Plan and Plant a Garden – Green Step By Step

When it comes to being green, food miles is an important consideration. The further your food comes to reach your table, the less efficient it is. Eating organic food is nice too.

Gardening is a wonderful way to be green and to encourage the entire family to appreciate what it takes to bring food to the table. You may or may not save money gardening, but you can’t beat the food quality when it all works out.

Plan by what your family will eat and what grows well in your area. If you’re in an area with water shortages, do take that into consideration as well.

Especially for younger children there is nothing like seeing a plant go from seed to the table. It can even encourage some of the pickier ones to try vegetables they thought they didn’t like.

There are many ways to keep your garden organic. Delight younger children by getting lady bugs to help with pest control. Plant marigolds near tomatoes. Get a good organic gardening book – Square Foot Gardening is a good choice for your typical, space limited yard as well as for larger properties.

Gardening also gives you a great excuse to make the most of your compost pile. Some cities do now take yard waste in special containers, which is a big help, but it’s better yet if you can use it yourself. Much better than using chemicals on your garden. There are plenty of compost bins and such that you can buy to keep the process running with a minimum of odor.

Why and When Should You Buy Eco Friendly Products?

If you’re concerned about climate change, pollution or other damage we’ve done to the environment as a species, you’ve probably thought about how you can be more eco friendly. Shopping habits probably immediately come to mind. Those organic bamboo sheets look awfully nice, perhaps?

Should you be buying them?

There’s a right and a wrong way to go about buying eco friendly products. Certainly if it’s something you need, get the eco friendly version whenever possible.

But if you’re just replacing something you already own, think more carefully.

It’s good to buy eco friendly when you’re shopping, but that doesn’t mean you can just shop for whatever you want. Even eco friendly is not an excuse for consumerism.

You also want to be aware of greenwashing. So many products claim to be green, but the claims are pretty thin. Many of these claims aren’t regulated and can be put on just about anything. Don’t assume that terms such as “natural”, “green”, “nontoxic” and similar terms mean much at all. “Organic” and “recycled” are much better terms as there is some oversight on them.

You can also research the claims online. Companies that are offering products they claim are eco friendly will probably share details online, even if there’s not much information on the packaging. If not, you can probably get some good information just by searching on the product name. It’s amazing what some people can find out and will share quite freely.

Certification is good to look for too, so long as it’s a real one such as Energy Star for saving electricity.

For personal care products, check out Skin Deep’s Cosmetic Database. You’ll find out if the products have a lot of unsafe ingredients.

Do buy foods, personal care products and cleaning products in eco friendly versions when possible or make your own. These are things you use up and so you’ll probably be buying pretty regularly.

Don’t go replacing perfectly good but non-eco-friendly products just because you want the green version. If it’s still good it’s probably more green to keep it than to replace it even with the eco version. If you do get rid of things that can still be used, make sure they head to a thrift store, get sold at a garage sale or are offered on Freecycle. Someone else may still appreciate what you don’t want anymore.

There’s a balance to be had in buying more eco friendly products and in being too much of a consumer. Keep an eye on your habits so that you don’t fall into that trap.

Washing My Hair with Baking Soda and Vinegar

I finally got around to trying a baking soda wash with a vinegar rinse for my hair, as I said I would at the start of the month.

Most places I read about it said to use 1 tablespoon of baking soda in warm water, although others said to make a paste of it. I used probably a half tablespoon to try things out as some people found the full amount made their hair really dry. With hair as long as mine I tend toward the cautious side of things.

The mix is applied to the scalp, not the length of the hair. Overall I think I used too little, but I could definitely tell when the oils by the scalp started loosening up and moving. There was a definite change to the feel of my hair as I scrubbed it. Can’t say lathered it, as obviously there’s no lather with baking soda.

The vinegar rinse was made in the same way, one tablespoon of vinegar to one cup of warm water. That was applied to the length more so than the scalp.

First try, I’m not ecstatic. I’ll try using a bit more baking soda next time and maybe a bit less water and see if that helps. The hair near the scalp was left just a bit too oily.

Is Being Green Getting a Bad Rap?

It always amazes me when people start talking about global warming being wrong. It’s as though they think that’s the only issue that matters… not to mention that they often have a poor understanding of the entire issue. Then they’re sometimes critical of the efforts other make to be green, as though it’s foolish.

