My Green Freak

Tuesday Tour: Cleaning Supplies

Cleaning supplies are truly the bane of my existance. Everything has to be "natural." We have several homemade concoctions around here, and I'm sorry, but they just don't do it for me. Some of them are "ok" but that's about it. Nothing to write home about. But that doesn't mean that I'm not open to homemade cleaners, I just need to find the right ones.

The one I use most often is like a 409 substitute...just a general cleaner. And I'm okay with that one. But I need a good wood floor cleaner, a furniture polish and a stainless steel cleaner. All the recipes I've tried or found contain olive oil and they leave this funky film on everything. Even if I buff it out really well, it still manages to be kind of sticky and attacts every dust particle in our house. So if you have any good ones, PLEASE send them my way.

Here's the recipe for the general cleaner:

2 cups water
4 T. white vinegar
2 t. Borax (still wondering how that's green)
1/4 c. dish soap
1 t. tea tree oil

Oh, and I found a recipe for a great glass cleaner today but I'm sure it's not green by most standards. But isn't store-bought and it IS homemade so it's green by MY standards. :)

1 cup water
1 cup rubbing alcohol
1 T. vinegar

But if you have one that's more green, send it my way and I'll give it a try!

Tuesday Tour: Timers

One of the easiest things Jason has done around the house is add timers to our TV's. In concept, this is a great idea. TV's, DVD players, cable boxes, etc. continue to draw power even when they are turned off. These are also known as vampire appliances because they continuously suck energy. An easy way to save that energy (and money) is to simply add timers so that the timer actually stops the flow of power. We have an electronic one on our living room TV and simple wall timers in the bedrooms. The electronic ones allow for a little more flexibility so you can change the on/off time by day (since our schedule changes from weekday to weekend) whereas the wall timers set the on/off time the same every day.

However, as I'm sure you might imagine by now, things don't always work that easily in our house. Jason continuously sets the timer in the living room to be off on days when I'm home. Which means if I want to watch anything I have to crawl behind the TV to turn off the timer. Hopefully, I've planned ahead too because it takes about 15 minutes for the sound to warm up on our television (not sure what that's about). But that's ok. It's only a minor inconvenience that even though I don't really understand it, I can live with it.

The real issue is the one in our bedroom shown above. This is plugged into an outlet relatively close to the floor. Right over where the dog sleeps. As she roots around for the most comfortable sleeping position, she always manages to hit the timers. She's constantly changing the times on them. I can hear the little sliders click throughout the night as she moves around. We never know from day to day when the timer is going to go on and off. Unfortunately, there's not another outlet nearby and we certainly can't move the dog from her favorite location. Thankfully, this one is a little more accessible so we can easily switch it on/off according to our needs.

So...the timers are actually good thing. I totally recommend them. It's an easy way to be green. Just keep them away from the dog.

Anyone knows an ant can't move a rubber tree plant.

Well, at least not these ants. About this time every year, we get a little influx of ants. Just little sugar ants coming in looking for water. But it's still annoying. Jason's solution? A cotton ball, water, sugar and borax. The poor thirsty ants drink from this and then take it back to their colony to die and kill all their friends. Supposedly, no more ants. Although I see a couple here and there but nothing like the first couple of days. Is it still a green environmentally friendly solution if it ends in death? I'm just wondering.

Let's take a tour, shall we?

One of the things that makes life so interesting around here is that you can always find the beginning of a project or two. Jason is always trying something. Some things work great. Others...um, not so much. Not that I have a problem when they don't work out but I do find it rather humorous. Here's a little tour of random things I found around the house today.

This is one of our suet feeders. We have plenty of birds to feed and Jason's on a quest to make homemade suet. Except, we can't actually make true suet because it's made with animal fat...something we choose to avoid whenever possible. So, he's creating a concoction of peanut butter, crisco, corn meal, and bird seed. It's a good idea and I'm all for it. But we do live in Texas with over 100 degree heat. So naturally, the peanut butter and crisco melt and run down the tree. What started out in a perfect square only a few hours ago is now dripping from the feeder...

and falling to the ground. Birds that like to ground feed will be fine with this. I could be fine with this. But we do have a cat. So for me, this homemade suet quest doesn't really sound like a win-win situation. At least not for the birds.

I honestly don't know what's going on here. It's obviously corn from the garden. But it's rather small. And it's in one of the patio chairs. I'm not even sure how long it's been there. I'm thinking the squirrels might be happy it's there. Let's see how long it stays there.

I don't know about you, but that does NOT look like queso to me. But it is in the kitchen so be sure to look closely at anything before you consume it at our house. Some things I just overlook...like the corn above...but this one prompted some questions. Mostly I wanted to make sure it wasn't something that would kill me should I knock it off the counter. Come to find out, it's actually a mixture of corn starch and water...or glue rather. We don't have a big need for glue in this house so I'm certain a bigger project is on the horizon.

This one I'm a little bit scared about. It just came in the mail a few days ago. It's a worm farm. Thankfully, there are no worms here yet but it's only a matter of time. Apparantly, instead of throwing our leftover food in the bio section of our trash that ultimately ends up in the compost pile, I'm supposed to feed it to the worms. This can't be a good thing. For me anyway. Maybe for the worms. There was some mention of poop as well. There are several layers to this thing so I'm not sure how much worm poop we're talking about. And that little spout on the side...what's that do? I'm certain I don't really want to know. He mentioned putting it in the kitchen. I might not know what it does but I KNOW that there's no way it's going in the kitchen. This one can't be good for our marriage.  

I could have sworn I put this in the recylcle bin yesterday only to find it back on the counter this morning. Something about mosquitos? Not sure which scares me more...the worms or this.