You may have noticed my little series of “spring cleaning tips of the day.” These posts have included groundbreaking suggestions to wash windows with vinegar, acquire a self-cleaning child, time yourself while cleaning, and phase out toxic cleaners gradually. And now my well of spring cleaning knowledge has run dry. What are your handy spring cleaning ideas?

I suppose applesauce muffins are more of a fall food, but I’ve been baking batches of these for breakfast and snacks and find them perfectly suited to the cold, drizzly days of a Pacific Northwest spring. I’ve used store bought and homemade applesauce, and both worked just fine.

Applesauce Muffin Recipe

6 tablespoons butter, melted

2 eggs

2/3 cups brown sugar

1 ½ cups applesauce

1 ½ cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon cardamom

½ teaspoon salt

Mix the melted butter, eggs, brown sugar, and applesauce in a large bowl. Add the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Grease a muffin tin or use cupcake liners. Spoon batter into cups until they’re half to two-thirds filled. (Reserve the remaining batter for a second batch.)  Bake at 375 degrees for twenty minutes or until done.

Makes about 16 muffins

In our research for The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, our favorite organic choice was Nature’s One Baby’s Only Organic Formula.  And in our recent exploration of hexane, Baby’s Only again stands out as the best choice.

So what is hexane anyway?  It’s a petroleum derivative that’s found in glue and gasoline and has recently been used in infant formula to help obtain the DHA and ARA fatty acids from fermented algae and fungus.  Since breast milk is packed with DHA and ARA, there has been a recent drive to get these components into formula.  (Don’t get us started on the advantages of breastfeeding.  If you possibly can breastfeed, there are a million reasons that it will provide you with better health, your baby with better immunity, and save you heaps of cash.  Since not everyone can, we want to be sure to share organic formula options. If you are breastfeeding, don’t forget to enter our Hygeia EnJoye Breastpump Giveaway!)

Similic Organic Formula and Earth’s Best Organic Formula both state that no trace of hexane is detectable in their formula and that it’s just used to process the DHA and ARA.  But Nature’s One Baby’s Only is the only organic formula to derive their DHA and ARA fatty acids without hexane.  They are also the only organic formula to have 100% BPA free packaging.

There’s just one problem with Baby’s Only Organic formula.  In an effort to encourage breastfeeding, the company recommends their formula as a follow up to a full year of breastfeeding.  However, they offer a nutritional chart comparing their formula to others on the market and recommend that you consult with your health care professional.  It’s clear from viewing the chart that Baby’s Only  meets or exceeds other brands with its nutritional components and would be more than adequate as an infant formula.

Baby’s Only Infant Formula isn’t even the most expensive option!  It comes in at $0.88/oz. while Earth’s Best Organic Formula costs $1.15/oz. and Similac Organic is a bit cheaper at $0.73/oz. (These are my current rough estimates based on buying from Amazon in large quantities)

What’s your favorite organic infant formula?  Any tips on finding the best prices on formula?

Our spotlight on great green bloggers shines on! Today we’re featuring Lisa from Retro Housewife Goes Green. Lisa wants to “bring more green to Oklahoma,” and she’s off to a good start with these recent blog highlights:

Sunflower butter cookies

Easy chocolate cake and cream cheese icing

Is Nuclear energy green energy?

McDonald’s Takes on Oatmeal

I seem to be drawn mainly to her food articles. Hm. Now I’m craving sunflower butter cookies. . . .

The Hygeia Enjoye Professional-Grade Breastpump was invented with working moms and the environment in mind. I have to say that I would have loved to have one of these incredible machines, and one of you will be getting one for free very soon!

So just why is Hygeia EnJoye so unique? It actually has a device that records your child’s cry or cooing so that you can play it back while pumping to help you with let down.  I personally had to sprint into our school’s filing room and try hard to envision my baby’s faces so that I could produce milk in the allotted fifteen minutes I had to pump.  Hearing their voices would have been a huge help!

