mind piling up loose oranges, or green beans to weigh them out. After thinking of a way to get around the plastic produce bags it hit me that I would like to have some sort of mesh bag similar to the bag I use when doing my laundry that I put my delicate “under things” in so that they do not get harmed. With that I set out to one of my favorite places, Jo-Ann Fabrics. I purchased some mesh fabric and got to work. I have added a few pictures of my mesh produce bags, so that you can all see what they look like. I made three sizes to fit the small, medium and large produce that I purchase and fitted them with a Velcro closure for easy open and closing. The sides I fashioned with some left over fabric I had from the holiday season when I went mad making aprons for the ladies in my family. I secured the sides with stitch witch and then sewed them for added strength. Therefore not only are they environmentally savvy, they are also just a little bit sassy as well, and I think we all deserve just a little bit of sassy when we’re lugging ourselves through yet another trip to the grocery store! I hope you find the bags a good tip and if anyone is interested in purchasing them please drop me a comment and I can tell you where you can go to purchase them.

Keeping Up With The Jonesin'

I guess as winter still has it’s firm grasp on us all that I should start out with things on the indoor front first. It’s not as if there is not more than enough inside work to keep us all busy forever and a day! I remember that when I was still working that I’d love to hear people say to one another on Friday evening as we’d all head home for the weekend “Have a good weekend,” or “I hope you enjoy your weekend.” I used to think to myself “Are you kidding me?!?! I don’t know about you, but my weekends are filled with the 40 hours worth of household work that I didn’t have time for because I was here all damn week! Yippie Skippy, Laundry! Dishes! Scrubbing my much needed dirty floors! Wow, sounds like a weekend in the Alps to me!” I always had some weird, twisted vision of them going home to houses with maids on Friday nights having all of their chores done for them and miraculously being able to settle in with a good book while some layperson fetched them a cup of hot tea. In the meantime I went home to a house that looked like pigmies had ravaged it, playing lacrosse from one room to the next in it without a care in the world. I’d put down my coat and work items and settle in to reclaiming my piece of the world I claimed by owing a mortgage the size of Texas on 

Recently however, I have been reminded on a dear friend of mine, Manuel. I refer to him as my Italian brother, as he was my neighbor when I lived in Italy and he taught me many things about the cultural differences between Americans and Italians. One of the most important lessons Manuel ever taught me came in a single word….”Simplexity”. To this day I remember his speech on the reasons why it seemed to him that so many Americans are on anti-depressants and have such troubles. He said to me very simply “Americans it seems to me live to work, where us Italians work to live.” He explained that in Italian culture that many of the most blessed things that they embrace and refuse to concede no matter what century or technology brings upon their culture are life’s simplest pleasures. Time with your family, good food, good wine, love, relaxation, vacation, spirituality, and simply taking time out of the rush to “be.” Manuel was right with so much of what he said about Italians. It's also sad how that we as Americans have conceded so much of those things in search for the huge house, 2.5 kids, nice car and high paying job…it’s always more, more and MORE with us…and for what? So that we can all be moving so fast that we fail to take the time to simply “be” and keep conceding the most important things in this world that make it worth living in order to chase things that none of us, no matter our stations in life, can't take with us to the grave. It’s just plain silly and I for one am more than willing to start living under Manuel’s Laws of Simplexity to see if there isn’t just a little something better on the Italian side of the fence. I'm gonna try to see if I can't just keep up with the Bussato's :)

On with Simplexity and Indoor Chores; yes…I was going somewhere with that! Ha! During our family challenge I took the time to take a gander through all the crap I called “cleaning products” throughout the house and boy did I discover something! I discovered WMD’s!!!! I just knew I had to get rid of them…not only for the health of me and my family, but I’d heard of the “Bush Doctrine” and wasn’t about to go messing with the possibility of Dick Cheney launching a preemptive strike on my house if he only knew the junk I was stockading at my place! Gesh!!! Can’t take the risk! After all Dick’s still hangin around and I’m not taking chances with that crazy old man! Ha! Especially since after writing down the top 5 chemicals on the 5 common cleaners in my house and looking them up I found out that in order to “legally” dispose of them in my state I would have to basically take them to the nearest HazMat site! Of course no one actually does that in the real world, but I did take mine to the Solid Waste disposal facility in my county and ask them what the impact of these cleansers was on our ground water and soil. Needless to say I didn’t get a pretty picture painted for me, but I did get some nice EPA stats that showed me that if we all dumped them down the drain that the fish in Lake Erie should have 4 to 5 eyes and at least 2 heads by now! Thankfully that must mean that someone isn’t dumping their cleansers, or they are using alternative cleaners! From there on out I did the research and found that in order to clean my house to the same standard I only needed a few basic items and some recipes:
Borax Soap
Washing Soda
Baking Soda
Castile Soap
White Distilled Vinegar
Lemon Juice
Ivory Snowflakes (or grated castile or Ivory soap bars)
Bleach*** (Now, many people will say that bleach is still harmful, and if you have a greywater system it is! BUT I am a germaphobe, so I couldn’t let go of my Clorox Bleach…sorry!)

