Home grounds us. It’s a safe haven to come and go. For kids, it’s generally the nesting place until they go off to the next great thing. Could they benefit from a little green guidance? Couldn’t we all use help living a sustainable life?
Do you know about the parenting theory of Roots and Wings? It goes like this: Give kids the roots of guidance and trust, and watch them soar. Parents develop principles and values that guide their children. The hope is that these roots become ingrained, and when they move out, their path to live responsible lives will flourish.
My kids are in their early 20’s. It’s been mostly an empty EcoNest with the exception of summers for a few years. Last month, I moved my youngest child into a studio apartment near the college
Whenever I speak to groups, one of the biggest hits is always my backpack. It’s quite odd because it’s something I never even intended as a teaching tool, yet somehow has become synonymous with my attempts to curb my waste. I think the reason it works is because it’s so specific, pragmatic, and doesn’t take a lot of thought, just a little forethought.
I’ve carried a backpack for pretty much as long as I can remember and like many of you, have been hauling around things I never need for quite some time. Let’s face it, the road flares from that spelunking craze you went through last year aren’t really doing a lot of good to you these days are they? So last year, while saving all of my trash, I decided
...
It’s common knowledge among remodelers and interior designers that the easiest way to transform the look of a home is by changing the wall color. Often the design element used is paint. Not so in my childhood home.
See, I had a wallpaper designer parent (Dad), and my other parent (Mom) was over the moon over wallpaper. My father’s flocks and my mom’s modern metallics were in full bloom all over the walls of the house. Along with the rolls of wallpaper samples and those thick, stumpy wallpaper books, there were tiny flecks of film that caught on all the textured surfaces of the house. My Dad’s handprinted silk-screening pieces from his graphic design process landed on more than just the walls. It gave new meaning to “wallpaper world” and
The sun in shining, the birds are chirping (at least here at Care2), yet my sense of organization remains in hibernation mode. So, in honor of today, the official first day of spring, I will dedicate myself to a weekend of cleaning–a fresh start for a new season. If you care to join, here are some great tips to help you get started.
Getting Rid of Clutter
Why Clutter Happens
Feng Shui Your Clutter
Clear Your Clutter in 6 Steps
Recipes for DIY Natural Cleaners
Make a Non-Toxic Cleaning Kit
Porcelain Stain-Be-Gone Soft Scrub
Non-Toxic Oven Cleaner
Counter Cleaners
Detoxing Your Home
Simple Ways to Detox Your Home
Top 10 Swaps for Detoxing Your Kitchen
Clean Your Upholstery the Non-toxic Way
Organizing Your Closet
7 Ways to Organize Your Closet, the Eco-Way
Healthy Green Closet
A funny thing happened when I stopped using plastic shopping bags: I started saving money on purses. I started collecting cute reusable totes that make me so happy that I kind of just stopped using regular purses, which means I stopped buying them. And although my reusable tote budget increased, the price differential proved beneficial to the bottom line.
Although it would have been a good strategy, I didn’t start using reusable shopping bags to quell my eco-naughty purse-shopping habit–my inspiration came in the form of factoids such as this: between 500 billion and one trillion plastic grocery bags are consumed worldwide each year. Or, that 100,000 birds die annually from encounters with plastic bags, not to mention the estimated 100,000 whales, turtles, and other marine
...
Remember that old saying about putting the cart before the horse? Well, as a friend who reads my Care2 pieces pointed out to me the other day, I seem to have done just that. I jumped into energy saving at home without really looking at the problem to begin with. So I’d like to take a quick step backwards and talk about how we can investigate what we do use in a way that will make us want to waste less in the first place.
The first stop in our journey is your trusty electric meter. Most of these are in the rear or side of a house or building. If you happen to live in a apartment complex, and pay your own energy bill (some places roll electricity into the rent), the meter you are looking for will likely be marked with the number of your unit so the meter reader knows whose is whose.
...
By the time laundry day comes around, you’re probably more concerned with cleaning your son’s Spider-Man jammies and your daughter’s favorite purple shirt than you are with the chemicals swirling around in your washing machine. But switching to natural laundry solutions means clean clothes and better health for both your family and the planet. Plus, making the change won’t compromise the quality of your laundry load—your clothes will be as clean and durable as ever.
The down and dirty truth is that traditional detergents contain synthetic optical brighteners as well as surfactants (which are wetting agents such as emulsifiers, dispersants and foaming products that reduce the surface tension of water). They also have fragrances that pollute our waterways,
...
News of possible health threats associated with plastic bothered Jeanne Haegele of Chicago so much that she has quit using plastic. The 28-year-old marketing coordinator chronicles her efforts online at
www.lifelessplastic.blogspot.com. “Plastic is absolutely everywhere–our food is packaged in it, our clothes are often made out of it, and even baby toys are made of plastic,” Haegele says. “It was scary that something that was such a big part of my life might be dangerous.”
Scientists are mostly worried about bisphenol-A or BPA. “It’s an endocrine disruptor and in numerous animal studies it’s been linked to cancer, infertility, obesity and early puberty,” says Anila Jacob, M.D., M.P.H., a senior scientist at the Environmental Working
...
Given poor government regulation, many of the cleaning products available on the market contain “everyday” carcinogens such as formaldehyde, nitrobenzene, methylene chloride, and napthelene, as well as reproductive toxins and hormone disruptors. Not to mention other ingredients that cause liver, kidney and brain damage, allergies and asthma. I really am a happy person–not your basic Eeyore type, but toxic cleaning products seriously get my goat. One of the best things you can do to detox your home is to create one of Annie’s simple non-toxic cleaning kits to use–most of the ingredients you probably already have on hand.
But there are a host of products, other than those used for basic cleaning, that often contain carcinogenics. This list, from Cancer: 101
...
Every time I open my medicine cabinet I think, “Boy I really need to clean this out.” But when I start to think it through, a little flutter of panic somewhere leads me to say, “Yeah, I’ll get to that later.” Old medication, old sunscreen, old make-up. Even if the majority of it is comprised of natural ingredients, I don’t want to flush it and and pollute my wastewater–and is letting this stuff slowly degrade in the landfill any better? I realize I’m trying to protect the environment by storing the expired products in my medicine cabinet–and the clutter-aversion I have is clearly at odds with this strategy.
But today’s the day–I have devised a plan of attack. It starts with determining what needs to be trashed (tips 1
...