Mommy Goes Green

I may not be writing here regularly but you can find me contributing every month at Simple Organic and The Creative Mama.  I also post interesting articles and tips on the Mommy Goes Green Facebook .  Please stop by for a visit!

When we had our oldest, I used our rocking chair incessantly.  It was cream colored and after several years of use, it was stained in so many places.  It was a good quality chair and I didn’t want to toss it so I decided to have a slipcover made for it.  I chose white fabric – I know, white in a kid’s room - but I just love how crisp, clean and classic white is. 

I’ve used the chair for 10 months now, snuggling up with my baby before bedtime.  Last week I noticed the cover had a few stains on it so it was time to peel it off and wash it.  Not only did it have the normal dirty fingerprints but it also had dried milk from spilled bottles and denim rub off from my new jeans.  I’d like to think that I would wash my slipcovers every month or so but let’s face it – not at the top of my ‘to do’ list.  So it had been a few months and I was worried those stains weren’t coming out.

I hosed the slipcover down with my new favorite stain remover, poured some chlorine-free bleach in for good measure and threw it in the wash on cold.

Not bad for Round 1 – all the fingerprints and blue jean stains came out. It was the milk that didn’t come out, something I didn’t expect.

On Round 2, I followed the same steps with the stain remover on the milk only, a couple ounces of chlorine-free bleach but I used warm water this time. 

And it worked.  Perfectly white slipcover again.

Over the next three weekends in October, The Home Depot is hosting FREE Energy Saving workshops.  On Saturday, Oct 16, 23 and 30, the workshop will be held from 1-2 pm at your local store. 

Topics include:

• Identify several exclusive Eco Options and Energy Star rated products that can help you start saving on energy costs in the Fall

• Begin weatherizing your home with a range of low-cost sealants and insulation that make your home more comfortable and save you money

• Learn about other easy to install products that help you get the most electricity and water bills

Simple Organic shares 5 Simple Home Remedies That Really Work.  Skip the Tums and try peppermint essential oil in water or DIY chest rub for those winter colds.  Many great ideas you can put together yourself – saving you money at the drugstore and using natural ingredients.

Group buying is the thing now and I’ve gotten some great deals on the sites.  Groupon, Living Social – you’ve heard of them and they all have similar deals that are 50% or more off products and services. In fact, I often find the same deal on Groupon one day and then on Mobba the next.  But Roozt has it’s own twist – they only feature socially responsible companies that are eco-friendly, ethical, humanitarian, and/or community conscious.  For example, today’s Roozt dealwas $18 for $33 worth of mineral makeup from Alima Pure.

On Healthy Child’s blog, they talk about how Health Care Begins with a Grocery Cart and I couldn’t agree more! I really believe the better we feed our bodies, the healthier we are.  My son has had terrible eczema for a couple months and we found that eliminating some food in his diet immediately made it disappear. I’ll be talking about that next week but it’s just another example that garbage in = garbage out.

A great way to furnish your home is with new to you furniture.  It’s less expensive and you’re keeping it out of a landfill.  You can find inexpensive, quality items on Freecycle and Craigslist.   For inspiration, I go to some of my favorite blogs – these ladies can turn junk into treasure. I’m constantly amazed and inspired.  Just A Girl, Thrifty Decor Chick, The Lettered Cottage and Centsational Girl.

I have a major sweet tooth and often vow to cut back.  Keeper of the Home has a great post on “Cutting Down on Sugar: 21 Ways to Eat Less Sugar“. 

What are YOUR favorite blogs or posts of the week?  For you bloggers, feel free to share your own favorite topic of the week!

Need some new jeans?  Take an old pair to Gap and get 30% off a new pair of Gap 1969 jeans.  The Gapwill take your old jeans and use them to create eco-friendly insulation.  If you have a Facebook account, “Like” Gap and get 40% off a new pair!

In March, Gap participated in this event recycling over 270,000 pairs of jeans.  The jeans were recycled into insulation for 500 homes in under served communities and for special projects, including Hurricane Katrina rebuilding efforts.

It only runs through October 20! I’m all over this – I so need a new pair of jeans!

One of the best things I’ve found about blogging is the amazing community of women you meet (okay, I’ve mostly met women but there are lots of men out there, too).   You find immeasurable support, commitment and friendship. 

Today, at The Creative Mama, a blog I’m so fortunate to contribute to, they are asking for support for Chele.  She is a mother of 4 who recently found out she has cancer, amongst other health issues.  Her husband is currently unemployed and their are uninsured -  you can imagine the financial pressures coming their way with cancer treatment.

For more details on her story and to contribute, please visit The Creative Mama.  I’ve seen these types of requests on other blogs, for other heartbreaking stories, and the community that comes together to support someone they will likely never meet is amazing.

