nicole siswick's Profile

This is my favorite video yet; you two are lovely. And that pasta sounded delicious! I cooked shepherd's pie. Nothing fancy, but not something I usually make because it's hard to compete with the one my mom makes. I've never cooked anything from Jamie Oliver, but you've piqued my curiousity!

Spent about 40 minutes doing a much-needed deeper than surface clean in my kitchen. Looks lovely, and I'm proud to say that I did it all with my 1 year old underfoot!

The Martha Stewart Homekeeping Handbook has a great information about how to make healthier choices when it comes to cleaning products. A few excerpts:

"Choose products with specific claims, rather than general ones. The term environmentally friendly...is only meaningful if accompanied by an explanation, such as 'This product has no air-polluting potential.'"

"Many products are prominently labeled 'phosphate free' even though phosphates haven't been used in household products, except automatic dishwashing detergent, since the mid-1990s." (My note for those of us using our trusty Cascade dishwasher detergent: According to their web site, as of July 2010, all phosphates have been removed from their products).

The MSHH also has a great universal cleaning kit chart which enforces *always* using the least toxic cleaning product possible first before moving on to something stronger (her example is cleaning a particularly dirty oven with baking soda and water before trying a commercial spray cleaner). I have been making my own eco-friendly cleaning products for over a year based on the suggestions in this book. General purpose cleaner is a solution of mild dishwashing liquid and 2 cups water in a spray bottle and a glass cleaner of 1 part white vinegar to 1 part water in a spray bottle.

Cheap ingredients and I've never run out of supplies to make my cleaners. FWIW, I've also found that using "natural" dishwashing detergents didn't cut it on my dishes, so I use Cascade. I figure washing my dishes once using a phosphate free detergent is better than than running the load through again (an often eventually resorting to washing them by hand) because they weren't clean.

As far as laundry detergent goes, we cloth diaper, and the original Tide is what works (and we tried quite a few cloth diaper-specific formulas), so that's what we use.

I think my outbox is going to need to be about 10 times the size of yours, Maxwell! Such a good idea. I have so many things that I've been *wanting* to part with, but with a one year old trailing after me all day (<3), it's hard to devote a block of time to collecting all those things at once. The outbox concept is a great one, because I can put items in to it as I go through my week, and bring things to Savers on Fridays!