5 out of 5 leaves

It’s pretty common knowledge that a diet full of fresh fruits and veggies will keep your body healthy, strong and at a reduced risk of many common ailments.  But the problem with fresh produce is that it doesn’t stay fresh for long.  It can be hard to purchase enough produce for a week without losing some of it to spoilage before the next shopping trip.  Rinsing with vinegar is a lot of extra work, and does not seem to prevent spoilage.  A product called the “Bluapple” promises to prolong your produce freshness, but does it really work?

The Good

• Better for You – the longer your produce lasts, the more of it you will probably eat
• Better for the Earth – less waste makes for a less polluted planet (not just the compostable produce wasted, but also the packaging, transportation impact, etc.)
• Saves Time – no need to spend time on a vinegar rinse, or with multiple trips to the store for the freshest produce
• Saves Money – less waste =  more money in your pocket
• Easy – put the Bluapple in your produce drawer.  That’s it.
• Lowcost and Refillable – the Bluapple system is pretty cheap, and also refillable.  The total yearly cost is  about $20.

The Bad

• You have to remember to refill the Bluapple every three months

My Experience

The BluApple

When my husband and I were first married, visitors to our home would tease us about how “empty” our refrigerator was. At the time we were pretty entrenched with the Standard American Diet and ate very little fresh produce.  We would pick out one type of fruit to eat each week, and all veggies were canned or frozen.

Now that our eating strategies have evolved and we’ve cut processed foods from our menu, our fridge looks quite different!  I love the overflowing bounty of produce that occurs each week when my husband comes home from grocery shopping.  Almost all available space in our fridge is taken up with fruits and veggies of many varieties.  It’s a beautiful thing!

What’s not beautiful, however, is when my husband brings home four pounds of strawberries from Costco, and we only get through two pounds before they start to spoil.  I feel sad at the end of the week for the produce that didn’t make it.  And I feel frustrated that fresh fruits (berries especially) tend to start turning so quickly.  Although the Costco strawberry packs are a great value, you start to resent them when you find yourself trying to eat a pound of strawberries every day so they don’t go to waste.

I’d tried washing produce in vinegar, which was supposed to prevent it from spoiling, but I found it didn’t make much of a difference at all.  It was also extra work to add into my busy life.  Then I heard about the Bluapple, and everything changed…

The Blueapple is a little plastic blue apple.  Inside it has crystals which naturally absorb ethylene gas, which is what causes fruit to ripen, and then over-ripen, leading to spoilage.  All you have to do is put a Bluapple with in your produce drawer, or other enclosed space like a paper bag, and it pretty much halts the ripening process.

I ordered the Bluapple 2-pack, and put one in each of my refrigerator produce drawers.  I also rearranged my fridge a little bit to ensure the produce most prone to ripening was in those drawers.  Then I waited to see what would happen.

To my surprise nothing happened!  That is, my perfectly ripe fruit did not change.  At all.  For more than a week the strawberries and raspberries in the drawer stayed as fresh and firm as the day we bought them!  I was really shocked at how well the ethylene absorbents worked.

Usually by the fourth day after shopping, I’m carefully picking through the strawberries to find the “good” ones.  Now all my strawberries are good ones, all the time.  I love choosing a fresh snack based on what I want to eat, rather than what is about to spoil next!

I highly recommend the Bluapple system!  Without a doubt, it stops your produce from over-ripening.  It comes with clear instructions, even for those tricky bananas and avocados.  The refill system is easy to use, and the company will even email you a reminder when it’s time to refill!

If you’re interested in trying this out, and saving a bunch of money in lost produce please check out the link below (Amazon affiliate link).

Have you ever tried Bluapple?  What is your strategy for using the produce before it goes bad?

 PS: I was not asked to review this product by the manufacturer, or compensated for this review in any way. This is a personal recommendation for a product that I tried of my own volition.

