Why I feel better when my fridge is empty

Here's my fridge, and it clearly isn't empty.  But, here's the thing - it's a lot emptier than it used to be, and the change has been a voluntary one.

I used to hoard food, thinking that somehow it made me thriftier, when in reality it made me crazier.  I was one of those women who debated saving the water their vegetables were steamed in to use later when making their own broth.  This saving food compulsion was born of a thrifty childhood, nurtured by some long, lean college years, and finally blossomed and bore a lot of fruit after David and I got married, had a child, and firmly slipped into a pretty low economic class.

Not only that, but our discovery of healthy eating (aka - skip the Ramen noodles every night and buy something labelled 'fruit' on occasion) led me to believe that I had to scrimp and save nutrients constantly.  Don't throw out bones, because bones have calcium and, um, 'good' stuff, whatever that means, and they should be boiled to extract it and the reduced liquid should be frozen...or something.  It was becoming an obsession.

I also noticed that the more I fell into this mentality, the more two things happened.  The first was that I was actually LESS likely to make and eat food.  Food had become a huge chore, requiring lengthly prep time and exhaustive research to be delicious.  I would make it, and then be loathe to toss a Tbsp of leftovers and instead let them molder away in the back of the fridge.  Half of the produce I bought, I tossed.  Half of the healthy stuff I made, required a ridiculous amount of time.  Not to mention space.  My fridge and freezer both were crammed with food.  Little labelled bags of stuff.  Can't throw out that half a calcified lemon, since it was organic and all, and cost the earth.

The second thing that happened is that we all lost out on the joy of eating, as well as the supposed financial benefits of doing so in a healthy way.  Who wanted to eat Mama's lentil casserole three days in a row?  No one, that's who, including Mama.  So the casserole sat there and Mama, exhausted from the two days of prep work it took to produce a healthy, entirely homemade lentil casserole, ordered a pizza.  A delicious melon, or some perfectly ripe apples, supposing I hadn't forgotten them and left them buried under mounds of food in the back of the fridge somewhere, got pushed aside again and again in favour of convenience and 'food planning'.  I couldn't give Sam an apple because those were the 'special' apples I was saving for a pie, which I couldn't make because we weren't buying piecrust anymore, just making it, and I was too tired to make piecrust.  So let the apples sit.

So what changed this?  To be honest, it's still changing, and the change is slow.  I still hoard food.  I still buy a bunch of 'excellent deals' at the grocery store and then throw them away.  I still save bits and pieces.  I have a peeled ginger root in my freezer as we speak.  Yesterday my husband threw out a pumpkin that I had been holding onto in cold storage since before Hallowe'en, and to be honest, if he hadn't thrown it out I wouldn't have.  I would have kept it.

But, I'm a lot better.  To start with, we've all noticed that if there is one food option, then when you're hungry that's what you'll eat.  If you look at that picture above, that big bowl on the second shelf is the roasted pepper soup I made yesterday - and we'll have it for lunch today.  Because that's what there is for lunch.  The top shelf holds some stuffed pasta shells, and David will take those to work for his supper today.  Because that's what there is for supper.  When I went to the store yesterday, I bought exactly what I needed for ONE intensive recipe - in my case, a roasted portabella mushroom soup.  I bought three onions and whipping cream - you can see my onions in one of the crisper drawers.  You know what else you can see in that drawer?  Nada.  There's nothing else there.  On purpose.

There's enough food in that fridge (and my freezer, and the fruit bowl on the counter, etc.) to feed us for a few days only.  Then I will have to go shopping again.  I have a loaf of bread on the counter, but only one, and then I will have to make more bread.  I have some homemade energy bars wrapped up, but only half a dozen, and then I will have to make more.  I have three apples, a kiwi, a banana and a cantaloup in my fruit bowl - this means that in about two days, I will need to buy more fruit.  These small, manageable amounts of food tend not to go to waste anymore.  If you only have three apples, and they're all visible, then you'll eat your three apples.  When they're done, you'll buy more apples.  Simple.

