Category Archives: Eco Friendly Parenting

Homemade Stain Removal

My daughter and I went through her clothes yesterday because my inlaws got her a bunch of new clothes and some of what she has is looking a trifle worse for wear, if you get my drift. The kind of stuff that happens when clothing is worn by a highly imaginative and active 5 year old.

She’s quite typical for her age in some ways. Very reluctant to get rid of any of the old clothes. The shirt in the very worst condition that she of course adores I showed her the exact problems, and she finally agreed that it didn’t look too good.

But we still had a lot of clothes that she doesn’t want to get rid of, but have obvious stains. So today I’m going to have her help me work on stain removal.

I’ve been looking around for good homemade stain removal options. The one I’m thinking on is a very simple recipe:

1 squirt dishwashing liquid
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 quart water

Mix and store in a squirt bottle. Spray on stains and allow to sit for a half hour or more before washing as usual.

Hopefully this will help to revive some of my daughter’s favorite clothes. One shirt was stained on its first wearing, so I really want to get it looking good again.

I just love doing this with products that are safe enough that the kids can participate. It’s good for children to learn how to do basic household chores from early on.

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Get Your Kids Out of the House!

I love sending my kids outside to play. So far it tends to keep them busier than watching television or playing on the computer. Admittedly, they’re 2-1/2 and 5, so this may change, but it is so far quite encouraging.

But sadly, many children don’t get time to play outside, or at least not nearly enough of it. There actually appears to be an association between attention deficity disorder and not getting enough time with nature for kids. They call it nature-deficit disorder.

I added Last Child in the Woods to my wish list today. I get the basic premise, and agree with it, but the book should still be interesting reading.

chalk

I can tell you that I see a difference in how my daughter behaves after spending hours playing outside versus watching television. She’s much, much happier overall if she’s been out having fun, as well as being more focused and obedient. In either case she still has her wild imagination, which goes through leaps that can be delightfully hard to follow.

There are a lot of great activities you can do with your children to get them outside and playing and enjoying nature. If you have a space to do so, you can garden. You can walk to a neighborhood park. My daughter loves to do that, then go rolling down a grassy slope. It’s not all about the playground equipment, after all.

You can go camping or hiking as a family. You may have to drive to do this, or you may have a good hike within walking distance, but I love getting my family out into the less civilized part of nature. Parks are great, but there’s more variety to areas that are not so precisely maintained in appearance as city parks are.

Let your kids get dirty. Yesterday I had to clean my kids up after they had some fun with water and chalk. No trouble; I laughed as I got them cleaned up. I think the clothes survived too, although not by much. Let your kids play in in the creek, look for frogs, lizards and other small critters. Talk to them about the bugs they see. Show them different plants and which ones are safe to touch, or, more important, not safe to touch.

I have a basic philosophy that if my kids don’t sometimes shock me with how filthy they got, I’m doing something wrong. I may have to soak their clothes for hours after, as I did yesterday, but it’s worth it to me. The skirt did finally turn soft pink again.

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I Think I’m Getting This School Lunch Thing Figured Out

Getting Ariel to eat the lunch I pack for her has been a challenge. Most days these first few weeks she has come home with much of her lunch intact. Not too big a deal many ways; her kindergarten gets out at 1, so it means only a slightly late lunch for her.

I’ve determined that she is definitely not a sandwich eater right now. Maybe someday she will like them, but for now, no. Same for putting any meat in her lunch. She just won’t eat it. Nuts, even her favorites, cashews, are similarly a no go so far.

But I packed her a pasta salad filled with vegetables and sprinkled with cheese, and it vanished quite satisfactorily. She then informed me that her next lunch she wanted to be “Sand and Shells“. I can cope with vegetarian. Not like people need as much meat as most Americans eat anyhow.

She’s hitting it lucky right now on desserts, although I’ll have to make it clear that this is very, very temporary. We have a ton of “two bite brownies” and other small desserts that I got saddled with from my sister’s wedding rehearsal luncheon. That’s what I get for not leaving early. But her favorite is the angel food cake with strawberries on top. Could be worse.

But her normal dessert is fresh fruit. She adores kiwis and most other fruits. Throw in some vegetables, maybe some cheese, and she’s pretty content.

I’m looking at switching her over to whole grain pastas. It’s a bit hard on a tight budget, but if she’s going to have pasta more than occasionally, I’d like it to have some nutritional value.

I doubt the menu is down perfect yet, since I like providing a good variety, but I’m making steady progress.

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Going Retro-Progressive

I love this term! I think it really describes the habit so many people are developing to be more like their grandparents and making things like cookies and bread at home, and air drying laundry.

There’s a lot more than homemade cookies, air-dried clothes and free-range children that are making comebacks. Farmers’ markets, car-free days, 100-mile diets and counter-consumer movements have all grown in popularity.

I just love it. My mother tells me I’m too protective of my kids, yet I give them more freedom than a lot of parents I know. I’ll readily admit that it is very, very hard for me to let my son go at times, but that stems more from the rough start he had (near miscarriage, surgery on his skull at 3 months), than anything else.

There are a lot of things I look forward to being able to do when we can afford a place of our own. We are fortunate enough to be able to garden in our yard; never thought I’d be so grateful to the extremely unusual freezes that killed off the landlord’s landscaping, allowing us to garden freely.

But I would love to be able to hang a clothesline. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to hang one, but the fence is cinderblocks with rebar and filled with concrete, then stuccoed. Yes, massively overbuilt, but it also makes it really hard to find something to attach the clothesline to. No trees in the yard either, &$*#. That one frustrates me on so many levels.

There’s more I would like to do on a retro-progressive level, but some things make it tough. Having access to a car only when my husband is home from work means I can rarely get to a farmer’s market.

I don’t know at what age I’ll let my kids do some of the things I used to do. I’ll probably try letting my kids play out front with only minimal supervision within a few years. It should be interesting to see who calls me nuts at that point. I know my sister was chewed out by other neighborhood parents for letting her 8 year old play in the front yard alone a few years ago. Yet I know my sisters and I did so regularly at that age, no problem.

There’s a lot to be said for a lot of the old fashioned ways of doing things. Some really don’t take that much more time, many are great for family bonding and raising children who are competent to take care of themselves for a while, without a television or computer. And of course much of it is better for the environment and healthier.

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So Glad I Didn’t Get the Laptop Lunches Box Now

The delights of parenthood! My dear, darling daughter managed to lose her lunchbox already. This would be day 2 of kindergarten. Really makes me glad I didn’t get the Laptop Lunches box.

lunch bag

The school has a lost and found, but it hasn’t turned up there yet. The custodian said she’d keep an eye out since sometimes these just get given to the wrong teacher.

That’s the whole thing, including the containers inside her box. Plus her head band, which her grandparents had just bought on Tuesday and that really does help to keep her hair out of her face during class. But I know my daughter, and she just likes having her hair lose. She says she doesn’t look like the real Ariel with her hair pulled back. Which is funny since it’s been pulled back most days since she had enough hair to pull back.

I took her television and computer privileges, which I had previously warned her would be the consequence for losing her lunch things at school. This, of course, started because on day 1 she lost the ice pack to her lunch.

Much as I hate to, it looks like time for disposables until she’s responsible. Makes more sense than buying new constantly. But I’m going to tell her to keep her things so that she can show me that she’s not losing them. Have to have her teacher’s cooperation, I assume, but what else to do?

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