Welcome to Living Green Tuesdays cohosted by Jasmine (AKA “Happy Mrs. Bass) from Like A Mustard Seed, Susan from Essential Traditions and myself.  Join us every Tuesday as like-minded bloggers come together with their “green” ideas! We love to see things like gardening tips, natural/money saving DIY projects, sustainable living ideas, herbal/natural healing, homemade anything, and more!

Share ANYTHING that relates to “green” living aka herbs, gardening, money saving, eco-friendly, ect. Use the Linky tool below to participate. Share your link new or old (make sure the link goes directly to your post), title, and image. It’s that easy! (No links to businesses please).

Please link your posts back to this Link-Up. Linking back here helps build our little community by sending your readers to all of the other posts shared. Grab the Living Green Link-up button above and paste into your post. Or simply create a text link somewhere in your post.

The idea of this link-up is to build up & encourage other readers as we learn and share our ideas. Be sure to visit other participants, as time allows. Tell them hello and that you found them here!

(Note: if you are reading from an email or RSS feed, you must click through to see all the fun links).

4 out of 5 leaves

Whether you’re two, or fifty-two years old, boo-boos happen.  And when they do, an ice pack is a wonderful tool to help you feel better fast.  But store bought ice packs can be expensive, and are filled with industrial chemicals. And filling a bag full of ice cubes just doesn’t really cut it sometimes.  My Pinterest feed suggested that rubbing alcohol is the secret to the perfect DIY ice pack.  Does it work?

The Good

• Better for you – while you have to be careful with rubbing alcohol, at least there are no other unknown toxic chemicals in your ice pack (what is that blue gel anyway?)
• Better for the Earth – making your own ice pack reduces the environmental strain of factory processing, transportation of goods, and packaging waste
• Saves Time – no fumbling with ice cubes while you’re hurting: you can prepare this pack ahead of time so it’s always ready
• Saves money – uses water and rubbing alcohol – super cheap compared to commercial ice packs which start in the range of $5 each
• Easy – super quick to make
• Shapeable – the frozen mixture stays slushy so you can shape it for full injury contact

The Bad

• Supervision required for the kids as rubbing alcohol is flammable, poisonous, etc.  Your curious toddler WILL open the zipper lock bag the second he/she feels better.

My Experience

With two little monkeys active and highly mobile kiddos in the house, we have a lot of bumps and bruises.  In my quest to be a creative, problem solving mama, I’ve learned the novelty of an ice pack can usually dry up the tears that come with big falls.  I am quick to pull out an ice pack for even the smallest bumps so we can laugh about how chilly it is, and then move on with the day.

What I don’t like is the blue liquid filled ice packs.  There are two options: (1) the brick shaped ones that don’t really form to the injury, and (2) the soft pliable ones just waiting to be pieced by a toddler’s little teeth.  (Ice packs always seem to end up in someone’s mouth around here).

When I heard about the rubbing alcohol ice pack, I was excited to try it!  It was cheap, easy, and looked soft and pliable too.  I used the following recipe, and stashed it in the freezer.

• 1 part rubbing alcohol (70% isopropyl alcohol)
• 3 parts tap water
• Mix together and double bag in zipper lock baggies

The liquid freezes to a nice slushy consistency.  Depending on the amount of empty space you left in the bag, it can be wrapped or formed very easily around most any body part.

It didn’t take long before we had our first test subject

Just the novelty of having a new ice pack was enough to make the pain subside almost immediately!  My toddler was thrilled that I had made an ice pack just for her.  Then she waited until I wasn’t watching and opened it, spilling some of the alcohol slush out on the floor.  Sigh.

I rolled the ice pack up and put it in a large tube sock for the next use.  This is now our new favorite ice pack.  The kids request it specifically for injuries.  We like it because it is big, and formable for full injury contact.  It provides quick pain relief.  And it’s cheap so if we get a hole in the bag it’s not a big deal to toss it and make a new one.  As soon as I get a chance, I’m planning to improve it by stitching a nifty flannel pouch to hold it in (like this).

