A recycled posting for my 100th post: natural cleaning products revisited

I just noticed this morning that I have written 99 posts. So I thought in the true spirit of an ecologically focused blog I would recycle my most popular blog post. This was originally written in early April when I only had a handful of followers. Since then, Small at Reduce Footprints has Stumbled the following post and sometimes it alone receives a dozen direct hits a day. The day it was Stumbled it it nearly crashed my site, a new visitor logging in almost every second!

It always makes me happy to see someone showing interest in removing the chemical cleaning products from their home. So for my newer followers who haven't seen this yet I challenge you to give some of these recipes a shot. They're easy, very cheap and your body will thank you for it. Now I must go unclog the bathroom sink with baking soda and vinegar....

Kate reveals her all-natural cleaning product secrets,
originally posted April 3, 2009

The spring peepers are calling like mad in my neighborhood, the herring have been sighted in the fish ladder and my forsythia is about to burst. Spring has arrived on the north shore of Massachusetts and the two days I've been able to open my windows wide has made me itch to do a big spring cleaning. As I round up favorite four (and my ONLY four) cleaning products I thought I'd share my secrets with the world. All you need are these, I'm serious:





















Grab some empty spray bottles, a rag or newspapers (ditch the paper towels, a rag works great and you can throw it in the wash and newspaper is a great window cleaner) and you're ready for a toxin-free cleaning!

All-purpose cleaner: one part vinegar, four parts water and a splash of lemon juice, put in a spray bottle. This is the first thing I grab for cleaning counters, windows, sinks, sticky mystery messes my husband leaves on the kitchen table....

Safe scrub: baking soda, plain and simple. I get the biggest box the supermarket has and sprinkle it in my ceramic kitchen sink, my bath tub, my bathroom sink. Just moisten a bit and scrub. Everything is pearly-white in no time.

Floor cleaner: Equal mix of white vinegar and warm water. Add a splash of lemon juice for a yummy scent. For wood floors add a splash of baby oil. I admit, I loved my Pine-Sol. But it always left a chemically odor that I didn't want my newborn inhaling. All the ammonia is not only bad for her sensitive mucous membranes (not to mention mine) but unnecessary.

Drain de-clogger: pour a half cup of baking soda down the drain followed by a half cup of vinegar. Don't be alarmed when it foams up! That's how it works it de-gunking magic. Fifteen minutes later pour hot water down the drain to wash it all away. DON'T do this if you've already used a chemical cleaner, the vinegar will react with it and release toxic fumes. Best bet, start with baking soda and vinegar in the first place.

Mold remover: spray it with hydrogen peroxide. One part hydrogen peroxide three parts water.

And my favorite, courtesy of my chemist father-in-law (which I haven't actually tried yet but I'm itching to do because I love a good basic chemical reaction.):

All natural-magical-silver polish: Line a saucepan with aluminum foil and fill with water. Add a teaspoon of salt and baking soda and bring to a boil. Once it's boiling add your silver and let it sit for a minute or two then take it out. Voila! Tarnish-free AND far easier than doing all that polishing! Let me know if you try it and how it works out, my mother-in-law says this is the coolest thing ever and is mad that my father-in-law didn't show her this trick years ago!

What you're never going to need to clean your house:
ammonia: causes damage to mucous membranes and potential burns.
bleach: causes chronic respiratory damage and heart conditions.
antibacterial soap: a whole mess of health problems including antibiotic resistance for you and the creation of super-germs, just don't go there. Get them out of your life for good.

One of the best benefits of getting the scary chemicals above out of my house is I don't have to worry about my almost-crawling baby getting her grubby hands on toxic products and swallowing them.

Happy spring and happy toxin-free cleaning!! -kate

Playing farmer

Friends of ours in a neighboring town occasionally go away and ask us to pet sit. Except their pets include a lot more than their three friendly cats. They also have a goat, two sheep, a dozen chickens, a half dozen peacocks, a flock of guinea fowl, two geese, and a couple of turkeys (I might be forgetting something?)

I have a blast doing this! I've never lived on a farm. I've never taken care of "farm" animals, even though I did aquatic animal care for twelve years, this is much different. My husband and I only own 0.06 acres so unless we move we'll never be able to own more than a few chickens and never a goat or sheep and especially peacocks as they are very loud.

I think it's a great deal: we take care of their animals, get to play farmer for a few days and can take home all the fresh eggs we want. If you've never eaten an egg straight out of the nest box you are missing out. The yolks are impossibly yellow and the flavor is out of this world!