I've found myself not only saving on tossed food, and therefore money, but also on stress.  It's stressful to look in a fridge and have no idea what to prepare for a meal, and it's equally stressful, for me at least, to prepare this elaborate meal plan every week that I cannot hope to achieve.  I don't want to spend two hours every day in the kitchen, making food.  I like food, I want to eat food, I want to serve healthy and delicious food, but I don't want to use up my life preparing food.  I can tell you right now what we'll have in the next couple of days without a meal plan.  We'll have apple pancakes for a meal.  We'll have portabella mushroom soup.  We'll have a cheese souffle.  And then at some point in the next few days as I run low on fruit I will also pick up some vegetables and we'll do a stirfry, and then an omelette.  Then we'll be down on eggs and so...you get the idea.  I don't need a meal plan, I can look at the dozen items in my kitchen and tell you right now what you can expect to eat if you arrived for supper.

I'm too lazy to write my own exciting post.

Well, give me a break, I woke up at four am remembering with a start that I have forgotten to take the garbage out and tomorrow is Spring Clean Up Day and the only opportunity I will have for months to get rid of my old bread machine and a mattress that has been the bane of my existence for months. So I'm not exactly relaxed and thinking clearly.  But fortunately Amanda from Diapers and Paranoia is, as well as Kim from Dirty Diaper Laundry and no doubt countless others.

Here's the gist of it:  What's it like to be trying to live on limited funds without a washer and dryer?  Go ahead, ask me, I do it everyday.  I've washed laundry in my bathtub and kitchen sink.  I've boiled it, I've hung it outside, I've used drying racks and fans and heaters and the ever-trusty curtain rod!  So I will tell you from experience that hand washing cloth diapers is a time consuming and thankless job.  Kim wants us to try and use only flat cloth diapers (the old-fashioned, fold-your-own kind) for a whole week, just to see if it's possible for limited income families to do it; if it's a feasible option for everyone.  She's explained it much better on her blog, which you should go check out.

Here are the rules:

• You MUST use Flats.
• You MUST handwash them.  How is up to you.  (bathtub, sink, large wash tub, portable non electronic washing machine, or camp style washer (bucket and plunger- think churning butter)
• You MUST air dry them.  (indoors or outdoors, makes no difference)
• You MUST limit your number of covers in rotation to 5 or less.
• You can use any detergent you want.  (Keep in mind that you still want cloth safe detergents)
• You can still use your nighttime diapers but I ask that you try to make flats work.  Maybe try a prefold wrapped in a flat.
• You can use disposable liners.
• You CAN’T use a diaper sprayer.  I thought long and hard about this one, but at an average cost of 40.00 this is one diaper accessory that is out of range for many families.  Dunk, swish, flush, or scrape!
• You MUST start the morning of May 23 and end the evening of May 30.
• You MUST fill out a completion survey about your experience.

So that's it - I'll be doing it.  I have the cloth diapering *stuff* - it's just a question of getting a few more cleaning options and I'll be, hopefully, ready to go on the 23rd.  Won't you join us?  Let's see if there is a way to make clean bums affordable to all!

Cleaning the Green Family

In a continuation of my post, Cleaning the Green House, I was thinking I should write a post about green personal products.  Except that our experience with these is just starting, really, and we don't have a lot to share.  What can I say, we're a work in progress!

We have tried The Body Shop line of products, and I'm a big fan of their green tea facial cleanser and satsuma lip balm.  I've also used some products from Lush, and I love them, especially the bath bombs, but they are very expensive and strongly scented.  Although, according to the blog http://www.myplasticfreelife.com/, Lush can ship products without a lot of the harmful packaging you find with other personal cleansers, which is a big plus if you are attempting to decrease your garbage output.  Check out this post here to see the email Lush responded to her with.  In the past I've also tried Dr. Bronner's soaps, which give you a nice clean scent (I like the Lavender, personally) and something to read in the shower as well!  But, we haven't really settled on a solution and for the most part the whole family uses a brand name baby wash at the moment while Mama tries to figure out what the alternative is.

