A More Natural Home: Part II

Cleaning naturally is nice, but it misses a bit of the fun. Beauty products, on the other hand, are a more entertaining, rewarding, and nice smelling undertaking.

I've already made my own deodorant. Now, I've got a better recipe, though, here. It's less goopy and smells nice, too because of the essential oils in there. A little looking around revealed that Amy Karol of Angry Chicken has also written a handy booklet of potions and concoctions as well as put a series on her blog. It's worth checking out. I've also tried my hand at the lip balm. It's a bit liquid without the bees wax, so there's a lesson for next time. But overall, I'm happy with the booklet and keep wanting to print out labels to stick to my new collection of containers.

Another great resource is Rosemary Gladstar's book, Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health. It's a great source of information about using herbs and natural beauty products. I enjoy the chamomile tisane. Her sore throat tea passed the Papa test and Peanut is a fan of elderberry syrup when he's a bit under the weather. My greatest find is her lotion recipe. Who'd have thought you can make homemade lotion?! It's just an emulsion, basically mayonnaise for your skin and works well. I'm half way through my first batch and happy with the results.

All of this called for buying a lot of ingredients I'd never heard of before (marshmallow root?!). Everything has come from Mountain Rose Herbs. It's what the Dutch would refer to as a good price-quality place. Delivery can take a while because it's coming to me from Portland by land, but the prices are fair and the products are good. The fresh herbs smell amazing. Be careful, though - it turns out that four ounces of bay leaves is enough for three families to use for two years!

So now the question is - what next? What's the next area of life to tackle and make more natural?

A More Natural Home: Part I

Since moving back to the States, we use even more natural products at home, in the kitchen, for cleaning, and for beauty products. This project has been on-going for a while now, and it has been wonderful to take some bigger steps towards realizing the goal of more homemade and more self-sufficient. It has involved learning about a whole new range of ingredients and techniques. We now keep a lot of baking soda as well as borax, washing soda, vinegar, and liquid Dr. Bronner's to do most of our cleaning jobs.

My first ideas came from a couple of my favorite blogs. There, I found a recipe for homemade laundry detergent. We are now fullly converted to using homemade laundry detergent and it passes the Papa test. The Papa test means that Papa notices neither difference in quality nor extra hassle to use a greener product or method. It's a high standard. I made the first batches with Dr. Bronner's Peppermint and loved the fresh smell. Looking for a less expensive option, I tried Kirk's Castile for the last batch. It works just fine, but the scent is gone and it smells rather soapy. We're going back to Dr. Bronner's next time.

I've also found a useful scouring powder recipe and one for cleaning the toilet bowl, but forgotten to note where they come from. Here you go, though!

Scouring Powder
3 parts baking soda
1 part borax

I store this in a a recycled plastic hummus container with holes poked in half the lid. The other half makes a convenient shelf for my cleaning sponge.

Toilet Bowl Cleaner
You will mix this in the toilet bowl. Doing it on the counter results in a science experiment (trust me)!

1 cup vinegar
1/2 cup baking soda

They will fizzle like crazy for a minute and then settle down. Leave for a few minutes and then scrub for a clean bowl.

I'll follow up tomorrow with some homemade beauty products!

Cloth diapers

Caution: very long baby-oriented post below. Contains the word "poop," more than once.

Long before my son was born, I had decided to cloth diaper him. Luckily, my husband is a willing victim in many of my "let's try something rather inconvenient and messy" undertakings and went along with it. The cloth diaper journey has not been without bumps (usually of the stinky/damp/generally gross kind) in the road, but overall, I'm pleased we made the choice. At the very least, our peanut isn't starting out in life by making a much-larger-than-peanuts sized contribution to our family trash production.

One of the problems I encountered when trying to get ready for cloth diapering was either a dearth of information or the opposite - so much detailed information that I couldn't wrap my head around it. So, when my friend started asking me serious questions about cloth diapering this weekend, I wrote her an email about some of the basics. Then, I realized it would be nice to share, so here is an edited version for the public!

I learned a lot about cloth diapers from the Green Mountain Diapers information site. I find the prices a bit high and the writing over the top wordy, but there is a lot of good information there and lots of pictures of babies in diapers and explanations that were helpful for someone who had never seen the real thing.

I buy most of my diaper stuff from Jillian's Drawers. They have a nifty trial package that you can use for 21 days, return, and then get all but $10 of your money refunded. The bigger size is probably a better deal since babies tend to grow out of the newborn sizes within a month or two if not weeks.
Probably best website out there for diapering information, product reviews, and forums is The Diaper Pin.

