Spirit of Service: Passing on Old Clothes

One of the Works of Mercy is to clothe the naked. A very simple way of sharing the love is by donating. We donate our old, unused, or unwanted clothing and household items. It's not a big thing, but as St. Therese of Lisieux and Mother Teresa say,

 "Do small things with great love."

A way to stretch our family's money, aside from shopping sales and scouting the clearance racks at department stores, is by frequenting our local thrift stores. Just about all my maternity wardrobe from this last pregnancy was purchased from them. We've also been very blessed to have a number of friends pass around their daughters old clothes to us. Not to mention donating, buying used, and passing around clothing and other items is a superb, easy, green way of helping the environment through reusing.

I am in the process of doing some house cleaning and organizing. This stash of clothing is headed today for CCAP, a local needs assistance center that gives out clothes without charge to those who need them.

New Year, New Schedule

This year I am working on trying to be more organized. Having a sixth child on the way, I REQUIRE some sort of organizational system to keep my family running with the least amount of stress and chaos. Of course, I rely heavily on making lists. With so many tasks swarming around my head I have to write them down to keep them in order and to not forget anything. I have been using Ann Voskamp's Day Planner for the past couple weeks. I have to say I really like the set up; it keeps all my lists in one place.  She just came out with a Week-at-a-Glance sheet I'm trying for the first time this week.

Keeping with my green resolution, I print my to-do lists on the back of old, used papers and worksheets. With a daughter in a school that sends home a ton of notices and then homeschooling two daughters, we end up with loads of papers. I like to reuse the opposite side and then recycle them I'm done.

If you'd like to check out these sheets--maybe print a few for yourself :) get them here.

Getting organized--putting together a schedule system--isn't necessarily the problem for me. It's the maintaining that I find difficult.  Being consistent and persistent, especially when I get tired (which is a habitual state I live in these days at 7 months pregnant) and all I want to do is cut corners and relax a little. But when I do, I find the chores and work only pile up. Instead of doing my myself a favor, I've only made it worse :(  

Going Green Extreme

This is a funny little post, but I HAD to share! We found it in my midwives' new office. Both my girls and I were blown away by it when we first encountered it. . . What was it? How did it work?  It's a what?! It lingered with me for so many days after, I even did a google search on it to find out more. I had to know.

No, it's not a Porta Potty 3000 . . .

It's a green, composting toilet! Green to the extreme, I say, composting your own pooh. I love it. I love being exposed to new things, different things, new ideas--I may not always subscribe to them, but to enlightened to them is counted as awesome in my book. This was definitely new! I had never heard of, much less seen, such a thing. As you can see, O(3), got a kick out of it too :)

Yes, it's a whole toilet composting system. You use it like a regular toilet--there's surprisingly no smell, like a porta-potty. There's a continuation of the system outside the building, that holds and "greens" your waste until it's ready for composting. If you be ever so compelled (as I was) to read more, you can start here.

In all honesty, one day, in my future, little homestead I'd love to have one. I'm not sure if my husband would be sold on it though! Oh well, to each his own. Thought I'd at least share a new idea with you guys and expose you to the "extreme green" composting toilet. Now you know!



Green Cleaning: Mildew Remover

The holidays are over and once again I set my mind to preparing for my homebirth. Any thought of baby preparations was put on hold so all my energy could go towards making it through December. And let me tell you, I feel like I blinked during Thanksgiving and opened my eyes again to New Years--a whole month lost in a blur.

But now, things are slowing down and I can begin to grasp "life" once more. An ongoing thread you'll see over the next few months is Green Cleaning. Having a homebirth, it's important to me have my home as clean as possible and in tip-top shape. Not easy to do with five other kids running around! But it's my goal. I am in the transition of "going green", switching out my old, non-green, store bought products with greener versions and if possible homemade. As I find, and try, new cleaner recipes I'll be sharing them with you.

Today, I'll share with you a mildew cleaner. I found this one, plus a few others, on Healthy Child Healthy World. I have a downstairs bathroom in our split-foyer house with a terrible mildew problem in the shower. I'm not sure if it's because it's virtually in a basement--dark, damp--a perfect breeding ground for the stuff, but I'm determined to fight it with a vengeance. While I would have liked to stay away from chlorine bleach, I thought it was necessary in my tactical plans to at least begin with a product using it to tackle the mildew and get it under control. Later I can switch to a less abrasive cleaner for maintenance.

Mildew Remover for Hard Surfaces

1/4 cup chlorine bleach

1 1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon borax

• Mix all ingredients, put in spray bottle.
• Spray on area, let sit 1/2 hour.
• Scrub.
• Rinse.
• Let dry.

Repeat every couple days to be sure to remove mold spores.

I thought this product worked well. The 30 minute wait period is important to the process to give it time to do it's magic. I was able to get rid of a majority of the mildew, and as the directions state, I will be continuing the process every couple days to make sure it doesn't return, keeping it under wraps. I will win this battle with my basement shower, with perseverance and persistence!


By all means, if anyone out there has any tips on mildew control, PLEASE share. My upstairs bathroom doesn't have any issues, it's just the basement shower?!  I am always open to new cleaning tips, hints, suggestions, and resources :)

Dishes, dishes, and more dishes!

One of the issues we're having in my house at the moment is dishes. We are going through two dishwasher loads a day and we still have dishes left in the sink. It's out of control!! So I am trying a new trial run dish system. Each one of my girls will get one set of designated dishes a day. After each snack or meal they are to immediately hand wash them themselves. That way their dishes are clean at all times. The only dishes that will be put in the dishwasher will be for J (age 16 mos), my husband's, and my dishes, as well as dishes used for the meal preparation. My four other girls V (12 yr), A (9 yr), C (7 yr), and O (3 1/2 yr) will be responsible for their own. Dish washing is great Montessori activity that preschoolers, like my O, love to do. It teaches them a practical life skill and  gives them a sense of responsibility. I got this idea from a blog I read one time. I thought the idea sounded great but at that point dishes weren't a problem for us. They are now!

We already had a plan in place for drinking glasses. With as many kids as I have, the amount of cups left unclaimed on the counter can be headache. And since no one knows whose cup is whose, they grab a new one from the cabinet. So we put name tags on the counter with each persons name.

Each person gets a fresh cup at the start of the day. After each use they are to put their cup by their name and that's where it is to be kept, reusing the same cup throughout the entire day. This has been a great help in cutting back on our cup usage and keeping the cups in order. Only every once in a while do I have to reprimand one of them for not following the rule, usually they're good about it.

For the dishes I labeled some old plates and bowls with their names so that there is no confusion on which plate belongs to who and so forth. The dishes for the time being can be kept on the drying rack until needed and returned to it after being washed. Nothing fancy for this trial run. If the system works out, then I will purchase some new color coded dish sets for each girl and rearrange my dish cabinet to have a permanent place for them. But until I know it's worth the effort, this is good enough.

Hopefully, this solves our dish problem. . . and our dishwasher gets a much deserved rest!