Halloween is just around the corner and we’ve already got our costumes ready.  It’s not hard at my house to come up with something.  My daughter is HUGE into playing dress up.  She wears a dress up outfit (or three) at least once a day.  She has quite the collection from things I’ve passed on to her to the Halloween clearance section where grandma has purchased numerous costumes for a buck or two.  Her imagination just lights up when she puts on a doctor’s outfit or lion mask.  Playing dress up happened to be one of my most favorite games as a child, too, so I’m having a lot of fun playing with her, too.

A great way to get your Halloween costumes this year is to take part in the National Costume Swap Day.  Find a local swap, pass along your kid’s old costumes and pick up a new (to you) costume.  It’s a great way to make your Halloween ‘green’.   If you can’t find a local swap, consider hosting one of your own.  It can be as simple as one between friends or neighbors, or as large as a city-wide event. 

What costumes will your kids be wearing this year?  Are you buying new or getting creative with DIY?

1.  Start early.  Several years ago, I was reading an article about healthy snacks for kids where they mentioned hummus. Comments from parents ranged from “great idea” to “what kid eat hummus?” My first thought was “my kid eats hummus”. I fully attribute this to our early introduction of hummus, along with other foods that kids haven’t traditionally eaten like quinoa, lentils, couscous, and beans. We were just feeding our daughter (and now our son) what our family eats. We didn’t make separate meals for them. And for us, it worked. Both of our kids eat a lot of different healthy foods.

2.  Be the example.  If you aren’t eating veggies, your kids probably won’t either. Put them on the menu for every lunch and dinner. This point was recently proven to me when my daughter was playing house and said “I need a Coke. That’s what mommies drink.” Ugh. If you’ve been reading MGG for long, you know I have a love-hate addiction to Coke. Obviously it’s a bit on the “I love you so much, how do I survive without you?” side right now.

3.  Sneak them in.  When I was making pureed food for our infant, I thought it would be so easy to sneak those pureed fruits and veggies into our meals for added doses of healthiness.  I’m not the genius who came up with this idea, there are plenty of cookbooks that have great suggestions on how to do this like Deceptively Delicious and The Sneaky Chef.

4.  Prepare ahead.  One of my personal goals for 2010 was to eat more veggies myself.  I figured if they were easily available throughout the day, I would snack on them.  So between buying pre-cut veggies and spending time cutting veggies into bite-sized chunks, I put them in glass storage so I would see them every time I opened the refrigerator.  I did begin to eat more of them until I came up with #5 below.

5.  Leave them out.  Because our fruit is stored on the counter, it gets eaten quickly. I figured the same would happen with veggies so I started putting them in pretty glass dishes around the kitchen and living room. This is my current method of extra veggie consumption and it totally works. Both the kids and I are snacking on carrots and tomatoes many times a day.

6.  Grow your own.  With your own backyard garden, kids are bound to be curious.  My daughter (and friends) love to comb the garden to see what they can pick fresh off the vine.  Your garden can be as simple as a tomato plant in a container – that is how I started several years ago.  Each summer, I try to plant something new so we can practice our gardening skills and expand our taste buds.

7.  Get creative.  When I was a child, I would often come home from school to a message on the counter spelling out ‘I Love You’ in chocolate chips.  Of course, we swallowed them as fast as we could.  Although she used chocolate, the theory could apply to veggies, too.  Here are some great ideas resembling Sesame Street characters with veggies like corn, radish, peas, spinach, tomatoes and carrots.

How do YOU sneak more veggies into your family’s diet?

Some days, I feel like a “laundry folding, kitchen cleaning, diaper changing, bottle making” machine. 

What does your Mommy Machine look like today?

Or not. I’d be happy if stains just stayed away permanently.

Months ago I almost never had problems with stains.  My girlfriend asked me, “ how is that even possible with two kids”?  I figured it was some “eating with good manners” skill I’ve taught them, making me a stellar parent. Unfortunately, I’m not the amazing parent I imagined. For more than one reason.  

So the answer is….my daughter, who is now 4, is old enough to eat (mostly) without spills.  And at the time, my son was 6 months old and just starting solid foods so there were few spills.  We were a stain free household and proud of it.  But like they say, “pride comes before a fall” and now that my son is eating finger foods, he’s a mess!  And so are his clothes.

I had some Dreft Stain Remover on hand so I used it and it worked fine but I wanted something a little more eco-friendly.  Toys R Us had a sample of BabyGanics Stain, Stain, Go Away and after dousing shirt after shirt with it – I’m a believer. When it took a coffee stain out of a white shirt that had been sitting in my laundry bin for over a month – I was SOLD. I bought a big bottle and it’s gloriously stored right on my washing machine for daily use.

I don’t know why it’s so ridiculously priced on Amazon ( $7.50 per bottle ) but at Toys R Us or Babies R Us, it’s only $4.99 so go there. That’s where I happily purchase mine.  All BabyGanics items are buy 1, get 1 50% off – so buy 2.  You’ll need it.

So ladies, what do you use to get stains out?