Think that you should be able to buy poison-free baby lotion and non-toxic face wash without loads of research? Click here to voice your vote of support for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. You’ll enter your zipcode to search for your representative and then one more click to seal the deal. Speak up for what you believe in!
If you’d like more info about the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, here’s a great article with links to excellent studies and some gutsy voices.
I am about halfway through Sandra Steingraber’s new book “Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis” and I can’t wait any longer to tell you what an interesting and worthwhile read it’s been. It’s kind of hard to explain how a book that shares serious, often disturbing information can at the same time be so personal and empowering. I’m sure the answer lies in the fact that Sandra is both a talented author and a real mom, who makes real mistakes, who lives in the real world - like all of us.
As a mom with an ear to the ground on environmental health issues (ie. no BPA products for us, no vinyl toys, no canned food, etc) I sometimes wonder if I’ve heard it all. Of course, I have not. And then the real question emerges – do I want to hear more?
“… a steady onslaught of information about a problem over which people feel little sense of personal agency gives rise to futility. Ironically, the more knowledgeable we are about such a problem, the more we are filled with paralyzing futility. Futility, in turn, forestalls action. But action is exactly what is necessary to overcome futility” (pg 46).
The truth is, I do want to hear more, but mostly in terms of what can be done about it. And so far, that’s what Sandra delivers. I was appalled to hear the story behind how pressure-treated-wood came to the market. All of the sudden I realized, our hand-me-down wooden playground could be made of this poisonous substance! So, off a sample goes to be tested for arsenic, a serious carcinogen (free tests available through The Safe Playground Project). And, remember last year’s post about newly approved and highly dangerous strawberry pesticides in CA? Sandra reminded me of this crazy industry decision, which spurred me to make sure that we are NEVER buying strawberries from California.
There’s a lot more to be said about Raising Elijah, and I expect I’ll be back with more later. For now, let me say that if you want to be an informed parent this book is something you won’t want to miss. I think it’s my next choice for book club!
If you’ve been thinking about switching to cloth diapers or augmenting your diaper stash, there’s only one week left to take advantage of savings on BumGenius 4.0 one-size cloth diapers! That’s right, BumGenius has strict policies regarding any sales of this diaper, and retailers can only extend the current Buy 5 Get 1 Free offer through December 31st. So, by all means, make the decision to stock up in time!
At EuphoriaBaby.com we’re currently stocked in all colors of the BumGenius 4.0 cloth diaper in both velcro and snap closures. Can’t decide which? As a parent who’s used both, I’ll attest that velcro diapers are quicker to put on baby at the changing table, but snap diapers generally wear better over the years. I personally favor velcro diapers, because a quick change is a must in our family (plus cloth diaper newbies always understand velcro). But, I’ll admit that snap diapers, which are much harder for baby to remove on his/her own, do come in handy if your toddler goes through the dreaded “removing of the diaper” phase. When parents can’t decide, I recommend buying both snap and velcro diapers. Trying them both is really the only way you’ll know what YOU like!
If cloth diapering is new (and strange) to you, you’re likely to have a million questions about how they work, how to wash them and what to buy. Feel free to check out Cloth Diapers Explained for lots of info, or just email me (rachel AT euphoria baby DOT com) or contact me toll-free at 866-282-8261 to talk cloth diapers. Locals are welcome to come in person to look, feel and discuss!
There are a million options out there for baby in organic clothing, bedding, toys, etc. But, what about mom? Thanks to Eco-Novice for the opportunity to guest post on the whys and wheres of organic clothing and bras for mom!
Two years ago we bought a 60′s farmhouse. The house was pretty well beat, but it sat on a gorgeous 7 acres. So, we set about remodeling it from top to bottom. We didn’t just trash old carpet, ancient appliances and rickety sinks, we ripped open the walls to replace electrical and rotted out framing. What did we find in there? Moldy fiberglass insulation.
Obviously, it had to go. Mold has no place in a healthy home. But, we didn’t look forward to touching that, literally. Fiberglass insulation is made up of tiny shards of glass. They will cut hands, make your skin itchy and irrritate the throat if inhaled. That’s why you’re supposed to deal with the stuff only when well-covered with clothing, gloves and wearing a dust mask. No fun in hot summer weather. To make matters worse, new fiberglass insulation outgasses formaldehyde which pollutes indoor air. There had to be a better way.
My goodness – there sure was! Some online research yielded a local source for Ultratouch, a natural cotton fiber insulation. UltraTouch is made from renewable cotton, has 85% recycled content (mostly used denim), and has no VOCs or harmful irritants. No warning labels even. It DOES NOT ITCH and is very easy to handle and work with. As an extra bonus, it provides better soundproofing than typical insulation. UltraTouch is available in R-13, 19, and 30 and in 16” or 24” widths.
We brought home a truckload of UltraTouch insulation and got to work stapling it in. The soft bats were actually pleasant to touch. Kind of cuddly, really. And, no, it didn’t cost much more than fiberglass insulation! What a relief to breathe free and clear through the whole installation.
