Twenty-Three - So Very Good

Today is yucky outside. But inside, today is PERFECT nap weather! The rain is falling softly on the grass outside my window. There is an occasional roll of thunder. Not too close but close enough that it would be a bit soothing while laying in my bed. The lighting in here would mimic evening if I could turn all of the lights off. But I can't. Boo!

There is a three year old that would NOT have all day nap time! AND...Apparently it is my job to clean the house. Part of staying home is to make sure our little house stays clean I suppose. So I thought this week I might share a little bit of my crunchy-ness. 

	Crunchy Granola
	Noun. A person who is lives in a healthy, green, vegetarian way. This person often supports Greenpeace and other such environmental and anti-war groups.

Now I am not as "crunchy" as some but I would like to think that I do try to live healthy and green. And the "green" part is what I intend to focus on this week. But first...one of my favorite covers (:

So for a while I made laundry soap as well as dish washing soap. The soap for the dish washer I was not so crazy about but I intend to find a better recipe for that one! I will be making laundry soap later on this week and will give directions for that. Today though I want to focus on the kitchen.

A while back our family ditched chemical cleaners for counter tops, refrigerator, and stove top. Turns out one part vinegar to one part water cleans just as well...even better IMHO (if you aren't crazy about vinegar smell..which really I don't even notice, you can add a couple drops of lemon or orange essential oils and that will help). I do much prefer that smell to chemicals. After cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms I would often have an awful headache and be done for the rest of the day. That is part of what made us look into another way of cleaning (and it is WAY cheaper!). I am not sure why we have turned away from some of the things our Grandma's used to do. Baking soda...Should I begin with all of the things you can do with baking soda. Hmm..Maybe I will...But not today :P

Now to our dishwasher. It is old. It probably should be replaced. Not our job since we rent our house. So for now we will have an old dishwasher that is stinky. Well WAS stinky until today! In the past we have tried to stuff from the store that you put upside down and run the washer blah blah blah. Those never really worked very well for us...But today I found THIS post. All you need is vinegar and baking soda. Run you dishwasher with 1c. of vinegar on the top rack. When finished, take out the vinegar, and then sprinkle baking soda on the bottom of the washer. Run again and VIOLA! Smells better and maybe even sparkles a tad :) You can also take 1c. of vinegar, put it in your microwave, run for about a minute and then wipe down.

I also found THIS post for the garbage disposal. Heat up half a cup of lemon juice (I used the fake stuff because that is what we had). Once hot add half a cup of baking soda while mixing. Let me say you should do this slowly (because I didn't) because it will foam. A lot. Pour that down the disposal with it on. After a bit run the hot water and you are done! Once a week. I bet once every other week would do just fine.

So am I granola crunchy? Maybe a little bit..We try to eat things with 5 ingredients or less (look at the ingredients in a load of bread...), try to cut out high fructose corn syrup, use less chemicals when we can, maybe one day we will plant a garden...but for now I think our Grandma's had it right when it came to cleaning. Seems like baking soda, vinegar, water, and a little Dawn went a long way!

So reduce, reuse, recycle!
God looked over everything he had made; it was so good, so very good!