Car-pooling A lot of things I do involve driving around with me and my small child in a minivan. When the destination is always at least 10 miles away and usually closer to 20 or 30, I like to fill the extra seats. So I invite neighbors and friends along the way to ride with me. I get a little more company, the world gets less stress. Frequently my riders will offer gas money, which is nice, but not the point. When I go to the store, I check with my neighbors to see if they need anything. That means saving about a gallon of gas for each trip I save my neighbors. Not bad when they just need a few things!
No-’poo My current project is replacing shampoo with baking soda and vinegar. The idea is that you make a paste out of baking soda and water, which you scrub into your scalp. Rinse that off, and then follow with a vinegar rinse. Day 1 shows my hair a little on the frizzy side, but that usually happens without conditioner. My scalp feels great, and my hair feels clean. We’ll see if this lasts… UPDATE: I did this for a couple of weeks, and it works just fine. The two problems are: 1. I don’t usually keep baking soda in the shower. 2. It takes longer than regular shampoo. I’m busy solving the first problem by saving the container from the parmesean cheese – I’ll clean that out and use it to sprinkle baking soda on my hair, as well as keep water out of the baking soda while I’m not using it. Not sure yet how to keep the vinegar, but I’m sure I’ll think of something! Maybe a used conditioner bottle will be just right. 2. Well, what’s a little time? Surely I’ll get faster as I get used to doing it. The surprise bonus is that I’ve found that baking soda is an excellent tool for cleaning up my grout. I spilled some in the shower while I was drying off and figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to wait until the next shower to rinse it away. The grout that has been very yellow unless recently bleached turned pearly white with just enough effort to rinse the baking soda away! So now I have another save-the-world option:
Using baking soda to clean the shower!
Vinegar as kitchen spray This one is really working out well – replace your windex and kitchen spray with straight vinegar. The idea is that all those other chemicals you’re putting into the universe are bad for the environment, and you can save some amount of waste by buying the really big jugs of vinegar. I came to this idea because K2 is asthmatic, and while inhaling vinegar is actually seen as a good thing, inhaling ammonia, bleach, and a whole lot of other stuff is not really healthy. I read in Clean House, Clean Planet that you can dilute the vinegar with water and add in some essential oil to make it actually smell good. I don’t dilute, as we have very hard water which would leave water spots on everything, but I LOVE the way the whole house smells minty fresh when I add in the peppermint oil. In theory, adding some tea tree oil also adds some disinfectant properties to it. I’ve seen studies showing that tea tree oil is effective against viruses, bacteria, fungi and mold, but nothing saying what concentrations are required. However, since most people don’t use the disinfectant spray as a disinfectant (my household included – you’re supposed to let it sit for 10 minutes to disinfect), I’m not too worried about it. I’m going to try tangerine oil next…
Cloth diapers This one I really, really, really wanted to work, but it wasn’t working out. The part that everyone seemed concerned about – that it would be a lot of extra work – wasn’t the problem. I used the fleece insert style diapers, and it was a tiny little bit of labor. The problem was that my kids have super-sensitive skin and the cloth diapers gave them rashes (waterproof sunscreen will do it, too). So, if you’re considering going cloth, give it a try. There are so many options out there beyond folded diapers with pins and rubber pants. If you have a washer and dryer, it’s not that much more work. But, see how your child responds to the cloth before you invest in all the diapers you could ever want!
Turning off the water This one just makes me ashamed of how I used to wash dishes. I would rinse everything, and stand there with the water running the entire time I was rinsing and loading the dishwasher. Now, I only turn the water on when it is actually being used. Kind of the extension of “turn the water off while you’re brushing your teeth.” I’ve also realized that crumbs don’t really need to be rinsed off. My water bill has gone down since I started being conscious of how much I leave the faucet running just because I’m too lazy to take the extra second to turn it off and then turn it back on.
Washing in cold Okay, I’ve always washed in cold. But, it turns out I’m saving the world while I do it. Hooray! I do wash the sheets in hot water, and anything that has come into contact with a sick person (napkins and handtowels actually show the evidence that a runny nose has been there…). If you do switch to all cold, be aware that the germ-killing in your laundry will go down. I don’t know if it’s better to add bleach or turn up the temperature, but I’m going for temperature.
Using cloth napkins I caught a going-out-of-business sale at a linen store and stocked up on about 20 cloth napkins. I also have 8 napkins that my mom bought years ago and for some reason I still have. For our family of four, that means we go through our napkins about every week. Yes, we do eat 3 meals a day: we use napkin rings for their original purpose to keep track of whose napkin is whose. We all have a different style of napkin ring. They don’t actually add up to a lot of volume, so I just throw them in the washer with the sheets. That means I’m not even doing extra laundry to keep from buying a pack of napkins every week or two.
Limiting paper towel use We have a drawerful of old washrags and burpcloths from when the kids were very small. Instead of using paper towels to wipe down the counters, tables, mirrors, spills on the floor, etc., we use these cloths. There are some messes that are just too gross for these cloths, and I’m not interested in lint on my bacon. Therefore, we still have a roll of paper towels on the kitchen counter. But instead of going through a roll every couple of days, it now takes us several weeks to change rolls. And, once again, they get washed with the sheets. We keep a laundry basket on top of the dryer. Wet rags get draped on the edge of the basket. Once dry, they are displaced into the basket by new wet ones. When the sheets come out for washing, the rags gets dumped in with them. Ta da!
Compact Flourescent Light bulbs: I highly recommend buying them from a place that has them on display LIT UP – that way you can see what kind of light you like, instead of installing them to find out that this bulb is a very blue light, which really clashes with the very yellow light in the next fixture, which really clashes with the really green light pouring out of the bathroom. But once you get your colors straight, they are just lovely and have reduced my electric bill significantly.