Now I’m proud to say that our walls wear denim.
This is part of the Healthy Child Blog Carnival – an effort by Healthy Child Healthy World to help inspire a movement to protect children from harmful chemicals.
When I discovered Betsy’s blog about “going green gradually”, it struck a cord. Not only does she have so many helpful articles, but she describes this lifestyle as a journey, even in her title. So true! No one has this all figured out. No matter where you are on the green spectrum, it’s all about taking another step.
I asked Betsy to share with us a little about her family and what got her started on this journey:
I am a SAHM to a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old. I was only as interested in being green as your average gal until I had kids. Not even pregnancy brought it to the forefront of my mind. But when my first baby sucked on my hair, I wondered, “What’s in my leave-in conditioner?” When he sucked on the floor, I wondered, “What’s in my cleaner?” When I started feeding him solid foods, I wondered, “How safe are pesticides for infants?” When I opened his disposable diaper on a sweltering day and felt a wave of heat come out I thought, “Maybe I’ll try cloth diapers after all.” So, really the birth of my first child was what really got me started.
I spent hours and hours on the computer researching safer, more natural options with my first baby on my lap. I had just left a job in policy research, so I was still in the research mode. And I was worried. And a bit obsessed. Eventually, I chilled out. But I started my blog a few years later because I wanted somewhere to dump all that information I’d accumulated in my head, and I figured that someone else might as well benefit from all the research I did.
Thanks, Betsy! Here are a few of her useful articles:
10 Easiest Ways to Reduce Toxins in Your Home
Quiz: Are Cloth Diapers for You?
Two Rules for Feeding Your Baby
I also asked Betsy what she’s working on these days as she continues to go green.
Right now I am trying my hardest to ditch non-stick for cast iron. I have wanted to to this for years and I finally bought the cast iron and hid my nonstick in the garage, but it’s been hard, especially since we love eggs at my house.
Ah, yes. We use the new non-stick Green Pans, since we were gifted them for Christmas. They’re working out well, but I’m sure that cast iron is even healthier. One thing you might hate to realize is that electric griddles and waffle makers are also non-stick. I’d love to find easy, healthy options for those too. But, one step at a time!
Packing lunches, whether for school or for work, tends to create a lot of waste. If you’ve been looking for something plastic-free to pack sandwiches and leftovers, look no more.
I asked the folks at LunchBots to send one of their containers for review. All LunchBots are made totally of stainless steel. The LunchBots Eco, which we’ve been testing, is their largest model and easily accommodates a big daddy sandwich. This baby has been receiving constant use for about two weeks and it still looks as good as new. It dishwashes just fine, but I hand wash it too when we need to reuse it quickly. We’ve had no problems with leaks or the lid coming off – it’s great!
We’ll be buying a few more to completely eliminate those little plastic baggies in our home. LunchBots makes some smaller sizes, including one divided to fit fruit and nuts or cheese and crackers, for example. And, if you have a child headed to school, you should checkout their adorable Waste-Free Lunchkits. Each kit comes with two stainless steel containers, 2 organic cloth napkins and a Mimi the Sardine non-toxic lunch tote at a 25% savings. So many fun designs! Makes me kind of sad we homeschool (not really).
LunchBots has generously provided a coupon for 15% off any items on their site. Use code BACKTOSCHOOL to activate your savings!
You’ve heard of the dangers of polyurethane foam, right? That’s why you’ve bought (or wish you could buy) an organic baby mattress. Great! But, did you now that polyurethane foam lives in lots of furnishings throughout most American homes? Unfortunately, it’ll take more than organic mattresses to prevent polyurethane foam from polluting our indoor air with it’s small airborne poisonous particles and ongoing release of VOCs.
I didn’t discover the plethora of polyurethane foam products in our home until last fall. My frustration spilled out in this blog, when I read labels on our sofas, armchairs and every mattress in our house, admitting to containing large amounts of polyurethane foam. Since then, I’ve also realized that our padded dining chairs are filled with this stuff and even my little tabletop ironing board sports a nice layer of toxic filling. Clearly, no one is using cotton anymore. Cheap, chemical-ridden foam is all the rage.
If you’re like me, it’s not possible to replace all of your tainted furnishings at once. But, improving indoor air quality is not an all-or-nothing question. Every little bit counts! I started with replacing my children’s twin mattreses. Since they spend about 12 hours a day sleeping on them, I was sure that was a good investment! Then, this weekend I recovered my ironing board. It was incredibly easy (tutorial here) and the results are so pretty! I used one bath towel in place of the polyurethane foam – much better – and a staple gun to make quick work of it. Many other furnishings can be recovered much the same way, from entry benches to foot stools. Old bath towels and thrifted cotton blankets make for plush padding with none of the chemicals. In the next few months, I hope to make time to recover our dining room chairs too.