I highly recommend going with this type of ice pack for pain relief!  Make sure you double bag, and put it in a sock or pouch for the kids to make it harder to open.

What’s your quick trick to dry up the tears that come with bumps and bruises?

Shared at Sunday School, Creative Homeacre, MYHSM, Natural Living Monday, Homemade Mondays, More the Merrier Monday, Thank Goodness it’s Monday, Living Green Tuesday, The Gathering Spot, Teach Me Tuesday, Titus 2sday, Show Me What You’ve Got, Titus 2 Tuesday, Tuesdays with a Twist, Tuesday Baby Link-up, Eco-Kids Tuesday, Wildcrafting Wednesday, Works for me Wednesday, Healthy Today Wednesday,  Simple Lives Thursday, Thank Your Body Thursday, Natural Living Thursday, Blog Stalking Thursday, Small Footprint Friday, Simply Natural Saturday

Welcome to Living Green Tuesdays cohosted by myself and Jasmine (AKA “Happy Mrs. Bass) from Like A Mustard Seed. Join us every Tuesday as like-minded bloggers come together with their “green” ideas! We love to see things like gardening tips, natural/money saving DIY projects, sustainable living ideas, herbal/natural healing, homemade anything, and more!

Share ANYTHING that relates to “green” living aka herbs, gardening, money saving, eco-friendly, ect. Use the Linky tool below to participate. Share your link new or old (make sure the link goes directly to your post), title, and image. It’s that easy! (No links to businesses please).

Please link your posts back to this Link-Up. Linking back here helps build our little community by sending your readers to all of the other posts shared. Grab the Living Green Link-up button above and paste into your post. Or simply create a text link somewhere in your post.

The idea of this link-up is to build up & encourage other readers as we learn and share our ideas. Be sure to visit other participants, as time allows. Tell them hello and that you found them here!

(Note: if you are reading from an email or RSS feed, you must click through to see all the fun links).

1 out of 5 leaves

Coconut oil is an edible oil extracted from the meat of mature coconuts.  It is used as a primary cooking oil in many parts of the world.  It also can be used in a wide variety of cosmetic and personal care products.  I have been using coconut oil for quite a while now in cooking and baking.  I’ve also tried shaving with it and using it as a body moisturizer.  Today I want to  share my experiences with using whipped coconut oil in baby care.  Does coconut oil make a good diaper rash cream?

The Good

• Better for baby – virgin, unrefined coconut oil is a safe, all natural product with no chemical fillers, preservatives, or sketchy things you don’t want to be absorbed by baby’s sensitive skin
• Better for the Earth – Coconut oil does not harm the waste stream the way that run off from chemical filled lotion might
• Easy to apply – coconut oil is solid at room temp, but melts easily against baby’s warm bottom
• Smells great – the scent of unrefined, virgin coconut oil will take your senses on a trip straight to the beach
• Saves money – a little bit of this oil goes a long way, and is a better price per application than most diaper creams on the market

The Bad

• Rubbing oil all over baby’s bottom can be a bit messy
• It doesn’t always work

My Experience

Coconut!  That magical fruit that yields magical oil that will heal all your ills.  Or so they say.  So, with a new baby in the house, I thought I’d try it out on her bottom and see how well coconut oil works as a diaper rash cream.

The baby had developed a minor rash among her chubby creases that didn’t seemed to bother her, but bothered me a bit.  Her skin was not super irritated, but was a deeper red color in some spots vs the normal pink of the rest of her bottom.  I put a small jar of organic extra virgin coconut oil on the changing table and started giving her a good application with every diaper change.

Nothing changed.  Coconut oil FAIL.

After four days of constant coconut oil, I instead applied some organic, zinc based commercial diaper cream (EWG Skin Deep Cosmetics score of 0, thankyouverymuch).  By the next diaper change the rash was completely gone and her skin back to a healthy, happy pink.

