Green SAHM

Like a lot of people growing up, I got sunburns pretty regularly as a kid. That’s what happens when you’re pale and you burn much more easily than you tan. But I learned early on to appreciate it the year my mother bought an aloe vera plant.

Aloe vera is a succulent. It’s pretty easy to grow and very useful. You can grow it indoors on the windowsill or outside in a pot or on the ground. It likes sandy soil, like many succulents. If you get frost, keep it indoors.

Any time you scrape or burn yourself it can help. And of course it helps delightfully with sunburn.

All you have to do is snip off one of the leaves and break it open. The gel on the inside is truly marvelous. It cools the burn or scrape quickly.

It can be a bit challenging getting the gel out. You can cut the leaves open and just rub directly on your skin, but the plant has some small spikes along the edges that may scratch you. Not badly if you’re using it gently, though. If using fresh leaves, avoid the yellow part inside the leaves. This can be irritating to the skin.

I like to recommend the plant over the commercially prepared aloe vera gels for a few reasons. The first is that I’ve always had the best luck with the gel straight from the plant. The effect just seems to be stronger to me. That could, of course, just be an illusion, but it is what I believe.

I also like that if you treat it right, you can just keep the plant growing, rather than having to buy new bottles all the time. It saves some waste.

And of course, if you use it straight from the plant you know exactly what you are getting. No worries about the other ingredients added to the stuff in the bottle labeled “aloe vera”.

Some people also take aloe vera internally from prepared capsules. There are a variety of claimed benefits to this. I’ve never tried it myself and so cannot speak from experience.

For me, the cooling effect this has on sunburn is the big reason I like to make sure to have a plant on hand during the summer. I always hope to not need it, but when a burn happens to myself or someone in my family, it’s nice to have a way to relieve the discomfort.

With gas prices constantly on the rise right now, anything you can do to avoid driving during rush hour is likely to be a very good thing. For anyone working outside the home this can be difficult. For at home moms like me, it’s pretty easy.

But you can try. The increasing gas prices have encouraged employers to start paying attention to the options. Some companies are becoming more open to the idea of a more flexible start time. If you can start and end your day an hour earlier or later you can avoid quite a bit of traffic in many areas.

If you don’t need to be face to face with people, telecommuting is another option you should be looking at. Even one day a week can save you a lot.

And then there’s the classic. Carpooling. My sister does this one and saves a significant chunk of money every month. She had to adjust her work schedule to go with her coworkers, as her employer already offers flexible starting times, but fortunately they had an early start time and now she not only avoids traffic and saves gas, she gets more time after work with her family.

Pretty good deal.

Public transportation works well in some areas, not so well in others. My area pretty much falls into the “not so well” category. In other areas it can be highly efficient. And even in my area I know a mom at my daughter’s school who takes the bus with her son every morning to school. She just prefers ours to the one nearest to her home. For a distance that short, it works reasonably. I wouldn’t try it long distance without a lot of need around here.

But as I said, in other places it is highly efficient. You may have light rail options as well as buses. We do have light rail, but not near me.

If you are at home, it’s best to just avoid all these entirely. Plan your errands for quieter times of the day. Makes them much faster and pleasanter. Ask for doctor’s appointments at times that will be convenient to you in terms of traffic as well as your daily routine.

And of course, walk or ride a bike when possible.

Many of these tips have the potential to save you a lot of money. The less you drive, the less often you’ll feel the pain of gassing your car up. That can’t be a bad thing.

Goodness I do a lot of laundry. That’s how it goes with small children, especially with one still wetting the bed despite diapers.

We’ve been washing our clothes in cold water for years. That’s almost always sufficient, and I’ve never even tried a “cold water detergent.” The regular stuff works just fine.

You can get some great laundry tips on the U.S. Department of Energy’s site. I’m not surprised to see that they neglect to mention line drying clothes at this point, but the rest of the advice is good.

Almost everything I wash comes out fine, as I said, with a cold water wash. Those things that don’t I try a couple things.

Dawn Dish Soap

Great for removing grease related stains. It may take an hour or two, but for tough stains I’ve left it on overnight. Clothes that otherwise appeared ruined come clean.

Baking Soda and White Vinegar

Rub baking soda into the stain. Spray or pour white vinegar. It will bubble up and work on the stain. This works well on carpet stains too.

Not every stain is going to come out. I think that’s one of the big lessons of motherhood. Kids are really good at ruining the appearance of their clothes, sometimes in a single wearing. To me that just means you maintain a playtime wardrobe. Children really don’t care, as a rule, if their clothes are stained or torn if they’re comfortable and allowed to have fun.

Having two cars in a family (or more) is so common these days that many families just cannot imagine living any other way. The sheer convenience is hard to beat. Why would anyone give that up?

I can think of a few reasons.

