Attempting to educate myself

I have done a paltry job of putting anything on this blog except for stuff about food. I assure you, there has been more happening, but it's honestly not been as much the focus as food has. Food, for me, is a big deal. And being successful with such a big change is a big deal for me. And I have been overwhelmingly successful in my opinion. I have never been able to 'conquer' this one. And I haven't entirely. I still have my moments. But I am improving!

One thing that I have been working on is reading. I want to read more in general. But I also want to read more about healthy living and learn how best to feed myself and my family, and to do the best for us and our home.

I am currently reading Fast Food Nation. I admit, I have been 'currently' reading this book for two weeks tomorrow. It's a good book. It's great information. I don't dislike the book. But I'm having a hard time powering through it. I'm almost there! I have about sixty pages to go.

I am simultaneously juggling reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. This is my second time reading the book, but the first time I did not completely finish it. Again, for some reason, I have a hard time getting through it. It's a great book. I love the information. But I just don't feel drawn to, 'oh! I hope I can find time to read this book today.' And as such, I have conveniently not been finding that time.

I'm working on it. My goal is to finish Fast Food Nation today. I can do it!

Crunchy Laundry Fail

I've been trying to "green" over a lot of the products we use in our home. I've started switching our bath products over, tried out some "green" cleaning products(as well as using household alternatives, like vinegar), and so on.

And one thing I thought I'd figured out, I discovered I hadn't. Back in the winter sometime, I don't recall when, I started buying Charlie's Soap. At first, it was great! It was a bargain, you only need to use a little bit, our clothes were coming nicely clean and didn't smell strongly of detergent. It was great! I did find that it wasn't cutting it for diaper laundry, so I did keep using regular detergent for that. But otherwise, Charlie's was awesome!

But then a few bags into it, I started to notice that stains weren't coming out like they used to. And the laundry just sort of looked.... dull. And sometimes I was finding I needed to re-wash things to get them really sufficiently clean, and if I have to wash something twice, what's the point?

So I decided to test the theory that it was the Charlie's to blame, and I headed to Target. I didn't want to buy a pricey detergent, but I wanted to get something that looked effective. Enter Arm and Hammer plus Oxi Clean.
Is it eco-friendly? Not likely. Is it super healthy for my family? Probably not. But darn if it didn't clean the clothes.

I would like to, at some point, switch to a greener alternative. But 'green' products are expensive. And I know it'll be a trial and error process to find what works with my washing machine, my family's laundry, our type of water(a little hard, I think), and so on. So there will likely be a few products I buy and reject before finding one that works.

For now, I'd like clean clothes, thank you!

Earth Day!

So, it's Earth Day. Yay! And, because my life is all kinds of crazy right now and I've been putting off some projects and thus had little to blog about, I figure I can post a bit on what I do to be earth friendly.

So, let's see.

The biggies..... We use cloth diapers. We didn't with Kadin. Heck, I had no idea they even really existed anymore. But we have with Ansel since he was born. And seeing how he's almost 3 1/2 now, that's a LOT of diapers we haven't thrown away. I won't lie and say I love it at this point. It's tedious. But I remember Kadin's last months in diapers being tedious, too, and all I had to do with those was throw them away.

(I will also add that Ansel wore this same diaper today, as a matter of fact. The color's lost some of it's brightness, but the diaper is every bit as functional as it was in this picture, when Ansel was a little over a year old.)

We breastfeed. Feeding artificial human milk(also known as "formula") creates a TON of waste. If you can possibly breastfeed, I highly recommend it!

This is about 3 days post-partum, our first outing.

I use reusable menstrual pads. I'll spare you a picture on this one. Really, you don't want to see. But I promise you it's NOT gross. And an unexpected plus of it has been that they're WAY more comfortable than anything disposable ever was.

One of our cars is a hybrid, and we LOVE it! It's fun and cute and spacious enough and gets great gas mileage! The blue one on the right. The grey SUV is my parents'.

We buy organic products and local products when we can. This is less strain on the environment, especially the local products. Organic products also reduce the amount of impact each crop has on the land itself.

There are a lot of other smaller things we do here and there, and a lot of other things we'd like to do, but at this point don't because of financial constraints or the time involved or other things. We're working on it, though, and doing what we can.