Some basics that it took me a while to figure out.

Two basic approaches: diaper + cover OR all-in-ones (AIOs)

All-in-ones are what they sound like, it's one piece, you velcro or snap it on and you're done. The whole thing goes in the wash. New diaper is a clean all-in-one. Variations here are on how they add extra absorbency (inserts or pockets for stuffing) and sizing. Some have snaps for adjusting the rise (think length of diaper when it's laying flat) for different size babies. They're a bit expensive, but the most convenient option. I have three Organic Dream-eze now that I put on peanut when we send him to daycare. They leak more than the others, but I'm convinced they would do much better if they were going in the dryer instead drying on the line where they get pretty stiff. They are a really soft material on the outside and it has a hard time keeping the stiff cotton in place.

A diaper + cover system means you have the absorbent diaper on the inside and a water-proof cover on the outside. The diaper soaks up urine and catches poo. These go into the wash with every change. Covers keep clothes from getting wet and catch anything that doesn't stay in the diaper (poo, unfortunately). They go into the wash as needed - when they smell or are poopy. Our get washed once a week or so each (we have 5 now). We have gone through I think four sizes (xs/s/m/l) and between 3 and six per size. By far the family favorite is Thristies.

Diapers (for diaper + cover) come in two basic formats: flats and fitted. Flats are what we use with peanut. Essentially one flat piece with several (6-8) layers of material in the center third. You can fold them any of half a dozen ways depending on baby size, poo problems, cover size, etc. They are held on with a Snappi, which is essentially a three armed stretchy plastic clip that grabs the diaper at each hip and in the crotch to keep it from popping open. He has gone through three sizes of flats so far with us buying 36/24/24 of each size. Our flats are Cloth-eez Prefold Diapers from Green Mountain Diapers and we have orange, yellow, and now brown edged sizes. Prefold refers not to the fact that you do not have to fold them but to the fact that they are already folded to be thicker in the center before you fold them again! Whew. That's a lot of folding.

Fitted diapers look like all-in-ones or disposable diapers. They are shaped to fit without folding and held in place with either a snappy or velcro or snaps. They do all the soaking (sometimes also have elastic around the legs) and are covered with a diaper cover. Again, an easier option than flats.

Flats plus diaper cover is probably the most basic and cheapest way to do it, but not the easiest. They are also the most difficult to get other folks to use as the whole diaper folding ordeal is a bit intimidating.

Hopefully, this will be helpful for anyone who's thinking about cloth diapers and not sure how to approach the undertaking. My big question for anyone with experience would be this: does line versus dryer drying make a difference for effectiveness or fit?

Mama day

I just finished whipping up a double batch of homemade deodorant following this simple recipe. Over the past few years, I've been slowly working towards a more natural lifestyle and the deodorant was another step in the right direction. I made some for myself about a month ago and am very happy with it. Works better than my old bar and only has four ingredients: corn starch, arrowroot powder, coconut oil, and a dash of vitamin E. I still sweat, but don't stink, not even after a 45 minute bike ride. So, one jar will be a potentially grossly inappropriate gift and the other is for a friend who'd like to try. Can't wait to hear what they think of it.

Today's a mama day. I work four days a week and have one at home with Peanut. We try to keep our weekends free for family fun (this week we're going to Brimingham, UK), so that means that Fridays are busy. We do a couple loads of laundry, change sheets, get groceries, and cook a good meal (with leftovers for the freezer). There's also usually a project in there like deodorant today.

Sometimes I feel bad that we don't do kiddy fun stuff - parks, pool, outings - but there just isn't time right now. Then I try to remind myself that despite having a mama who works four days a week, Peanut eats only homemade food, usually wears pants made by mama, and even plays with toys made by mama. Going to the park sounds great, but if it had to be at the expense of homemade meals, I think we'll pass for now. He won't remember the park, but his body is thriving on the good food and he's learning to appreciate all kinds of tastes. Besides, does this look like an unhappy child?



I think that me and the happy Peanut will be OK in the backyard for now.

Ecofont: Use Less Ink!

This week, I've finally had time to start reading the newspaper again. It's exciting. Today, it's the economy section and a few articles about a "Green New Deal" that's been suggested by the UN as a solution to both economic and environmental problems. It sounds like an interesting plan, but a big one that will be executed (or not) by corporations, nations, and so forth. Ecofont, however, is something we individuals can put to use to take care of our personal economic and environmental issues. Funny how those two often go together, eh?

