The Green Life

Since I'm a lazy environmentalist, I thought I would share a few of the things I do to be Earth-friendly.

1) Cloth napkins. I love using cloth napkins! It's a little more of an investment up front, but it is so worth it. You don't have to constantly buy the paper napkins and cloth napkins can be used several times before you have to wash them. And then you just throw them in with your regular load of laundry and voila!

2) Old-fashioned push mower. My lawn mower uses no electricity or gas which is fantastic! It was a lot cheaper to buy, too! It works great. I highly recommend it.

3) CFL lightbulbs. I honestly haven't replaced all the light bulbs with CFL's yet, but I have changed out the ones that we use most often. They do cost a little bit more, but they use so much less energy. I've considered trying the LED bulbs, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

4) Organic food. Of course, we can't afford to buy all organic. But we do purchase a lot of organic produce (whatever we can find). Organic is great because you don't have to worry about consuming harmful pesticides.

5) Reusable grocery bags. I love reusable bags! You can fit so much more in them and they are easier to carry from the car to the house. That part was more important when we lived on the 3rd floor of the apartment complex, but it's still nice.

These are all pretty run-of-the-mill Earth-friendly stuff, but they are easy to switch to.

Cleaning Green--Toilet edition

Since Cheryl is arriving today, I'm in last-minute cleaning mode. I usually only really clean when guests are coming. Not that my house is dirty all the rest of the time...I just go longer before deep cleaning things. So, I went to go clean the toilets and realized I did not have toilet cleaner like I thought I did. When we moved, I brought all the cleaning stuff with us that we had in Rock Hill, but I guess I had used up all the toilet cleaner before we moved. Being too lazy to go to the store and buy some toilet cleaner, I thought I would Google homemade toilet cleaners. A lot of the recipes call for vinegar which I never have. I don't like vinegar and don't have any recipes that call for it. But I came across one that used baking soda and lemon juice. I happen to have lemon juice from when I made some punch for an office party that we went to before Memorial Day. Here's how I did it:

- I sprinkled some baking soda in the bowl (I didn't measure...just eyeballed a good amount)
- Poured in some lemon juice (again, no measuring)
- Let it get a little bubbly
-Scrubbed as normal

It worked pretty well. It got the water stains out and smelled fresh and clean. Hopefully the sparkling toilet lasts a good amount of time. Maybe I'll never buy toilet cleaner ever again. And maybe I'll try making more homemade cleaner sometime.