Citrus Vinegar All Purpose Cleaner

In an earlier post, I mentioned how I was putting all those lemon peels to use by making citrus vinegar cleaner for the house.  A few people asked for the recipe, so here it is.

Ingredients;
  * Citrus peels
  * White vinegar
  * Water

How to make;
1) Cram as many citrus peels into a jar you have on hand.  I keep a mason jar next to our compost bowl in the kitchen.  All other kitchen waste goes in the compost bowl.  Citrus goes into the jar.  Once the jar is full, I go on to step 2.

2) Pour white vinegar over the peels until the jar is very full.  Seal the jar and shake to get out all the air bubbles.  Add more vinegar if needed.

3) Put in a sunny window and let it steep for 2 weeks.

4) After 2 weeks, pour the contents of the jar into a funnel inserted into your spray bottle.  The citrus vinegar will go into the spray bottle, and the peels will stay in the funnel.  Compost peels.  Add enough water to your spray bottle so that the mixture is roughly 1/2 citrus vinegar and 1/2 water.

5) Use on everything. 

It can't get much easier than that.  In fact, I can't believe I got 5 steps out of this simple process.

Hooray for the combined antibacterial power of both vinegar and citrus.

And hooray for a very effective child safe spray so the kids can help out even more!

Today

It's been raining for a LONG time around here.  The kids are doing great being cooped up, mainly thanks to our covered porch.  They can still get fresh air and jump and holler.  But even that lasts only so long for kids who stare out at their bikes dripping with rain upon rain.  Since starting our urban homestead, I've learned that no matter the weather, there's stuff to do in the yard.  So we've taken advantage of the breaks in the rain and gone out to weed and rip more stuff out of the yard.  Lately, there's been less breaks in the rain and no one wanted to stay inside all day today, ESPECIALLY since Zac was home.  So we just went out in it anyways.  Zac said our neighbors must think we're crazy.  But I think they already do.  :)  It was just a gentle rain, most of the time, and wonderful to garden in.  We found TONS of worms and moved them into a wine half barrel, which will be my first carrot bed.

  We have plans to put in a large carrot bed, since carrots are the main veggies our kids like, but that is yet to be built and I'm itching to get my carrot seeds in.  Zac ripped up more huge stumps and I finally said goodbye to a beautiful climbing rose that was just utilizing too much potential edible plant space.  I felt like a plant murderer. 

We moved aside some great mulch from where our large carrot bed will go.  I took some Iris down to my neighbor who LOVES to leaf blow many yards (not ours) in our cul de sac, and asked him if he'd mind dumping his leaf mulch in our yard instead of green wasting it.  He was very happy to do that and have more room in his green waste.  So I've now acquired us a lifetime supply of mulch!

As we've made piles upon piles of waste pulled from the yard, I couldn't help but think that if we are able to produce THIS MUCH waste in our yard, think of how much edible goodness we potentially have room for.

I wish I'd taken pics of the waste along the way.  This is only what we did today.  Mounds of waste have already been taken away in our green waste bin.

I unearthed our walkway and plan to give it a bit more TLC with decomposed granite in between each step.

Zac is going snowboarding with our brother in law tomorrow so while Kian napped, he and the two big kids headed up to my mom's to grab his snow stuff out of her attic.  I had ample time to work on Logan's i-spy quilt since he was out of the house and I finished the top!  I'm so excited, but a bit nervous about the next step, which is the backing, quilting, binding part.  I usually back my quilts with a blanket in a pillow case type fashion, and then turn and topstitch.  I'd really like to learn the whole quilting process and hope to have time to do that with his i-Spy.  I also raided my scraps and found enough to add two more rows to my nephew's i-Spy quilt to just make it as big and fun as possible.

While still waiting for Zac and the big kids to get home, I enjoyed some one on one time with Kian after he woke up.  While I sewed the last boarders onto Logan's quilt, he played ball with himself.  Sometimes he'd bring me his ball to throw so he could fetch it.  :)  He's done this since he could walk.  Yes, we play fetch with our 1 year old.  :)  He's becoming quite the talker and after I threw the ball, he would exclaim, "I get it!".  At one point I asked him where his Tickity (his lovie) was and he said, "I no know.", his new favorite expression.  So I told him to go find it.  He came back with it and told me "Tickity night night.", which means Tickity was sleeping in his crib.  I LOVE having a little talker in the house.  We missed this stage with Felicity and I had forgotten how much fun it is.

Can't Tickity and I blog with you Mama?

Just as Zac and the big kids arrived home, our load of firewood did too.  We've been expecting it for a few days but the guy didn't want to drop it in the pouring rain.  Zac and the kids all helped bring the wood up onto our front porch, and stacked it nicely.

This boy can turn anything into a guitar.

Kian is very insistent upon helping these days.  If he's crabby, I'll ask for his help with a job and he cheers right up.  He insists on clearing his plate from the table after every meal, like he sees his siblings do.  If I forget to hand him his plate to clear after getting him out of his chair, he will throw a fit! 

He stayed up on the porch with me but his sister and brother brought him pieces to carry from the stairs to the pile, and he was very proud.

