Category Archives: Eco Friendly Home

Our Water Restrictions Are Now Official!

Actually, they were official on July 1. I’ve just been too busy trying to find a new place to live to write about it before now.

Ours require paying attention. We can water Saturday, Monday or Wednesday. That’s hard because that’s not how the settings on my sprinkler timer works. I can schedule for every day, every other day or every third day. Doesn’t quite work.

I guess it will be nice to get moved and not have to worry about the sprinklers here. Just have to find out what the restrictions are in the new area, because they will exist.

I like how they’re doing it where my sister lives better. They just restrict the time of day. I could wish for a time of watering limit too or even a number of days per week restriction there, just to really emphasize the need to cut back, but at the same time it makes sense to say “only water when it’s not all going to evaporate immediately because it’s really miserably hot and windy out.”

A combination of the two would be good in other words. Limit time of day, length of watering and how often each week but not days of the week. I could program that pretty well into my system.

I can’t help but suspect that the restrictions are so simple where my sister lives because there are so many relatively new developments, all with Homeowner’s Associations, which typically have rules about how green a lawn must be kept. I’m sure they don’t like it when homeowners can’t keep up due to restrictions, so I can picture them campaigning to make it easier to keep having those perfect green lawns.

Personally, I still want either rocks or native plants in my front yard. Much more interesting than lawns. And then fewer worries on keeping the front watered on schedule, just have to deal with the back.

Keeping Kids Green and Busy While School’s Out

With the kids at home more, summer is a time that can be a little bit challenging for green parenting. Somehow you have to combat all the boredom that comes from having more free time, while facing the fact that the weather is warmer. Here are some of the things I do:

1. Try to get the kids outside early and late in the day.

I have a lot of sympathy for them wanting to be inside during the hottest parts of the hottest days. Who wouldn’t prefer that?

But even on the days that it breaks 100 degrees F around here there are times that they’ll willingly play outside. Rather than let them turn on the TV first thing in the morning, as they would love to do, I boot the kids outside to play. They can come inside when it really starts to warm up. Then I do it again when the day cools off sufficiently.

This also has the advantage of limiting the need for sunscreen. My kids generally aren’t out in the most powerful of the sun’s rays, so I don’t have to apply sunscreen to them so often.

2. Make homemade popsicles.

Sure the store has cheap ones, but they’re often little more than sugar water.

I prefer to make my popsicles from smoothies, but you could use regular juice or pudding if you prefer.

3. Hit the library.

Hot days are great for spending at the library. Get some new books for your kids to read while not having to run the air conditioning in your own home. The library’s there, after all!

4. Combine lawn watering with running through the sprinklers.

We have water restrictions starting up in our area, which means watering only on certain days and only after 6 p.m. and before 10 a.m. and only for 10 minutes per section on timed sprinklers.

On hot enough days, 6 p.m. is still plenty hot enough for running through sprinklers!

And of course there are always local swimming pools, beaches and so forth if you want to cool off during other parts of the day.

5. Crafts!

Within certain age ranges, it’s easy to come up with kids’ craft ideas. My kids love saving magazines and other things that might otherwise go into the recycle bin for a path through their crafting table first. Saves me a lot not having to buy everything they craft with, and the reuse is a great habit.

As kid get older, they may have particular ideas about what they will be willing to do, but if you find something they really enjoy making, try to encourage it.

6. Have friends over.

It won’t necessarily help to keep the kids cool, but having friends over certainly helps with the boredom factor. I always tell mine no TV or computer time with friends over.

7. Know when to give in on TV and computer time.

Really, it’s not the end of the world if kids watch a bit more TV or spend more time playing on the computer during the summer. What matters is that they get enough activity overall.

Glad to be Reusing Moving Supplies

Getting ready for this move is rather time consuming. I’m managing bits of time for regular work, but it’s tough. Especially since we had a scheduled, 8 hour power outage yesterday for some sort of work the power company has been doing in our area.

We still haven’t found the house we’ll be moving into, but I’m doing a bit of packing every day so it won’t be such a chore when the time comes. There are always things you don’t need to have out all the time.

The nice thing is that we have a lot of boxes to reuse. Many are from a previous move of ours, and in between were loaned to one of my sisters for her move. It’s nice that they’re still in good enough shape to be used for this. We also have a few boxes that my mother had from other things.

Packing materials will mostly be old newspapers, which I have my mother and my inlaws saving up for us. Why buy bubble wrap and such when we can get the newspaper for free?

This whole process will no doubt also be a reminder of how much stuff we have that is only rarely used. Most of it I really don’t mind, especially the various antique dishes from my great aunt and grandmother.

It should be interesting to see how little we can spend on moving supplies.

What Sunscreens Are Safe?

Here we are, at the beginning of summer. Time for some serious outdoor fun for most families, including mine.

That means time for sunscreen!

Trouble is, a lot of sunscreens have some really nasty ingredients, and skin is great for absorbing chemicals. In the long run it can really pay off to be picky about what you use.

So off to the Skin Deep database I go to find some of the safest national brand sunscreens by their standards. It’s kind of tricky sometimes to find the exact ones they have tested, as companies change these things all the time, so here are some that I could find on Amazon.

  1. California Baby SPF 30+ Everyday/Year-Round Sunscreen Lotion – 2.9 oz
  2. California Baby SPF 30+ Sunblock Stick Everyday 0.5 oz.
  3. Kiss My Face Sunscreen Spf#30 + With Oat Protein 100% Paraben Free 4 oz.
  4. Physical UV DEfense SPF 30, 3 oz
  5. Solar Sense Clear Zinc for Face – 0.5 oz

Efficient Lawn Watering

Much of southern California is getting into stricter water restrictions right now, with a goal of cutting all water use by at least 20%. That’s a tough goal when you consider how many people have already been conserving. Most lawns in our area show it.

The typical restriction is along the lines of allowing people to water on certain days of the week between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m., and limiting sprinkler time to 10 minutes. Also they want people to keep an eye out for obvious water wastes, such as broken sprinklers, obvious leaks and sprinklers spraying more on sidewalks or streets than they should.

These restrictions are pretty good for cutting back water use for irrigation, which is a huge part of residential water use.

For the best results for your lawn, you need to water about 1 inch per week. That’s easy enough to measure if you put out an open, empty tuna can. If you can do it in one shot you should be able to reach the deeper roots of grass, which is the most effective.

Believe me when I say I don’t water mine this much, and it’s kind of brown. But my garden looks good.

Mowing less is also good. Taller grass shades the soil, and so less water evaporates from it. The grass also is then able to better stand getting less water.

My own favorite tip is to find more native plants to put in, rather than your typical lawn. There are grasses that do better with less water. My city suggests a list of plants that are California-friendly (PDF, pretty big). They also suggest only maintaining as much lawn as you need, and having drought resistant plants for the rest of the yard.