favorite blogs: The Green Baby Guide

I think I'm somewhat teal... not quite green yet but not blue either... I'm sort of a green wannabe...

The Green Baby Guide has been a great inspiration to me in this quest of greening.

Joy and Rebecca regularly post about relevant and doable ideas related to having a baby and living more environmentally friendly. I think I went back and read every post in their archives before Baby Girl was born and learned so much. They are super down-to-earth and really focus on living simply and not just on green for green's sake.

Typically they host a blog carnival every Thursday called, Thrifty Green Thursday where readers share tips for saving money and living green but this carnival is on break for the summer.

I highly recommend that you take a peek at their fabulous blog!!

over 250 pieces of fruit

What do you do with over 250 pieces of fruit?

Especially when you have two days to get rid of it before you leave town!

My husband works on a college campus. At the end of each semester parents can pay (big bucks) to send an "exam care pack" to their student. An outside company takes these orders, sends the boxes to the university and a student organization my husband works with is responsible for distributing them. Here's the rub... many students never come to pick up their box.

First of all this makes me sad for the parents who send the boxes.

Secondly this makes me sad because of the extravagant waste!

Thankfully much of the prepackaged candy, cookies, chips, etc. can be saved and given out to student workers and kids at camps this summer.

But the fruit... the fruit!!! It makes me cringe.

I willingly took on the task of doing something about it all. There were over 250 green and red apples and oranges. Some were already going bad. I had to act fast.... what to do?

1. Give it- this is obvious but harder than you might think. Because we live on a college campus and all the students are gone, we have no neighbors... I've been passing as much as I can off to the housekeeping staff. I've also called several friends who are swinging by on their way home from work to pick some up. And we made a few special deliveries earlier today.

2. Eat it- this is obvious too. We're having some folks over for lunch between graduation ceremonies tomorrow... guess what we'll be serving?

3. Juice it- I'm planning to take a lot of the oranges home to my parents' house this weekend and will borrow their juicer.

4. Puree it- Applesauce anyone? Baby Girl LOVES applesauce... this might be enough to make her never want to see the stuff again! I'll be making this at my parents' since they have an apple corer/peeler/slicer thing and I am not about to tackle this by hand!

5. Freeze it- I never knew you could freeze apples! I'm going to slice and freeze most of the green apples to use in pies, for baked apples, apple cake, etc. down the road. I'm looking forward to giving some of these goodies away as well when I'll be in town to bake.

While I hate that the students didn't get these boxes I'm very thankful this fruit isn't going to be left to rot and then chunked in a dumpster!

We may not all have 250 pieces of fruit dumped in our laps, but we can all do our part to not let food go to waste!

For other frugal tips check out Frugal Fridays over at Life as Mom!

happenstance recycling

Here's my Thrifty Green Thursday tip for the week. Check out Green Baby Guide for more tips!

At first glance "happenstance" recycling might not seem very green... we should be intentional about recycling! We do that too... don't fret... but we also recycle by chance.

We don't buy canned sodas in our house. Ever. We drink them occasionally when we're out but we don't buy them.

We have realized however that lots of other people buy them and leave their cans random places. Such as the ground, the trash, in bushes, etc.

So whenever we're out we just keep our eyes open. We pick up a can here and a can there and bring them home, crush them and put them in a bin. It takes a long time to fill up the bin, but we're not in any rush.

Once the bin is full we take it to our local recycling center where it's contents usually net us around 4 bucks... that's the thrifty part. (So after one and a half bins it pays for one meal at our local Japanese express place.)

The tortoise or the hare? We're definitely the tortoise but we're doing our part.

bowl shower caps

Upon opening my stocking this past Christmas I saw some plastic things with elastic. "Ohh, a shower cap?!" I said. (I actually sort of needed one of those for those days when there is no time to wash my hair.) My mom laughed.... not a shower cap, these were reusable bowl covers. "Ahh," I said, "interesting..."

Despite my initial skepticism...

These things rock!

They come in a set of 6 different sizes and work just like... well... just like a shower cap.

I literally use them at least once a day and it has been great not to fall back to saran wrap every time I turn around. The picture shows my veggies and broth which I prepped early in the day for chicken pot pie covered in their cute "caps" and ready to go.

For other thrifty green tips check out the Green Baby Guide's Thrifty Green Thursday.

the poop is real

Solid foods change everything!

A little while back I wrote a glowing review of my love for cloth diapers and how they work so well for us and I skipped and sang and wrote poetry about my wonderful bumGenius friends.....

Then Baby Girl tried carrots. "It" was orange. The she tried sweet potatoes, and avocado and peas and "it" got worse.

There have been a couple of diaper changes where I have literally said out loud, "What was I thinking?!?!"

A friend had mentioned using Viva paper towels (they're so soft they're almost clothlike) as a liner in the diaper and then flushing the residual "stuff." Last night (while watching LOST) I cut a whole roll in half and now have a neat stack of liners.