Tonight was Earth Hour.  Basically, people across the World go without lights for one hour, starting at 8:30p.m. their time.  Our kids go to bed by 7:30ish and we wanted them to take part in the whole hour, so we did Earth Hour at our house at 6:30p.m.  Due to our busy day, we ate a late dinner.  This allowed us to eat dinner by candle light, followed by getting ready for bed by candle light, and doing our nightly reading by candle light.  I've been reading Little House In The Big Woods to Felicity and Logan every night.  Earth Hour was perfect timing for us because not only did we have good discussions with the kids about energy conservation, we also talked about the reality that this was how Mary, Laura, baby Carrie, Ma, and Pa lived every day!  This hit home to Logan especially who was not a fan of our dark house. 

Did anyone else take part in Earth Hour?

Here's a link to a video about it if you are interested.

It's pretty cool.

One Small Change - January 2011

My one small change for January focuses on the kids' pajamas.  We recently learned that all loose fitting kid pajamas are coated with fire retardant chemicals.  Once we learned this, we tried to find information online about these chemicals.  Some information said the chemicals were harmless and there was too much hype over the concerns regarding them in the use on kids pajamas.  Other articles said the chemicals DID have harmful effects....specifically showing signs of messing with the nervous system and thyroid.  Interesting.  Other articles said that some of the chemicals hadn't been used over long periods of time so not enough was known about long term effects. 

Though we could not ever discover 100% if the chemicals were harmful or not, we WERE able to discover what pajamas they are used on.  Basically, any loose fitting pajamas have the retardant chemicals on them.  I'm not sure about the organic options, but the normal ones you buy in the store have the retardant.  The ones that are free of chemicals are long johns and those thin cotton two piece numbers that remind me of thin long johns, just made of cotton instead of thermal. 

One of the major issues that was pushed by the authors of the articles in favor of the retardant chemicals on p.j.s was the chance of the child coming into contact with an open flame such as a candle.  Their point was that if the child was messing around with the open flame, their loose fitted p.j. sleeve would not ignite.  Well, we rarely light candles in this house and when we do, we don't leave them in reach of the kids.  Never once did the pro fire retardant authors address the fact that if the house were to catch on fire, the retardant in the p.j.s would not do much for a child who's bed sheets and hair would catch fire.  Authors against the chemicals did mention this fact.  In the tragic event of a house fire, the retardant doesn't have a fighting chance against all the other flammable materials surrounding the child.  Since our kids' safety in the case of a house fire would not have anything to do with weather or not their p.j.s were flame retardant, and since we don't have open flames such as candles lit in the house at their level, making the switch to chemical free p.j.s was easy for us. 

Everyone has an opinion and with stuff like this, since we're not scientists, its hard to know who to believe. We decided that since the harmful effects were unclear, we'd just skip on the loose fitting store bought p.j.s to be on the safe side. The kids already have a decent amount of thermal and cotton long johns so it was easy to go through their p.j.s and get rid of all the bunny sleepers and loose fitting two piece sets. I consigned, thrifted, and handed down their old p.j.s. None went in the trash.  To fill in the few gaps in their pajama needs, I sewed up a few flannel pants for each of them.

 

Kian was NOT happy about modeling his Big Butt Baby Pants and needed some consoling from Daddy after the torment of it all.

So how is this one small (green) change?  No chemicals = Green   
Plus, I'm really good at reusing stuff so a lot of the flannel used to make their pants (as well as the piles of flannel waiting to make more when they grow out of these) was handed down scraps, old sheets, or thrifted.  So I'm using stuff that would have otherwise just been thrown out.  Some is new flannel though, I admit.  JoAnns was having a super sale on flannel on Black Friday and I got sucked in big time.  :)  But in this house, we use flannel to the max.  None will go to waste!

One Small Change

People around me tease me for being green.  I respond with that I'm just trying to live a simple life.  But I guess this year, I should just accept who I am.  I do like the idea of living a bit greener, and I shouldn't worry about those around me teasing me because they think I'm crazy.  I don't consider myself a tree hugger.  Simply put, I love my Lord and love this earth He created and I want to respect His creation by treating it with respect.  People will always argue my choices, as they already do, but this year I need to validate my convictions in my own life for myself.  One way I'm doing this is to join One Small Change.  The button for this project is in my sidebar but I can't for the life of me figure out how to link it so that when you click the button you are taken to their blog.  Help?  Here's the link.  I DO know how to do that.  : )  Check it out if you're interested.  I loved being a part of the Handmade Holiday project!  I made blog friends and became part of a little online community who value similar things I do.  The ladies in that project spurred me on with their support and inspiration and I think that's the main reason I was able to follow through with a 100% handmade holiday.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I can be a procrastinator.  Like right now, I should be schooling but I'm blogging.  Anyways, Zac and I have been wanting to make some changes around here so I decided to join the One Small Change project to again get that encouragement and inspiration that helped me to not be a procrastinator.  Basically, the project encourages you to make one small change a month to lessen your carbon footprint.  I'll post periodically about our goals and how we reached them.  And now, I'm off to home school.  : )