Ecofont is designed to use 20% less ink. Designed by the folks at SPRANQ, a creative communications agency in Utrecht, the holes in the letters reduce the amount of ink used without interfering with legibility. I think it's a grand idea. Best of all, it's free to download. Aside from getting the font (links to directions for installing the font are also available), you get to see the Dutch version of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." How's that for a groovy bonus?

I'm thinking it would be cool to print, say, a dissertation using Ecofont. I could also use it for all the handouts I make for my students. Or how about an Ecofont Christmas letter? Would you use Ecofont? How?

Conversion Complete

Doing a little bit to be more green is important. Well, I'm sure there are plenty of arguments to say that one person doing a little bit doesn't make a difference at all, but I have resolved to ignore those and keep trying my little bits. Besides, there are some awfully compelling stories out there about one person making a big difference in the environmental movement. In this case, a guy living in New York City who decided to try to live a year with no impact. In his words, "In other words, no trash, no carbon emissions, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no toilets…" His experiment has concluded successfully, but it's still interesting to read old posts and follow his re-entry experiences.

My little bit is a buying green cleaning products for our home. When we first arrived in the Netherlands, I had no idea where to find these products and in the rush to get settled in, bought what I could find in the supermarket. Today, I have an idea (they're called naturwinkels) and a source. I've been replacing our cleaning products with Ecover brand products as we ran out. It's not nearly as good as making our own cleansers, but it's a start. My personal milestone was replacing our allesreiniger (literally "everything cleaner") with green stuff. Of course, just as I thought I was doing a good thing, I discovered that Ecover has fairly recently been involved in a scandal over their claim to not test on animals. The fun never stops.

What do you think, do little changes matter? Have you made any?

Chicken Gift

I've adopted a chicken. Not the thing you'd expect someone living in the city with a mainly tile backyard to do, but I like to keep everyone on their toes and the neighbors at bay. Actually, it was a gift. Also, it's not really a chicken. It's a mail-in chicken adoption program that a thoughtful friend gave me. I get to become the adoptive parent of an ecological chicken, a green chicken, and as a special bonus, I get half a dozen eggs every month. Hopefully, my new chicken (is that pulline?) friend won't mind the eggs.

Now, in case you feel like you're missing out, you two can adopt a chicken, or give one to a lucky friend. There's a UK option at chickenadoption.co.uk with lots of chicken pictures for your viewing pleasure. If you're looking for an American chicken, here's one option. You can actually adopt all kinds of animals from these folks, including pythons and penguins, if you're so inclined. Amusingly, all the animals are on sale and in stock.

Cradle-to-Cradle

In terms of radical ecological innovation, the concept of Cradle-to-Cradle could be at the top of the list. Essentially, the concept is that a product can come from the earth and return to the earth with no impact. Not reduced impact, not limited impact, not delayed impact – no impact. Imagine industrial production becoming a part of the natural cycle. Imagine industry taking its inspiration from nature, where waste becomes raw material. William McDonough and Michael Braungart dare to do just that.

I learned about this concept two nights ago while watching some far-too-late-night TV. Blame the jet lag, or you can thank it. Tegenlicht was showing a follow-up to a show that it aired in October 2006, Trash=Food, which described McDonough and Braungart’s ideas. A year and a bit later and the concept of Cradle-to-Cradle has taken the Netherlands by storm. No Maeslantkering necessary, this is a flood of ideas that the lowlands is pleased to welcome.

In case you don’t watch Dutch documentaries easily, you can check out their book, not surprisingly entitled, Cradle-to-Cradle (2002). True to their principles, the book, currently in its fifth printing, is printed on tree-less paper. According to Mcdonough’s website, the book is a “manifesto calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design.” I like the strong language – they want a transformation, not change. In an interview, Braungart said they want to move beyond corporate goals to reduce waste by 20% and challenge themselves (they have their own design company) to achieve 0% waste. Do you hear voices singing praises, too?

In case you think this idea is to big or wild to be accomplished, they have plenty of examples. These gentlemen are not just idealists, they're out to make a living, too. On their website, you can find links to companies and products that have achieved Cradle-to-Cradle certification. You knew something like certification would have to be part of the package, but it makes for interesting surfing. Most pleasing is the fact that there are some big companies on the list, including the US Postal Service!

Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to read the book yet, or even get my hands on a copy. The bibliophile in me really wants to know what a paperless, tree-less book feels like! But it has gone on my reading list, meaning I am allowed to buy it one day. In the meantime, I want to spread the word. This is the kind of radical and innovative thinking that inspires me. There is hope.