So I will stop typing and share some fun pictures. This is the goat, he eats everything and tried to eat my camera:


I think this turkey is just beautiful. At first they seem quite ugly but just look at those colors! As soon as you walk by them they puff out all their feathers and put on quite a display:


This photo isn't great since it was cold and my hands were shaky, but these are some of the guinea fowl (they keep them for tick control) and there's one of the big male peacocks in the rear center. Have you ever seen a peacock fly? He flew clear across the paddock to perch in a tree and it was very impressive:


This is the last clutch of eggs we got. The brown ones are from the chickens, our friends say the big white ones are also chickens since the geese shouldn't be laying until next year but I'm not sure. They are HUGE! Twice the size if not more than the chicken eggs:

I'm sure we'll get a call again soon for some more pet sitting. Which is fine with me. Ever since I left my job at the Aquarium I do miss taking care of animals. Hopefully some day I'll be able to keep chickens, it will be a great learning experience for my daughter when she's old enough to help with the care. She loves going to the "farm" now, although in the recent cold weather I've had to bundle her up pretty tight. But, I can still hear the giggles through all the layers as she imitates the animals.

The Most Hilarious Santa Arrival. EVER.

Before I get to the point, I apologize for letting a month go by without blogging. An explanation (trust me, it's good) at the end of this post.

I live in a quirky seaside town. And I love it. But, the way Ipswich, Massachusetts has Santa arrive is about the quirkiest I have ever seen. This was the first year my husband, our little girl, and I made our way down to the town wharf to see the action and we were not disappointed.

I've seen Santa arrive by fire truck, by sleigh and on a horse. But, in our town, he arrives by fire rescue boat. He motors up the Ipswich River to the town wharf. Then, an awaiting fire truck with a boat trailer picks up the rescue boat and the whole town, I swear the WHOLE town, follows Santa, still in the boat, about a mile upriver to the downtown area.

I'm not finished. There's also a jailed Grinch in the back of the police department's pick up truck. They make him pull up the rear of the Santa parade, I guess since he's in jail he shouldn't be up front in the place of honor with Santa.

I'm not sure what my daughter made of all this. She's only fourteen months so the crowd of mostly older kids was probably more interesting to her than Santa or the Grinch. But I think she really enjoyed the mile walk, the bells her Aunt Bev bought her along the way, and the lights from the fire truck. LIGHTS is now her favorite word, which she has to scream on the top of her lungs. Every time I turn on the Christmas lights in the living room I hear her shrill little voice cry out "LIGHTS! WOW!"

What I've learned in the past few days from the Santa parade, a very unexpected jailed Grinch, a new favorite word and the look of pure yumminess on my little girl's face when she ate a gingerbread cookie is the Holidays are so much more fun with a child. How on earth did I find them fun before? I have no idea. But all the wonderment and magic I felt as a child waiting for Santa is quickly rushing back. You might just find me creeping down the stairs at 3 AM Christmas morning to see if Santa drank the milk and ate the cookies we'll leave out.

I am so thankful for a child to share this holiday season with. And the reason why I've taken a little blogging break is we have another one on the way. I'm ending my first trimester and I'm hoping the nausea and exhaustion will start to fade like it did at about this point with Lizzie. If my kid is napping than so am I, hence the lack of online activity. So I think I'll go have another ginger cookie and go to bed!

Why I hate the end of daylight savings

Changing the clocks back by one hour is a cruel joke on parents with small children. I apologize for the profanity in this photo but it's pretty much exactly how I feel at this moment. Having a one-year-old wake up at 4:30 for six days straight just takes all the fun out of that promised extra hour of sleep that people without kids get to enjoy every fall.

It wasn't just my child. Facebook friends from all over the world lamented with me, their kids getting up, like mine, three hours early. You'd think a 6:30 AM wake up would simply go to 5:30 AM, but no. Something in their little brains was thrown way way off and they were all getting up, ready to play, sometime between 3:45 AM and 4:30 AM.

This past Saturday we had our first 6:00 AM wake up, which was the biggest gift ever to parents who had been sleeping an average of 5 hours a night. "Why don't you go to bed earlier?" you might ask. Well, it can sometimes take an hour or so to clean up the mess that that very same one-year-old creates during the day. By the time the toys and books are picked up, the sippy cups washed and the bananas scraped off the kitchen floor it's usually at least 8:30 PM and this parent needs another hour or more of mental downtime before my brain is calm enough to fall asleep.

So if you haven't seen me online much lately you know why. This is one of the first times in the past seven days I haven't napped while my child is napping. I should be but my to-do list has doubled in length since daylight savings time ended.

