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Green Baggin’ It
We’re trying really hard to reduce our consumption of plastic shopping bags, we really are. But we found ourselves craving a little more flair on the bag front than some of the standard-issue grocery store options (and we don’t mean in Italian leather). Luckily, we found it.
The Carry All market basket by Reisenthel is perfect for the interminable hauling back and forth from house to car to house to car to house (and so on) of toys, groceries, library books, soccer cleats, sippy cups, water bottles, mail, wet bathing suits…you know what we mean.
A Mean Green Clean
“Inside every problem is an opportunity”, mom used to say.
And of course she was right—even when it comes to making some environmentally-friendly choices around the house to reduce your family’s exposure to chemicals and just generally keep a watch out for Mother Earth. So here are a few opportunities we’ve recently capitalized on ourselves as we inch towards a darker shade of green for our homes:
Opportunity: Reduce exposure to potentially irritating laundry softening chemicals and save some money too.
Solution: Now that we’ve discovered that traditional laundry softeners work by leaving a thin layer of (flammable!) petro-chemical product on your clothes and linens, which reduces absorbency in things like towels and can off-gas things we can’t pronounce like toluene and trimethylbenzene, we’re a little obsessed with our Nellie’s™ Dryerballs. You just throw the two bumpy oval balls in the dryer with the wet laundry. As they tumble around, the balls lift and separate clothes to improve the air flow so things dry faster (Money Saver #1—up to 25% faster means less energy required) while the bumps relax the fibres of the fabrics, making them softer. Money Saver #2? A couple of boxes of your usual stuff costs more than the $25 or so a set of Dryerballs will set you back, and they last for years. Available online, at Roots Yoga Studio and at London Drugs.
The Simple Life
The green life’s definitely not getting any simpler just yet… what with carbon credits, zero footprints and 100 mile diets to think about. Throw in eliminating parabens and understanding the local garbage tax and sleep becomes a luxury (as if it isn’t already).
The Name of the Game is Organized
What’s the name of the game? Spring cleaning!
How do you play? Fast!
Why do you play? To get organized!
With references to ‘thumping’ university drinking games aside (call it our misspent youth), the point we’re making is that we just don’t have the time to spend on spring cleaning that our moms and our moms’ moms used to. As with most aspects of our modern lives—efficiency rules the day.