For one, it’s better for the environment, provided you are actually driving less. It’s less gas used. Fewer oil changes. Fewer car repairs in general. It makes you think before you drive anywhere.

It’s also a solid financial decision. The points above that are good for the environment are also good for your pocketbook. You can add in that it cuts back on your ability to shop, since you have to plan your shopping trips better. That does help with saving money.

My family has been living with just one car for close to a year and a half now. It’s not easy, since the city we live in does not have great public transportation. But it is doable. Just takes extra planning at times.

As gas prices go up, this has been more and more a benefit to us. I work at home, and drive much less now that I don’t have my own car. Frivolous trips are much harder to make. But it’s still not easy.

For example, my son has speech therapy on the other side of town. I used Google’s transit website to check the bus schedule. The buses here would get me about halfway there; the rest I’d have to walk. You can see where there’s a bit of a problem. The walk is very long for a 3 year old.

But in many areas, public transportation is one of the big keys to coping with just one car. Need to go somewhere and not take the car? Know how to research your local bus schedules. Most cities have them online now; if not, get a supply of the paper ones and keep them in a safe place.

Scheduling helps a lot. Whenever possible, I schedule things around when I will have a car available. This is easy for things like grocery shopping and other errands, but more challenging for doctor’s appointments and such.

If nothing else works, there’s always borrowing someone else’s car. I don’t like to do this, as the people I can most easily ask this of live a distance away and so there’s a lot of extra gas used. Kind of takes away from the whole point of having just one car. But done only when there’s no other solution, this can be a valid solution while still cutting back on your total use of cars.

This brings up another possibility that the person who needs the car most should consider. Carpooling. A good carpool can cut back even further on your use of your car and make it available for other needs.

You can’t forget the biggest challenge, of course. What if the one car breaks down? Suddenly there’s no other car to replace it. A plan for getting to work or any other places that you have to go to become vital. You’ll need to know your alternatives. If you carpool, you have a big advantage.

And of course, there’s always biking or walking. Either of these is good for you and for the environment. A bike with a basket is great for local errands, and you’re limited in your shopping to what you feel comfortable carrying on your bike. That’s more limiting for some than for others.

If you want to walk to the store, you can bring a rolling basket or your kids’ wagon along. I don’t know how stores would feel about a wagon being brought in, but you can always ask the manager or find the bike rack and lock it up there.

Overall, this can be a workable possibility for many families. If you aren’t sure that it would work for yours, just try driving like your family has only one car for a time. Keep one car at home at all times, and you’ll know if it’s possible.

It’s spring, and the weather is beautiful in much of the country. If it’s not, it probably will be soon.

Have you ever considered biking to work? Or for your errands? With gas prices climbing ever higher (they will hit $4/gallon soon in my area, the way things are going), biking is looking more and more practical for a lot of people.

It’s also great exercise. You don’t want to ride so hard that you arrive at work covered in sweat, of course, especially if you’re dealing with the public all day.

If you’re within 5 or so miles of your work, this can be highly practical. It doesn’t take all that long to bike that far, and unless you have a lot of hills to go up you probably won’t need to sweat much to get there, except perhaps in the summer if you live in a place where it’s already hot by the time you leave for work in the morning.

This is something we’re hoping my husband can do for his next job. While we’d like to stay where we are, if he ends up commuting a distance we’ll look at moving once my daughter’s out of school. No point in having him drive far just to go to work if we can live closer.

If you have baskets on your bike, it can be highly practical for many errands. I remember when I was in college I would ride my bike to the grocery store and just carry the bags on my handlebars. A basket would have been much easier, with significantly less distraction and risk of breaking a bag.

A challenge these days is where to store your bike at work or when you get to the store. A lot of places don’t offer a place to lock up your bicycle, a serious problem. When I was a kid all the grocery stores in my area had bike racks. Now I rarely see them, and I do look!

Some jobs will allow you to bring your bike inside. There may be a storage closet or room in your cubicle for one, depending on the setup. It’s something to discuss with your boss if someone else hasn’t found the solution first.

Stores can be more challenging. Most have trees in the parking lot, and many people use a cable to gently attach the bike to the tree. But no matter where you lock up your bike, make sure that you aren’t blocking walkways or ramps.

You will want a good quality lock for your bike. U-locks are very popular, as they are much more resistant to theft than cables are. Square link chains are also quite strong.

Make sure that when you lock your bike you lock the wheels to the body of the bike. It’s quite common to have individual parts of the bike stolen rather than the entire thing. Many bikes come with an easily removed front wheel, so you can pop it off and lock it to the body and the back wheel with little effort.

You don’t need an expensive bike either. Keep it affordable and you can quickly pay off the investment in terms of gas money. Add in the benefits of the exercise you’ll be getting, and the advantages may be too much to resist.