We'll see if this changes anything. Right now I am tempted to breastfeed exclusively until she is potty trained.

I might spend some time swagbucking some info on what to do about this unfortunate turn of events. Though I should probably just be thankful that everything is still moving on through.

I've posted this on the Thrifty Green Thursday carnival over at Green Baby Guide because I need help from some other cloth diapering mamas!! Any tips?!?!

green goals in 2009

I was encouraged by this post over at Green Baby Guide to formalize my greening goals for the coming year. These are things I have been thinking about and working towards for a while, but there's something to be said for putting this all into writing.

Some of these things may seem very common sense, but I'm recording them more for my own reference than anything else.

1. Switch to eco-friendly (and kid and pet friendly) household cleaners. I'm using up my stash of the nasty stuff now (I can't waste it!) and will use this post to make my own when they're gone.

2. Walk and use the bus more. Once the weather warms up we'll walk to church, but I also plan to start using the bus for visits to the library and for grocery store runs for just a few items.

3. Buy used. We're going to do a better job frequenting thrift shops and craigslist for needed items.

4. Use the dishwasher and don't pre-rinse! I am bad about rinsing before I put in the dishwasher and that wastes a ton of water! Since I feel the need to pre-clean just a little, I'll run a cup of water and use that water to lightly clean dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. It's a compromise.

5. Be intentional. This is really vague... but I really just want to be more thoughtful about everything that I do. Like really thinking before I throw things away if there are other possible uses and being more creative in how I live to reduce my mark on the environment.

We'll see how it goes...

my cloth diaper experience

I've had several friends ask about our experience with cloth diapers. So instead of retyping the info over and over I thought I would create a post about this and then can just direct people there instead!

Brilliant... what can I say?

We LOVE using cloth! Initially we opted to go the cloth route because it was cheaper and that was reason enough for us. But the more I use them and the more I see how many we use and recognize how many disposables we'd be putting in the landfills, I like them for other reasons too.

Because we were new at this we did what I call "cloth diaper cheating," we used pocket diapers. The fit and use is so much like disposables. When people say, "Wow... you use cloth?!" I always say, "Yeah... but we sort of cheat because it's super easy!". Below in bullet form are my thoughts....

We started with about 10 diapers, a variety of different kinds: BumGenius 3.0, Fuzzi Bunz, Happy Heiny's, Haute Pockets and Mommy's Touch. Our idea was to see what we liked best and then order more of that particular kind.

• We have found that the velcro close ones are the best for us. Jon really struggles to use the snappy ones, I agree they are more awkward, but I can see how they will probably last the longest.


• We used disposables for a good solid month after Baby Girl was born. I don't care what size they say cloth should fit, our girl was 8lbs. 5oz. and the cloth ones were huge on her. Plus it was nice to not worry about extra laundry there at the beginning.


• USE THE RIGHT DETERGENT! We didn't... I tried to use our homemade detergent on the diapers and it did not work. It actually made them repel watery substances (i.e. pee and liquidy poop). Disaster. Once we got them stripped and working we started using Arm and Hammer Sensitive Skin and it's been great.


• Our favorites are the BumGenus diapers. We bought 12 more of those and then later 3 more because they were on a terrific sale. I love that they are one size (more money savings) and that they come with the newborn insert... helps majorly with fit!


• Once we phase out the few sized diapers that we have I think we'll have a total of 23 diapers.


• I do laundry about every 1.5 days.


• For the first 4 months I used disposables anytime we went out in public. I was so nervous about dealing with cloth while on the go. But it is no big deal at all! I just use a gallon ziploc bag to put the dirties in. No need for a fancy wet bag... though they are cute.

I think that is really about it! Please leave a comment or email me at everydaywylie (at) gmail (dot) com if you have any questions!

*** Update: I now have also included my thoughts on what happens when the kiddo starts to try solid foods and how that affects my affinity for cloth diapers. In all fairness you should read it too. ***

*** ADDITIONAL UPDATE: I have now ALSO posted some further thoughts on using pre-folds now that I've added a few of those to my stash. Check it out. ***

reduce REUSE recycle

Over at Simple Mom the discussion today is about reusable grocery bags and asks what other readers reuse as well. This discussion so nicely fits into Thrifty Green Thursday theme over at Green Baby Guide.

And so, in one post I answer both questions: What do we resuse? How do we save the planet and a little money?

Wow.... it's already a productive day.

We reuse ziploc bags.

We typically don't use that many sandwich bags, just use tupperware for that kind of thing. But we can go through some freezer bags! So unless there was meat in the bag or something with oil I turn the bag inside out, give it a good scrubbing with some soap and water and then hang it neatly on my spatulas in the jar by the stove. Once dry, I roll it up and stick it back in the box.