My makeup routine is pretty minimal most days although I have tried a few greener products, including ones from, again, The Body Shop (mostly lipstick and powder) and a natural powder from the Wet 'n Wild line, which seemed to be natural mostly because it was packaged in recylced paper instead of plastic.  Which is fine, just not really, you know, natural per se.  I also splurged on a shaping wax by Aveda for my hair when I cut it a few months ago.  It was very expensive, somewhere in the $20 region, but to it's credit it has worked well, when I've bothered to use it, that is.  The shaping wax is packaged in 99% post-consumer plastic and Aveda uses wind energy to make their products.  Aveda also markets itself as having plant-based products, which I think is a little vague (are other products not plant based?  What does plant based mean, exactly?) but you know what?  At least it's a start.

I've also begun making a bit of headway into switching deoderants.  I tried a stick deoderant from Tom's of Maine, but found that I had a reaction to it and got a bit discouraged.  A friend suggested I try the Naturally Fresh deoderant crystal and I went and bought one.  It was expensive for deoderant, over $7, but my friend assured me that she had been using the same crystal for two years and it was still going strong.  I have had better luck with the crystal, which is made of mineral salts, and my only complaint would be that for it to be truly effective you need to wash and shave before each application, which is a few extra minutes in the bathroom that I don't always have every morning.

Before I can really tackle the soap and shampoo issue I'm going to need to figure out our toothpaste situation, because the baby is swiftly becoming a toddler and has six teeth that I should be brushing with something!  So far I've just been browsing, but I think I might try Green Beaver for a child and adult friendly natural toothpaste solution once our current tubes are gone.  I've also got a baby-sized toothbrush for him, but have been debating trying a natural bristled toothbrush since they are reasonably priced at my local store (about $3).

As you can see we're not as far along with our personal care products as we are with our cleaners, but we're slowly working on it.  And I can't stress it enough that, for us, this has been a slow journey.  Jumping into a whole new lifestyle might work for some, but we have found that slowly acclimatizing ourselves to new products and a new way of thinking about our house and bodies has been the best solution for our family.

Cleaning the Green House

When I started keeping house with David we bought the brand-name cleaners because it was what we were used to. I had no idea how to clean a house and was influenced by what I had seen in my own parent's cupboards and what was advertised on TV. After a while we started to see these products as way over-priced and gravitated towards what we percieved as the only other viable alternative, the no-name cleaners. Sometimes these worked, but often they required using twice as much, which pretty much negated the price difference. After a while I discovered that some things (like laundry detergent) needed to be the expensive brands, while other things (like window cleaner) could be no-name. And that's pretty much where we stayed on the cleaner front until I started to become more interested in our environmental footprint a few years ago. It started because I was concerned about the lack of ventilation in our small basement apartment and using strong scented cleaners bothered me. We also had two cats, and I wanted to make sure that anything I used would be safe for them. So I started to try out a few of the 'green'  brands out there.

My first purchase, if I remember correctly, was Method all-purpose cleaner. I was really drawn to it's grapefruit scent, which wasn't overpowering but pleasant. It didn't clean as well as a more chemically cleaner, but it cleaned pretty well all the same. I've tried other Method cleaners since then and that statement holds true. They tend to smell nice, when they're scented, and provided you don't need a really strong cleaner, (say, soap scum) they work quite well.

After Method I experimented with a vairety of vinegar and baking soda combinations, along with sea salt, saline solution and lemon juice.  Some of these worked very well, others...not so much.  I still to this day use baking soda to clean my bathroom because it gets the ring off the bathtub and the sink better than any cleaner I had tried before.  Sea salt and lemon juice cleaned the copper bottoms of my pots very well, and a vinegar and water solution is the perfect substitute for glass cleaner.

