Before we all had these fabulous environmentally friendly, non-toxic cleaners available everywhere, what did we use?
Well, if you were like me, you used Baking Soda and Vinegar (no, not together–that’s a science experiment!)
Fellow blogger Tracee Sioux has advice on how to use these two Green Cleaners.
Once upon a time, my best friend and I got two Betta fish: a boy Betta and a girl Betta. And one tank. My friend’s little sister named the girl fish “Carrie.” The name was a premonition. We put the beautiful male in the tank, then the rather drab female. Seemingly outraged at his gorgeous plumage, Carrie latched on to his pretty tail and rode him around the tank. We managed to seperate them, but the male was never quite the same. He lived for several years, but he always kept his tail curled up, and he had this twitch…
Keeping Bettas together
Male Bettas cannot be kept together. Period. And males and females can be kept together, but only for the purposes of propagation. Read the rest of this entry »
The house next door was empty for a couple months before it was sold. It’s a pretty house, and though a bit overgrown, the yard had some beautiful roses in it. The young couple who bought it asked the Realtor to “clean up the yard” before they bought the house.
A ‘mow and blow’ crew was hired, and boy did they ‘clean it up.’ They left lawn, trees, mulch, and an evergreen hedge (trimmed into a perfect rectangle of course.) Everything else was yanked, shredded, and bagged. My neighbor across the street and I were sick: if we had been home, we would’ve claimed the roses before they were chopped into little pieces. It wasn’t as if they weren’t recognizable as roses: they were blooming and Hybrid Teas!
When the young couple arrived at their new home, they stood on the curb, utterly shocked.
The new trend in real estate is to try to make the house look “new.” New carpet, fine. New kitchen, expensive but sometimes worth it. All new landscaping? Hmm…too young trees, tiny shrubs and large expanses of mulch are OK for a new home…but only because it’s expensive to do better.
The best thing about an older home is it’s mature landscape. Yes, you should trim and mulch. But please do NOT ruin the landscaping by removing trees (!), limbing up trees (especially pines) so that they look like paintbrushes, yanking out mature perennials, and any other effort to make it look “new.”
If the front of the house needs anything new, make it a new coat of paint.
Also see the rest of my articles on Home Staging.
I have always maintained that Americans watch too much TV, and that cutting down on TV is good for your health, and for your family’s relationship. But apparently, it also helps your family’s financial situation.
The Simple Dollar has a post on Ten Financial Reasons To Turn Off Your Television - And Ten Things To Replace It With
The responses are what interest me the most: people are very protective of their TVs! It’s almost as if they were defending their religion or their children! This I find deeply disturbing: TV is supposed to be just entertainment, but for many it is so much more than that.
Did your mother ever make your clothes? If she did, chances are that you swore you’d never do it to your own kids!
A woman named Alex Martin is making her own clothes…out of ones she already owns. Her Clothing Recycling project is a social commentary on consumerism as well as an earth-friendly project. Most famous for putting on the same little brown dress every morning for a year, Martin states: “let’s stop agreeing that the best way for women (in particular) to “express themselves” is by purchasing new wardrobe items and putting together daily outfits.” Martin’s a mom, and she makes her kids clothes, too.
It’s hard enough getting the kids dressed in the morning…I can see how not having to decide what to wear every morning would be appealing. The Dean of the college I did my graduate work at had 5 copies of the same black outfit: one for every day of the week. She looked appropriate and stylish every day and never had to waste time deciding what to wear.
As someone who once sewed a sampler to my thumbnail in Home Ec, I won’t be making clothes for me or my children (it was a really fast sewing machine, honest!)
But I really like the idea of not wasting time on clothes, and I love the idea of sustainable clothes!
I have found the most amazing tips for Ending Laundry Chaos at the Unclutterer!
These will help me restrain my laundry–that’s right RESTRAIN! You see, in my house, the laundry takes over the whole house. Laundry is more like a roommate than a chore.
I plan to (attempt to) implement these suggestions immediately, with one modification.
This tip:
Have a table in your laundry room so that you can have a space to immediately fold clothes as they come out of the dryer. Do NOT allow it to become a clutter table — keep it clean and only use it for folding.
would NOT work in my house. All empty surfaces are immediately consumed by the mail and scrap paper gods (we’ll work on this problem later!), so in myhouse, I’m going to install a fold-down surface, like an ironing board, to use to fold laundry.
One of my blogs is featured on this week’s Festival of Frugality.