Several days later, she developed a bumpy red rash all over her bottom.  Her skin was very irritated because she had secretly pooped after I put her to bed, then slept for a good six hours in it.  (Sorry baby! )  I applied coconut oil, but again her skin showed no signs of calming by the next diaper change.  So I went back to the old faithful diaper cream in a tube.  Once again the rash cleared by the next diaper change after using the store bought cream.

In our experience, coconut oil is not a good replacement for diaper cream.  While it made my baby’s bottom smell nice and fruity, it did not sooth her irritated skin at all.  I know that coconut oil has some anti-fungal properties, and so may help for a fungal type of rash like yeast.  But it was not helpful for a general irritated skin rash.

I am super sad that our favorite organic diaper cream has been discontinued!  However, after doing some research I plan to try out this one next.  It is zinc based, has 100% natural ingredients, has an EWG score of 1, and has great reviews on Amazon.  Hopefully it will be just as effective as our current cream!  You can click on the picture if you’re interested in trying it out with me (affiliate link).

Have you ever tried using coconut oil on a diaper rash?  What’s your favorite diaper cream?

 Shared at Sunday School, Creative Homeacre, Better Mom Mondays, Natural Living Mondays, Teach Me Tuesday, One Project at a Time, Titus 2sday, Living Green Tuesdays, Show Me What You’ve Got, Titus 2 Tuesdays, Tuesday Baby Link-up, Eco-Kids Tuesday, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways, Wildcrafting Wednesday, WFMW, Adorened from Above, Healthy 2day Wednesday, Party Wave Wednesdays,  Simple Lives Thursday, Blog Stalking Thursday, Thank Your Body Thursday, Natural Living Link-up

Welcome to Living Green Tuesdays cohosted by myself and Jasmine (AKA “Happy Mrs. Bass) from Like A Mustard Seed. Join us every Tuesday as like-minded bloggers come together with their “green” ideas! We love to see things like gardening tips, natural/money saving DIY projects, sustainable living ideas, herbal/natural healing, homemade anything, and more!

Share ANYTHING that relates to “green” living aka herbs, gardening, money saving, eco-friendly, ect. Use the Linky tool below to participate. Share your link new or old (make sure the link goes directly to your post), title, and image. It’s that easy! (No links to businesses please).

Please link your posts back to this Link-Up. Linking back here helps build our little community by sending your readers to all of the other posts shared. Grab the Living Green Link-up button above and paste into your post. Or simply create a text link somewhere in your post.

The idea of this link-up is to build up & encourage other readers as we learn and share our ideas. Be sure to visit other participants, as time allows. Tell them hello and that you found them here!

(Note: if you are reading from an email or RSS feed, you must click through to see all the fun links).

About a month ago I had the pleasure of sitting down for a radio interview with Vickilynn Haycraft, of Real Food Living.  She had enjoyed my homebirth reviews (Is Homebirth a Green Idea part 1 and part 2) and wanted to learn more about my decision to have three homebirths in four years.  I spent about an hour sharing more about my home birthing journey with Vickilynne and her listeners on the Get Real – Get Prepared Radio Show.

It was a lot fun getting to know Vickilynn, and hearing about her birthing experiences as well.  Vickilynn is a mama to five, and is passionate about whole grains, real foods, natural health and products that help support taking care of the family in a healthful way.  She hosts a weekly radio show on the Preparedness Radio Network called Get Real – Get Prepared, airing every Saturday night at 6 PM Central.

I missed telling you about the original air date, but the good news is that you can listen online anytime, or download to take with you.  Isn’t internet “radio” great?!  You can download or stream from the Preparedness Network here, or just click on the embedded streaming player below.

I’m looking forward to chatting with Vickilynn again soon about my journey through postpartum depression, and placenta encapsulation!

4 out of 5 leaves

Ladybugs (or ladybird beetles) are one of those pretty insects that we don’t tend to mind having around.  Although we think of ladybugs as “nice” bugs, they are hungry predators.  They love to eat other little pests, especially aphids.  Farmers regularly use ladybugs as a natural pest control, but would they also work in a backyard garden?  Will ladybugs eat the pests that try to eat my plants?