At some point in this green experiment I stopped buying paper towels and switched to cleaning cloths, steel wool pads and scrubbers.  I also got rid of my mop and purchased a floor steamer.  At this point we moved from the big city to a small town and I found myself with a bit of a cleaning dilemma.  On the one hand, I really liked the lessened environmental impact that I was having, but on the other hand I had two cats and a baby on the way and I was worried about my house being clean. 
I stopped using the homemade cleaning solutions for a while and tried some of the other major green cleaner brands, starting with the Green Works line of cleaners by Clorox.  I found they worked very well to get rid of  surface dirt, but they seemed very close to being simply a slightly better alternative to mainstream cleaners.  Plus, I really didn't like the chemical smell of them.  The next purchase was thegreenline all purpose cleaner in citrus sage scent.  (Sorry, I can't find a website)  Thegreenline is a Walmart product, certified by EcoLogo, and is non-toxic, biodegradable, not tested on animals and contains no dyes or artificial perfumes as well as having a fully recyclable container.  It was also pretty cost-effective since it fell under the Walmart Great Value line.  This time I had no problem with the scent, in fact I found it very pleasant and not over-powering.  As for effectiveness, it worked just fine, and I have continued to use it in my bathroom pretty regularly.

By the time the baby came home from the hospital I felt pretty good about my cleaner solution.  I was using steel wool pads with soap to scrub my sink and stove top and anything that could stand up to it.  For the rest of the kitchen surfaces I used a scrubber or cloth with soap.  I steamed my floors instead of using a chemical cleaner, and although I did use cleaners in the bathroom I made sure it was thegreenline all-purpose cleaner for the toilet and baking soda and vinegar for everything else.  My mom also introduced me to Biosource cleaners, and I tried their all-purpose, glass and window and kitchen and bath lines, adding them to my collection.  For the most part we were happy with the compromises and concessions we'd made.

It probably would have stayed that way except for the fact that we decided to try cloth diapering and to wash our cloth diapers we were advised to use an enzyme-free detergent.  I also started to wonder about the effects of traditional detergent residue on a new baby's skin, and even on David and my skin, since we both suffer from eczema and psoriasis.  So I tried a variety of green detergents, including a powdered one by Rockin' Green and a liquid one, Sunlight's Green Clean.  We opted for Sunlight because of its availability in the area we live in.  Once the laundry detergent was considered I couldn't help but wonder about the dryer sheets, and that's when we gave dryer balls a shot.  They are two plastic balls, about 2X the size of a golf ball, with nubbies all over them.  You toss them into your laundry and they decrease static cling, theoretically.  We never noticed a difference and stopped using them.  In fact we stopped using fabric softener all together and, since it was starting to get warm outside, we hung our clothes on a line to dry.  I also brought out my indoor hanging rack and started draping clothes over that as well.

With so many cleaners re-examined over the past few years you would think we'd have nothing left to think about!  These days I still use thegreenline and Biosource cleaners, occasionally Method for light cleaning.  I have cut all paper towels out of my life and use either cloth cleaning rags or microfiber cloths, which also leave a streak-free glass surface.  I recently stopped using steel wool pads with soap and switched to plain steel wool pads or plastic reusable scrapers, like the ones from The Pampered Chef.  Although I do occaisionally give my floor a 'hands-and-knees' cleaning with water and all purpose cleaner I find that my floor steamer does a wonderful job for most cleaning situations without having to use any chemicals at all.  And of course the old baking soda and vinegar standby works wonders on a variety of surfaces.  We have two more products that we really need to examine and they are our dish detergent and our cat litter choices.  We have switched from a scented clumping cat litter to an unscented version of the same, but that's all we've managed to do so far.  We have tried recycled paper litter and silica crystal litter but neither is really the right choice for us, so we're at a bit of a loss.  I think one option might be to try wood shavings, which are very common around here.  The other option is sand, which isn't as prevalent but I'm willing to source!  I'm not sure why I've never tried switching my dish detergent; you'd think that that would be way ahead of, say, dryer balls, but it has just never come up, somehow.  I'll need to start trying to find a brand I like.

What we've taken away from all of this is that lessening your environmental impact is a process, not an instant fix.  It isn't hard to take that first step, but it may be hard to determine exactly what it is you need your products to do, what you can and can't compromise on and how green you feel comfortable being.  Even for us the process has had its ebb and flow.  At some points I cleaned entirely chemical free and then went back to chemical cleaners for a while.  A balance can be found.