Since I learned about the popularity of polyurethane foam with manufacturers, I’ve made a point to check labels anytime I’m considering bringing home something soft and plush. Every little storage cube, kid’s chair and soft toy is suspect. Unfortunately, so many of them are guilty. Finding a couch that’s polyurethane foam-free is not so easy. So far, I’m partial to those offerred by Crate & Barrel, who uses a soy based polyfoam instead and uses many other sustainable components as well.
We’re not ready to buy new sofas now, but when it comes time you can bet it’s going to be polyurethane free! Until then, I just keep opening the windows…
This is part of the Healthy Child Blog Carnival – an effort by Healthy Child Healthy World to help inspire a movement to protect children from harmful chemicals.
What do you have when you and your mother plant 8 tomato plants EACH? How about 35 lbs of tomatoes, and the season has just begun!
To be fair, a chunk of that harvest was donated by my generous mother-in-law who also has a flourishing kitchen garden. When my mom and I took stock of our ripe tomatoes early this week, we decided to sauce on Tuesday. Now, neither of us has done this before – either processing tomatoes or canning. And, unfortunately, my experienced friend was out of town. But, when the tomatoes are ready, what choice do you have?
We settled on a seasoned tomato sauce recipe that I hoped would pass for a basic spaghetti sauce. I doctor up store bought spaghetti sauce for our meals, and hoped this would be a replacement for that purchase. But, the recipe called for 45 lbs of tomatoes. My mom, a very confident cook, suggested we make no adjustments. What’s wrong with a little extra flavor? In fact, she insisted we add more garlic than the recipe called for and also had me add 3 tbsp of her personal spice mix (which I’ll admit smelled perfect).
I chopped pretty little purple onions from my mom’s garden, when we ran out of her store bought onion stash. Aren’t the stems pretty?
My mother cored and quarters about a million tomatoes. We could barely fit them into 3 large pots. I had to squish the tomatoes down with my hands in order to add the seasonings! Instead of blanching the tomatoes to remove the skins and seeds, we simmered them as is in spices for 20 minutes. Then, we used a Vitamix to puree the mixture – seeds, skin and all. It came out incredibly smooth, and I figure we saved time and food.
Can you guess the results? Oooh, spicy! I tasted the sauce before we cooked it down by half, so I can only imagine how crazy-hot it is now. There is absolutely no way we could consume it as is, but my mom says to think of it as spaghetti sauce in a condensed form! I’ll be adding tomato sauce to it when I’m ready to make spaghetti.
By the way, 35 lbs of tomatoes + 1 whole day of cooking = 8 quarts of SPICY tomato sauce/spaghetti sauce. Somehow that jar of organic spaghetti sauce seems worth purchasing now! Still, I’m proud to be eating local, organic food that we’ve raised ourselves. It’s very “Radical Homemaker”, you know?
This weekend I finished Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, by author Shannon Hayes. While parts of the book served up what I expected – ideas and encouragement for pursuing a self-sufficent, good, old-fashioned lifestyle – one of Shannon’s central messages did take me by surprise. That message is Shannon’s vision for a “Life-Serving” economy.
Now, I’m not much for current events, watching the stock market, economics, etc. But, I do recognize that the economy directly effects my life. I don’t care for the “buy, buy, BUY!” basis of our American economy. It seems so circular – buying begets the ability to keep buying. But, what are we buying? It’s all so temporary… and so we keep buying! But, I honestly didn’t think there could be another way. Check this out:
“…the essential work of Radical Homemakers is to build a bridge that crosses us from the dominion of an extractive economy, which primarily serves its own perpetuation, to a life-serving economy, where commerce… directly fulfills a material human need rather than generating wealth for its own sake (pg. 282).”
“Money is simply an accounting chit created out of nothing, without substance or intrinsic value, which has value only becasue we believe it does… At the heart of Radical Homemaking is the quest to identify those elements of life that have tangible value, that deliver genuine wealth, and then make a beeline directly for them, relatively undistracted by the intermediary of money (pg. 120).”
So, what is poverty?
“One of the first determinatns of ‘impoverishment’ was a lack of personally ‘owned’ time… Other signs of impoverishment included the inability to access nourishing food, to get adequate rest, to properly nurture their relationships, or to live an ecologically responsible life (pg. 117).”
And what is wealth?
“Many of the homemakers counted the ability to provide their children with stable, peaceful home lives as a central feature of their wealth (pg. 121).”
“Radical Homemakers gauge their ‘wealth’ by their ability to include in their lives such incalculable values as good relationships, good food, or self-determination (pg 123).”
I can’t help but agree. These are the things that make for a good life. Money is just a tool, and when we overspend on things, it’s a tool used badly. I don’t want to exchange my time for excessive money, when I could make a “beeline” when I exchange my time for the real stuff. The bulk of the second half of Shannon’s book is real-life stories and principles for pursuing this kind of wealth. I guarantee you’ll be challenged and excited if you take a peak!
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