The Good

• Better for you – no need to handle chemical pesticides, or worry about them getting on your homegrown produce
• Better for the earth – no harmful pesticides leaching into the soil and groundwater
• Saves Time – one application of ladybugs is all you need for the whole season
• Easy – open the container, and dump them out.  Let the bugs do all the dirty work.

The Bad

•  If you really don’t like handling bugs, this is probably not for you
• They will all disappear and you’ll feel like it doesn’t work.  Until the end of the summer when you realize your tomatoes look great!

My Experience

photo credit

I am blessed to have a small backyard gardening space at our rental home.  I’ve planted a small vegetable garden each year.  We don’t get a lot of produce from it, but enough to make it fun and a great learning opportunity for the kids.  I keep it all organic, or even completely pesticide free, not wanting those chemicals near my food, or my children.

My problem, however, is that when you don’t use pesticides, you tend to get pests.  For example, the first year I planted tomatoes, they were covered in leaf hoppers.  These were trixy leaf hoppers too.  They were the same color as the tomato vine, and lined themselves up to look just like thorns on the plant.  As I was new to tomato gardening, I didn’t realize what was going on until much damage had been done.

Vowing to do better the next year, I started researching natural, safe ways to control pests in the garden.  Lady bugs kept coming up as a natural predator to many garden pests.  They cost about the same as I could theoretically spend on pesticides for a growing season, so I decided it was definitely worth it to try them out.  I ordered them online, and 2 days later 1500 ladybugs arrived on my doorstep.

My tub o’ bugs!

The instructions say to let the ladybugs go into your garden at night so they settle down there and don’t all fly away immediately.  Later that evening I shook out the container into the dark garden while saying a few words of encouragement to my little brood.  And I never saw another ladybug again.

Seriously.  You’d think that after releasing 1500 lady bugs into my yard, I’d at least see one here or there throughout the summer.  Nope.  They were gone.  ”What a waste”, I thought, grumpy that they didn’t like my garden.

But then, towards the end of the summer, I realized that the leaf hoppers had not shown up.  My tomatoes did better, and the rest of the garden was less chewed than it had been the previous year!  As I had done nothing differently, and had mostly the same plants growing this year, I have to assume the ladybugs did their job!  Also, they are really good at hiding.

And as it turns out the ladybugs decided to stay for the winter!  Early this spring, we started finding ladybugs everywhere in the yard.  We planted tomatoes again this year with great hope that the leaf hoppers, and other pesty bugs will stay away.  And if we start to see some, we’ll get some new ladybugs to take them out for us.

You can probably find live ladybugs at your local garden center.  Or do it the easy way like me and order them online.  Here’s a link to the ones I got.  They were shipped quickly, and were all alive once received.  Happy gardening!

Have you ever used ladybugs as pest predators in your garden?  What was your experience?

 Shared at Sunday School, The Creative HomeAcre, Better Mom Mondays, Natural Living Monday, Teach Me Tuesday, One Project at a Time, Titus 2sdays, Living Green Tuesdays, Titus 2 Tuesdays, Eco Kids Tuesdays, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways, Wildcrafting Wednesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Adorned from Above, Healthy 2day Wednesday,  Thank Your Body Thursday, Natural Living Link-up, Blog Stalking Thursday, LHITS DIY Linky, Small Footprint Friday

Welcome to Living Green Tuesdays cohosted by myself and Jasmine (AKA “Happy Mrs. Bass) from Like A Mustard Seed. Join us every Tuesday as like-minded bloggers come together with their “green” ideas! We love to see things like gardening tips, natural/money saving DIY projects, sustainable living ideas, herbal/natural healing, homemade anything, and more!