If you also have a small child and have been walking around like a zombie for the past ten days I know exactly how you feel. It really is a cruel trick played on us. And on top of that it gets dark by 5:00 PM so we can't even go to the playground after dinner. Just not fair. Who's with me to keep daylight savings time all year? It's dark when the kids are getting up anyway so what's one more hour of darkness? Sounds like a plan to me!

The most excellent news! Mass. DEP rescinds safe yield decision!

A very very big thank you to all of you who signed the petition to alert Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to the idiotic decision of MassDEP setting safe yield water withdrawal levels at a point where many of Massachusetts' rivers could get pumped dry. Initially I thought Gov. Patrick was behind this horrible decision, but when I heard the whole story apparently he was very upset and was able to take action to reverse it.

Just yesterday Mass DEP posted this on their website:

"MassDEP suspends the safe yield interpretation and determinations that were announced in October 2009. MassDEP clarifies and explains that its interpretation of the term safe yield under the Water Management Act includes environmental protection factors, including ecological health of river systems, as well as hydrologic factors. MassDEP will work with stakeholders to quickly develop interim safe yield determinations based on this interpretation that will be used in WMA permitting on a short term basis."

Basically that legal jibberish means that they have to determine safe yield based on many factors including environmental ones, which they claimed last month were no longer a factor. In the Water Managment Act they themselves wrote, which was upheld in court a few years ago, environmental factors were listed in their safe yield policy. So they were caught red-faced to say the least.

What will happen in the meantime? According to the Ipswich River Watershed website :

"DEP will re-determine the safe yields of all the river basins in Massachusetts within a year, and will include aquatic habitat protection factors in the evaluation. DEP will also work with the other state agencies and stakeholders to develop a sustainable allocation methodology that will include standards for more effective protection of ecological values"

I will keep you updated, but again a big thanks for reading, signing and your concern. The governor received a record number of signatures on this issue. This means fish won't die and the recovering herring run will be allowed to recover. And, hopefully this will mean that next summer the river that flows a few feet from my house will look like this:


and not like this:

Drive smart = save gas = save planet

I've been meaning to write a post about how considerate and careful driving can actually save the planet. Yes, it actually can. You know those idiots who have to gun the gas to go one block and then slam on the breaks? They are burning quite a lot of unnecessary fuel. I was stuck in a car last spring with a woman who did this just from one side of my small town to the other. She must have hit 45 miles an hour in the busy downtown area where the speed limit is 25, and she didn't get me home any faster. Not to mention I find driving like that very disrespectful to the passenger. Especially when that passenger is me.

I recommend visiting fueleconomy.gov for some very helpful tips on how to save gas that go beyond the obvious making sure your tires are properly inflated. To save you time and sum up the site the rules are pretty simple:

• Drive sensibly: Our government reminds you that "Aggressive driving - speeding, rapid acceleration and braking wastes gas. It can lower your gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and by 5 percent around town." I believe it. I love when I see a Prius speeding and weaving down the highway. That is the truest form of hypocrisy I can think of.
  

• Remove excess weight: This is one I am always guilty of. The back of my car currently contains a jogging stroller, a 22 pound SCUBA weight belt I've been too lazy to take out, a beach chair, various beach toys and a 1 gallon jug of windshield washer fluid. I estimate that's about 40 pounds of unnecessary weight.
  

• Don't idle: There are actually laws about this which you can check by state here. In Massachusetts you can't idle for more than 5 minutes or you will be fined not less than $100.

• Don't speed: This graph says it all. As tempting as it is to fly down the interstate at 80 miles an hour it is actually extremely inefficient. Highest fuel economy is around 55 and drops fast after 65 miles an hour.

I hope I have convinced you to take a deep breathe and calmly depress your accelerator the next time you take off after a green light. You'll be doing our planet a favor. A big thanks to Small at Reduce Footprints for reminding me that I've been meaning to write about this for some time now. Sensible driving and taking care of your car is the theme of this week's Change the World Wednesday Challenge.

Happy Halloween: My grandmother's pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

This year's Jack-O-Lantern creation, even pumpkins love to eat pumpkins!

This is a very special recipe passed down from my grandmother on my father's side. We made dozens and dozens of these every October and I even won a cooking contest with them back in college. I hope you enjoy!

Grandma's Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Mix together the following:
1 cup pumpkin (canned is fine, fresh baked from the oven is better)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg

Dissolve 1 tsp baking soda in 1 tsp milk. Add to pumpkin mix.
Mix well with above ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips

Drop on greased cookie sheet (about 1/2 tsp size)
Bake 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Enjoy! And Happy Halloween!