With these items I could make my Laundry soap, Dishwasher Detergent, Hand Soap, Dish Soap (for sink washing), and All Purpose Cleanser. I was amazed when I researched these items and found not one of them is damaging to the environment. Even Borax is found naturally in the environment and that was the one I was most worried about. With these in hand I started to follow some basic recipes for making my own household cleansers that I will now share with you. See…I told you I was going somewhere with this  It’s hard to keep up with the Jones’s 

Laundry Soap:

1/3 bar Ivory or Castile
½ cup washing soda
½ cup borax powder
**You will also need a small bucket, about 2 gallon size**

Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load.

Dishwasher Detergent:

1 Cup of Borax
1 Cup of Washing Soda
1 Mason Jar
Place the Washing soda and Borax in the Mason jar and shake. Now fill your dishwasher with the mixture where you would normally load your dishwashing powder. **Instead of using “Jet Dry” fill the dispenser with Distilled White Vinegar instead. This will work just as effectively to remove water spots from your dishes.

Dish Soap:

¼ cup Castile Soap
Essential Oil (5-8 drops of your fave scent)
Re-use an old Dish Soap bottle, or use a decorative bottle

Place the ¼ cup Castile Soap and Essential Oil in the bottle and SLOWLY fill the bottle up with room temp water. I say slowly because the foam will cause you troubles at first…so the slower you go the easier it will be to fill the bottle the first time. Once filled, cap….and mix together by gently shaking the bottle. Viola!

All Purpose Cleanser:

½ Cup Distilled White Vinegar
½ Cup Lemon Juice
¼ Cup Castile Soap
Spray Bottle

Combine the liquids in the bottle and fill the bottle the rest of the way with water. Once filled gently shake the bottle to combine. Strangely enough this cleanser was tested to be as effective on killing the virus that causes the common cold, and Ecoli as the commercial brand 409! The acidity in the lemon juice and vinegar is said to be what kills these viruses…so why do we mess with the chemicals in the other cleansers?!?!

Happy Cleaning!

Rose Colored Glasses

Anyone missed me? I know it’s been a very long time since I have posted anything here, but let me assure you that those reasons are no longer a factor in my life! Being that I am newly unemployed also means that I have once again reclaimed my 1st amendment rights! I am sorely dismayed that anyone in this day and age who has a blog, Facebook, My Space, or other social networking site is subject to the fear mongering put forth by employers, bankers, or any other pathetic corporate institution who wishes to stick their two cents further into the lives and freedoms of the average American, even if their blogs happen to be as benign as mine. It’s a very sick sign of our times. However, I no longer have to worry under the yoke of fear that I will be an HR concern should I post a recipe for homemade laundry soap, or support Urban Homesteading. Those days are far behind and I am now free to live my life as the Green Goddess I truly am In my new posts I will also show you not only how to live a “greener” lifestyle, but to do it on a budget! Anyone who knows me can tell you that I have been trying to pinch the hell out of old Abe for years! Luckily trying to turn one penny into two has made my family’s transition from a dual income household to a single income household much less turbulent. Like I’ve always said….We’ve never been offended by the word CHEAP! Ha!

You may be wondering how we did on our 6 month challenge to live locally and sustainably. Well, (drum roll please…) WE DID IT! We managed to spend more than 70% of our economical buying power locally!! It was a challenge at first, but with research and training ourselves to live life in a different light we managed to make some major changes. We also managed to make those changes fun! For instance, the holidays were turn into a “Homemade Holidays” which required us to make gifts for our family. This caused a lot of thinking and manual labor, but in the end the gifts we made I think were worth more than anything we could have bought! For situations such as birthdays, etc. we simply asked others to consider gifts cards from their fave local vendors, restaurants, shops. This helped us explore many new places that we’d not yet ventured!

Eating of course has been more than an adventure for us. The fact that we as a family have gone on a low fat diet, as well as living locavore really meant that we needed variety in recipes. I took that challenge on and with the exception of one or two dishes that we all agreed never to make again, we’ve enjoyed being creative! We’ve also learned a valuable lesson on how eating healthy and locally effects us in a very “immediate” way. When I say “immediate” I am referring to the few times we have dinned out and ordered food that sounded really good, but turned out to be way to rich for our systems. Ha! Each of us has learned this lesson the hard way  However, this was a very good lesson not only for my husband and I, but more so for our son who we pointed out that “clean living” has such a positive impact on your physical person that even one meal that isn’t at the same level of quality we are used to can make you feel like junk for a day! Think about how bad we’d feel if we still lived that way! He really took that to heart, and his father and I took it to heartburn 

I guess as George Jones once sang “These rose colored glasses that I’m looking through, show only the beauty, cause they hide all the truth.” It’s been so nice to be able to strip away a lot of unnecessary clutter, bad habits, and rat race mentality from our lives in pursuit of a much more simplified, greener, healthier lifestyle and home for my family. With February right around the corner I would have normally been found hiding in my house praying for winter to be over, but these days with the promise of spring right around the corner there is so much to do before it gets here that I am happy to be kept busy through each season! Living seasonally is also such a welcome feeling….the feeling of being connected once again to the cycles of life has brought me more than I can describe. I hope for all of my readers that we begin a movement to take back our right to be human, our right to belong to nature and re-connect to the land that we have seemed to have gotten so far away from. Not only for our health, but for our mental health and the longevity of our children and our grandchildren! We must reclaim the beauty of being.