Benefits of Going Green – 7 and Counting

As we have been preparing for the new school year, we’ve been looking backwards as well as forward and reviewing our progress over the year to date. We have our green goals and have been tracking our progress on them but it struck me that the benefits of going green have gone far beyond meeting those goals. Here are the main benefits of going green we have experienced: Read more

How We’re Doing on Our Green Goals for 2009

With July already well underway, I realized it’s time to review our goals for 2009. I wrote about the annual goals we set earlier and since then we have added a few more. Here’s how we are doing so far.

Mission Accomplished!
•    Expand our garden beyond containers. We now have a small garden going in our backyard. After doing some research, we decided to stick mostly with herbs this first year while we build up the soil. Even with our record breaking drought, the garden is doing well so far. (Fingers crossed!) Thanks to Heather at Simple-Green-Frugal for answering my newbie questions about gardening in Texas! Read more

Save Money, and the Earth, with Homemade Cleaners

Last week we discussed how toxic many household products are (so toxic that they are routinely referred to as hazardous household waste) and how to safely remove them from your home. This week we want to share some inexpensive and simple recipes so you can make earth-friendly replacements for those items.

We’ll start with cleaning supplies.

Conventional cleaning supplies: Homemade cleaning products can get your home just as clean as conventional products for far less money and with far less toxic exposure. They also smell better! Here are recipes for a few multi-tasking items. Read more

Greening Your Home, Frugally

Many people associate going green with expensive purchases scattered throughout their living space, but living a greener lifestyle is more often about what you don’t buy and don’t have in your home.

A quick, and frugal way to improve the health of your home is to remove the toxic items. You may be thinking, “Who lives with toxic items? What, do people have piles of radioactive waste in their living rooms? If so, I’m a better housekeeper than I thought!” With toys and books currently littering way too many surfaces in our home, I’m clearly not qualified to judge anyone’s housekeeping abilities, but I can tell you the odds are high that items you have in your home today are toxic. Read more

Book Review for “Clean House, Clean Planet”

We weren’t totally happy with our conventional cleaning products – many were “stinky” as our daughter succinctly put it and they sure cost a lot – but we didn’t give the subject much thought at first. Then we read that the Environmental Protection Agency ranks indoor air pollution as one of the top five environmental risks to public health, in large part due to the chemicals found in traditional cleaning products, and finding greener alternatives moved to the top of our to do list. Read more