There are various methods for teaching a child how to do household tasks and motivating her to be involved in the daily work of maintaining the family home. One that's worked well for me is this: Show the child how to solve a problem she created, and then extend her new skill into routine maintenance. … Continue reading How to Get Preschoolers to Help with Housework
Let it dry and scrape it off with a used-up gift-card. Simple! Much simpler than I feared.
Life here on Earth presents an astonishing array of abundance. There's so much stuff that we can gather to fulfill not only our basic needs but also our more frivolous desires and, perhaps, our need to feel prepared for meeting future needs. Many years during Lent, I've given up some category of material things in … Continue reading Would decluttering save you from buying a new appliance?
This isn’t really a blog. It’s a constantly expanding reference book. Most years, the most popular articles are more than a year old--they've had more time for other sites to link to them. I've made two Top 17 lists here: The articles written in 2017 that were most popular, and the articles that were overall … Continue reading Top 17 Articles of 2017
Earthlings have been discarding too much plastic too irresponsibly for the past five decades, and a lot of it has ended up in our oceans. Plastic never goes away. It just swirls around, breaking into smaller pieces, harming marine animals. method, a company making cleaners that are safer for the Earth and human health, teamed … Continue reading Hand Soap of the Zygons [method ocean plastic soap review]
This is a guest post by Ben Stallings (Becca's brother), a Web developer and permaculture designer in Emporia, Kansas. “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and - snap! The job's a game!” --Mary Poppins I work from home, and my wife doesn't, so I … Continue reading Streamlined Task Juggling: Getting things done when working from home
Tired of spraying your home with carcinogens and neurotoxins? Here's our complete guide to cleaning a typical Earth dwelling.
Photographs by Nicholas Efran This is a handy tip I learned as a Girl Scout that I still use in my home today. It's a great project for Girl Scouts (or any group of kids) as a follow-up to soap carving: kids can put their soap scraps in the Soap Saver and then add any … Continue reading Make a Soap Saver: neat, clean bar soap with no waste!
Autumn is here! Time for some nice baked squash! Unfortunately, this tasty side dish can really mess up your baking pan. Here's how my nice Corningware pan looked after my most recent batch of butternut squash. For some reason, this particular squash had an unusually large amount of sugary juice that oozed out the sides … Continue reading How to Clean a Blackened Baking Pan
The United States Food & Drug Administration banned 19 antibacterial chemicals from hand soaps and body washes. By September 1, 2017, manufacturers need to reformulate their products or remove the products from the market. If you've been using an antibacterial soap, you may not be able to get it anymore. Don't despair! The reason for … Continue reading Has Your Favorite Soap Been Banned?
This is a guest post by Phoebe Parlade. Follow the link to her well-researched article about the harmful ingredients found in many off-the-shelf cleaning products and about alternative ways to clean that are better for the Earth's health as well as your own! Do you suffer from allergies? If so, you know how crucial … Continue reading Cleaning Products to Avoid if You Have Allergies
ePantry, a convenient subscription service for environmentally-friendly supplies delivered to your home, has become more energy-efficient for customers living in the eastern United States by adding a distribution center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They've also expanded the product line to include more of the products I recommend, and I've tried something new that I like a … Continue reading ePantry keeps getting better!
...then click here to get $10 off your first order and a free organic soy candle! This link will also show ePantry that I referred you so that I'll get a credit with them--this week (May 24-31) I get double credit. ePantry is a company that sells plant-based and recycled cleaning and hygiene products in … Continue reading If you’d like to join ePantry…
UPDATE: If you decide to join ePantry, click here to save $10 on your first order and get a free soy candle! This is an affiliate link that will give me a discount, too--at no cost to you. As noted below, this was NOT a sponsored post; ePantry encouraged me to sign up as an … Continue reading ePantry and Earth-friendly Cleaning Product Reviews
A household products subscription is an arrangement by which a company mails you certain items--like soap, toilet paper, and laundry detergent--on a regular basis. A number of companies have started offering this service recently. Some of them only sell environmentally preferable products like plant-based detergents and recycled paper. Others offer these items among a wide … Continue reading Will a household products subscription help YOU save the earth?
My dishwashing method gets most food to wipe right off the dishes, but some things still need to be scrubbed--tea and coffee stains in mugs, blueberry-juice stains in bowls, and bits of pasta that stuck to the pot, for example. I also like to scrub the cutting board really thoroughly after chopping onions. Baking soda … Continue reading Cute and Thrifty Kitchen Scouring Powder
We've been having two main problems with our seven-year-old Nicholas since he was about three. Recently, I thought of a new strategy that just may be working to solve both problems! One problem is that Nicholas is sometimes rude, bossy, and defiant. Not all the time. Sometimes he's quite a delightful companion for hours at … Continue reading Treasure Chest
My ravings about the joys of reusing glass jars got too lengthy for my "What Do You Reuse?" article, so I decided to give these versatile, durable storage containers their own article! First of all, I want to rave a moment about how glass jars are much better for food storage than plastic containers! We … Continue reading Glass Jars Galore!
You know those annoying little stickers that are on most fruits you can buy individually in supermarkets? The ones that are so thin and so well-glued that they're often impossible to remove without gouging a hole in your fruit? Yeah, I always knew they were evil. In addition to being annoying on edible-skinned fruits, if … Continue reading Fruit Labels, Jar Labels, Six-Packs, Environment, and Health
Today is the Spring Cleaning Tips edition of Works-for-Me Wednesday, and I'm hardly an expert cleaner . . . but I actually went on a little kitchen-cleaning binge last night and utilized a tip that I want to share! I believe I originally saw this in "Hints from Heloise." When the interior of your microwave … Continue reading Easy, Earth-Friendly Way to Clean a Microwave Oven!