I just don’t get it.

It’s foolish to do things than can save money? That pollute less? That use fewer resources?

So many of the easy green things to do have little or nothing to do with global warming specifically. They have to do with recognizing that there are many solid reasons to try to take better care of our planet. There’s kind of a shortage of alternatives in our solar system just now.

Lots of the things you can do that are environmentally friendly are budget friendly too. That’s a pretty nice deal, especially when so many families are struggling to get by. That they’re also less polluting, healthier and create less waste are additional benefits.

Making your own homemade cleaners, for example. Vinegar and baking soda are cheap and can clean many parts of your house. They’re cheap and nontoxic.

It really doesn’t matter to me what you think of global warming. Whether we’re right or wrong on that one, there are other issues to consider. There’s ocean acidification. Ground water pollution. Air pollution. And just where is all that garbage going anyhow? What about wildlife? This planet needs more than us, you know.

These are the things that make being green important, not just global warming. I’d be delighted to be wrong on that one. On the other hand, I’d sure hate to disagree about it and get that answer wrong. Which consequences have the chance of being worse?

No, being green isn’t easy. There are a lot of habits to break, a lot of temptations to avoid. But it can be done.

Think before you shop and again before you buy. Do you really need it? Is it the best option? Will it last? Can you buy it used? Will someone else be able to use it when you’re done with it?

There are a lot of things you can buy where those will be excellent questions to consider. The answers you come up with can really help with the decision process and keep you from buying things that really don’t meet your needs.

Sure, as individuals we’re all “the little guy” but that doesn’t matter. Get enough people together and there is a difference, one that corporations will notice, and that’s where the bigger differences in pollution and similar issues can occur. But it almost always has to start with the little guy. If we regular people don’t care, who else will?

So be green. Be unashamed. And encourage those you know to do likewise. Don’t let the arguments about global warming and such get you down. There’s much more to consider.

6 Basic Principles of Green Parenting

Being a green parent takes effort. It’s not easy to avoid the temptation to give your kids everything and to teach them to avoid consumeristic behavior. There are a lot of little things you should do.

1. Clean green.

Using homemade or environmentally friendly cleaners is a very important step for green parents. It’s a way to avoid exposing your family to many of the chemicals that are common to so many homes, some of which can cause health problems. Just think about any time that cleaning with harsh chemicals has left your eyes watering, given you a headache or made it just a little harder to breathe. Why expose your family to such things if you don’t have to.

2. Enjoy hand-me-downs and thrift stores.

Hand-me-downs and thrift stores don’t just save you a ton of money. They allow you to reuse clothing, toys and other goods that someone else doesn’t want anymore.

It can be amazing what you can get for so little. Thrift stores won’t have the hottest styles, but you can find some very good quality clothing in them for very low prices.

Delight in the finds, and make sure that anything that is reusable when you’re done with it goes down to another family or to the thrift store.

3. Keep things simple.

Birthday parties. Holidays. The general clutter of the house. If you can encourage simplicity in your life, you’ll generally consume less. You’ll also be less driven to distraction by the chaos of it all much of the time.

Kids really do love simple birthday parties, especially when they’re younger. Don’t fall for the competition to have the best party in the class. Younger kids will happily just play together. Their parents may even be grateful if you keep the goodie bags simple or even just don’t bother.

It gets more challenging as kids get older and start to feel peer pressure more, but keep at it. Talk about why you do what you do and why you don’t do what you don’t do. Sometimes they’ll agree and be happy about it while other times they’ll be disappointed, but that’s life.

4. Teach the kids to recycle.

Recycling is easy in many areas these days, but not everywhere. If you have it easy, make sure your kids start from an early age tossing recyclables into the correct bin.

5. Garden.

It can be a small windowsill garden or a serious one out in the back yard, but having your own garden is great for green parents. You’re teaching about where food comes from as well as an appreciation for nature.

Make sure you include composting. You don’t have to get fancy about it, but why should that food waste go into the trash if it can benefit your garden?

6. Get active.

There are a couple of meanings to this one. Yes, get active physically. How else to show your children that there’s more to life than television, cell phones and computers.

But also be active in your community. Volunteer. Do so as a family as children get old enough. Don’t just talk about the issues that matter to you, show that you mean it.