Jlogged

Today, we are conducting the operation toy sweep in my children’s room. Three piles: 1.) keep 2.) throw away 3.) give away.  This is a yearly tradition.  We strip down to the bare bones of what my kids, love, play with, and wear.  Everything else goes.  My mom always thought getting rid of my kid’s toys was “mean,” so I started sending the boxes of excess to her house.  She understands now.

It took me an hour just to sort through the mounds of stuff my kids came home with after this years Christmas parties at school.  I have encouraged family members who are purchasing gifts for my children to give them consumables like chuck-e-cheese tokens, gift certificates to pump-it-up, or clothes.  They have a surplus of junk already. This is eggshell territory because one must not rob a person of the blessing of giving, and one can sound very high and mighty (without meaning too) by asking for certain items to not be gifted to her children.  I struggle with this issue, and often feel like a Scrooge.  How does one ask in a nice way for the world at large to stop giving her children land fill fodder?

*Edit*  The boys and I just hauled a box of nice toys to the curb and put a hand written (in crayola) sign that says Free Toys to a good home…Merry Christmas!

photo credit: mfrascella

I’m bartering for sourdough starter.  Studying up here so I can not kill the starter, and make lots and lots of yummy bread.  Bread that costs pennies a loaf?  Yes please!

Photo credit: naotakem

I have really fine, limp hair.  It’s driving me crazy.  So, I’m going to go chemical free, stop using shampoo, and try the baking soda ACV route.  Two nights ago I had my my trial run, and I will admit that my hair feels thicker already.  You just make a water baking soda paste with about a tsp. of baking soda.  The massage it into your scalp.  Rinse.  Then apply a tsp. of diluted (with water) apple cider vinegar.  Rinse.  You’re done!  My hair feels soft, isn’t nearly as lifeless as when I use shampoo, and I don’t smell like a jar of pickles (as I had feared.)  Besides the fact that going ‘poo free is clearly healthier for my hair, skin, and the environment, it is also healthy for my wallet. Way, way less expensive than the Nature’s Gate shampoo I usually buy.

And if you think I’m crazy, well, all I have to say is all the cool kids are doing it.

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Have fun!

Grate a bar of soap, melt it in a small pot of boiling water, and add 1/2 cup of Borax and 1 cup of washing soda (which I didn’t find at Wal-mart.  It was at Super-1 and Kroger.) Dissolve completely, and pour in 5 gallon bucket. Then fill it up with water. Stir it with something long (we used a broken light saber stick) and let it gel overnight. I poured it in old detergent containers with a spigot. Use a cup per load, which=80 loads. Some people I know use less, and say it still works great. This=16 weeks of detergent if you average 5 loads per week.
Here’s another recipe for powdered soap:

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Don’t allow yourself to become addicted to packaging.  This Christmas, take it easy on your wallet and the earth; buy second hand. Since they were born, I have been conditioning my kids that new is not best.  The large majority of toys, and clothes my kids receive from us are second hand.  My boys know their allowance money can go much farther at a garage sale than a retail store.  Try sending your kid to the counter at toys-R-us with a 20.00 toy saying “but I onwee hab’ two dahwah’s.”  At a garage sale, they learn the art of negotiation, and the value of a “dahwah.”

My friend Tracee posted a form letter you can send out to family members + friends to exchange the avalanche of unnecessary junk for human contact, food, family, and warmth:

Dear Friends and Family,

In the interest of making the holidays less stressful and expensive for everyone, we have decided the best gift we can give our friends and family is not to participate in gift exchanges this year. Please use any money you would have spent on us for your own family or to help someone in need.

We are still looking forward to spending time together celebrating the season and enjoying each others company. With that in mind, we would like to invite you to a Holiday Party at our home on Saturday, December 13 at 4 p.m. We’ll send more details as the date gets closer.

Love,

Your Name Here

Over the weekend I hit the garage sale Jackpot.  My total spent was 20.00.  I picked up all of the following + several other gifts I can’t mention (shhhh):

1.50 Large wood-framed antique map (I collect maps)

.25 Ea.  Heavy white ceramic restaurant platters

.50 New in box 12 pack aromathearay candles from world market

.50  New in box Christmas Crackers from world market

1.00  Brand New sketchers size 14 for husband  (60.00 shoes for 1.00 Squee!)

More packaging than gift always makes my heart sink.  Buying used also cuts way back on our stuff consumption.

Have you seen What Would Jesus Buy? It’s a real treat.  I highly recommend watching this documentary about American consumerism before you hit the stores this holiday season.

Funny, this kind of post seems to be an annual theme around jlogged.  Four years later I’m still an anticonsumer.

Lately I have been obsessing, Obsessing over our family lunch box situation.  If you were to come over, and open my cabinets while innocently looking for a glass, there is 50% chance a lunch box will jump out and bop you on the head.  Aaron used to collect them, so we have an absorbent amount of the tin variety stashed about our home. It’s ridiculous really that I am having a down right lunch box crisis at the moment, but I am.  Here’s why:

Do we go vintage, but non-space efficient?

The tin lunch kits only fit a plastic thermose (which kill your kids slowly you know…you DO know this right?  Come, to the neurotic dark side with me.  Please?!  It’s lonely here.) They are too small to fit reusable sandwich and side containers.  I’m not down with plastic sandwich bags either.  They Cost a lot, and cause massive amounts of non-biodegradable waste.

So, then there is the bento by laptop lunch.  It’s attractive to the eye, reusable, and was brought to fame by vegan lunchbox, and even has it’s own groupies, but…

I’m just not, not, N-O-T, going to spend 100.00 on kits that have a 99% chance of getting lost sometime during the school year and don’t even come with drink bottles.

There are these Vinyl bags, but they get gross, smelly, are hard to clean. Also, they kill my kids slowly with lead. Some boast “lead free” and “safe,”  but how can I ever trust you again lunch bag manufacturers?  Fool me once…

So, we settled on these:

Cons:

They are made of plastic

There is no place for a drink and they won’t fit in a traditional lunch bag (I’m gonna have to sew some up I think.)

Pros:

I don’t have to ever use baggies again.  Everything has a compartment.  No more plastic landfill waste.

I can lay them all out and quickly make an assembly line of healthy lunches without having to fiddle with multiple containers, or bags.

They were 3.00 each at Target

They have a neat utensil holder on top

I get to experiment with the yummy and aesthetically pleasing world of bento lunches:

Sending lunches for my family is important to me because school lunches are:

a)  Overly processed, freeze dried and reheated, genetically modified, junk

b.)  Served on Styrofoam, non-biodegradable trays

c.)  Insulting to children and food