Share ANYTHING that relates to “green” living aka herbs, gardening, money saving, eco-friendly, ect. Use the Linky tool below to participate. Share your link new or old (make sure the link goes directly to your post), title, and image. It’s that easy! (No links to businesses please).

Please link your posts back to this Link-Up. Linking back here helps build our little community by sending your readers to all of the other posts shared. Grab the Living Green Link-up button above and paste into your post. Or simply create a text link somewhere in your post.

The idea of this link-up is to build up & encourage other readers as we learn and share our ideas. Be sure to visit other participants, as time allows. Tell them hello and that you found them here!

(Note: if you are reading from an email or RSS feed, you must click through to see all the fun links).

5 out of 5 leaves

It’s a fact of life: mattresses can get stinky.  We spend about a third of each day laying on them, and without a plastic cover they have the potential to absorb all kinds of body fluids and bacteria.  But what to do with a stinky mattress?  Can putting a mattress in the sun naturally deodorize it?

The Good

• Better for you – no chemical laden cleaners needed
• Better for the Earth – there is pretty much zero carbon footprint* to putting something in the sun
• Saves Time – no spraying and drying time required, just set it in the backyard and forget it
• Saves Money – sunshine is free!
• Easy – let the sun do the work for you

*my educated guess, not actual scientific measurement

The Bad

• You have to lug the mattress outside – the bigger the mattress, the harder this is
• A bird might poop on your mattress

My Experience

photo credit

I have a four year old kiddo who is fully potty trained, even at night.  Except for those evenings where he downs three cups of water before I realize what’s going on.  (Note to self: keep the kids well hydrated during the day and they won’t be thirsty at bedtime!)  Without fail, I will later be awakened in the night by a little voice at my bedside saying, “Mama, I accidentally had an accident…”

While we would never let a kid sleep on a mattress without a waterproof cover, somehow with all his nighttime twisting and turning our little guy managed to tear a hole in the mattress cover we had.  And of course this hole ended up right underneath him and he peed right through it, soaking the mattress.

If you’re anything like me, there’s only one thing to be done with a soaked mattress at 3AM: put a thick towel over the wet spot and get everyone back to bed ASAP.  I got to it by late morning the next day.  The wet spot had mostly dried, but was now developing a nasty stink.

Google suggested vinegar, baking soda, or sunshine to take the smell away.  I opted for sunshine.  There’s total science here: sunshine is full of UV light. UV light is often used in industrial settings to kill bacteria (for example on your hamburger meat, or sterile gauze).  It’s usually bacteria or some other kind of living microbe that makes things smell bad.  If you kill the bacteria, the smell should also go away.

So I lugged the mattress out to the backyard.  I’m fortunate to live in southern California, where (almost) every day is a sunny day.  I draped the mattress over a backyard chair to minimize contact with the ground, and let it soak up the midday sun for about 90 minutes.  When I brought it back in the smell was completely gone!

Using the sun to kill the odor worked great!  I highly recommend this method of mattress stink removal.  It’s way easier than spraying the mattress with a cleaning solution then scrubbing and waiting to dry.  I am looking forward to testing this out on other stinky objects around the house.  Stay tuned to see if I can get sunshine into the toes of some stinky shoes we have lying around…

Have you ever used sunshine to freshen up a mattress?  What other stinks might be killed using the sun?

 Shared at Sunday School, Creative HomeAcre, Better Mom Mondays, Natural Living Mondays, Teach Me Tuesday, One Project At a Time, Titus 2sday, Living Green Tuesday, Show Me What You’ve Got, Titus 2 Tuesday, Tuesday Baby Link-up, Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways, Women Living Well, Works for Me Wednesday, Adorned from Above, Healthy 2day Wednesday, Wildcrafting Wednesday, Down Home Blog Hop, Party Wave Wednesday, Seasonal Celebration, Simple Lives Thursday, Blog Stalking Thursday, Thank Your Body Thursday, Natural Living Link-up, Farmgirl Friday, DIY LInky, Small Footprint Friday