The Hygeia EnJoye works as a double or single pump, comes with a battery and electrical cord, and is intended for long-term and frequent pumping.  Plus, these pumps are designed not to end up in a landfill anytime soon. They can be reused when each new mom buys new tubing for the pump or sent back to the company to be refitted for another mom.  (And all the components that come in contact with breast milk are BPA/DEHP Free)

At just eight pounds, the Hygeia EnJoye pumps are far smaller and more portable than the giant unit I toted around for a full year. And one of you will win a pump (valued at well over $200!) this week!

Four Ways to Enter the Hygeia EnJoye Professional-Grade Breastpump Giveaway:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like us on Facebook (then tell us you did it in the comments)

3. Visit Hygeia’s Website and comment on what you learned.

4. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

This contest ends on Friday May 6th and is only open to U.S. Residents.

Great luck!

Reader question! Any creative ways to repurpose that old vinyl shower curtain? Please weigh in with your suggestions, and help a Green Baby Guide reader out!

Now that you’ve re-used that old vinyl curtain, how about trying a nice, all natural linen shower curtain?

We’ve posted about this before, but when I wrote about my Top 5 Green Cleaning Supplies, I realized that not everyone knew what I meant when I said to wash windows with vinegar and a newspaper. So check out washing windows the green way and learn the secret to saving money on paper towels and commercial cleaners.

Good old-fashioned white vinegar

A friend of ours is in the thick of early parenthood.  The sleeplessness, the stress, the wonder, the trauma and the sheer depth of love.  There is really no way to describe it to those on the brink of this huge shift, so I always feel such compassion for new parents.  My advice?

• Laugh at yourself.  Because minor failures can seem so catastrophic in those early days.   Errors won’t be so powerful if you can manage a chuckle now and then.
• Progress not perfection.  (I had to repeat that at certain challenging points–like when I dropped a poopy diaper face down on the carpet at 3am.)
• Also, each day is a new ride on a roller coaster that will have huge shifts.  They may seem endless but it will be gone before you know it.  (I know that everyone says this to new moms–and I know it can be annoying, but it is so amazingly true! )
• Hmmm..  On a less philosophical and more practical plane, request meals from everyone you know.
• Beg favors for free babysitting so that you can take showers and maybe even venture out to the grocery store on your own now and then.

What would your best advice be to new parents?  What do you wish you would have known when you started in this humbling and rewarding career?

If you are pregnant or have just given birth, you may have to wait four or five year until putting this tip into effect. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I managed to raise a child who enjoys tidying up her own room. And she does not want any help! Her room does get messy—clothes, books, and toys start piling up in unattractive lumps. But that’s okay! We simply “challenge” our five-year-old daughter to clean the room all by herself, and she will hole away in there for over an hour so that she can surprise us with the results.

And she does! She will put everything away where it belongs, even going so far as to organize her dresser drawers, the interior of her closet, and the surface of her nightstand.

So if you have trouble keeping your house clean, do what I did: create or adopt a self-cleaning child. Problem solved!

Books sit on my nightstand for weeks before they are ever cracked open, but I was aching to read 15 Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Outside and Connect With Your Kids.

Why did this little gem get preferential treatment? The title alone tells me what I wish we were doing on a daily basis around here. It’s fine to skip the paper towels and embrace cloth diapers, but what do all those things mean to my kids if they don’t have an intimate relationship with the world outside their door?

The rain has been  relentless lately and we don’t seem to take the time to slip on our boots and brave the weather. We could save a stranded earthworm or find a budding pussy willow or perhaps slosh through a dozen puddles.

This book is simply a list of 365 wonderful ideas, organized by month, to push your reticent crew out the door. When I tell my children we’re going to go outside, my son always replies (rather loudly), “but I’m cozy mama!”. He’s four and loves building blanket forts while clad only in underpants.

But if I told him that we were going to hunt for bugs or plant pansies, maybe I’d have a better chance of moving him beyond these four walls.

If you’d like the chance to win a copy of 15 Minutes Outside, this is your lucky week!

Three Ways to Enter the Fifteen Minutes Outside Book Giveaway:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like us on Facebook (then tell us you did it in the comments)

3. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

This contest ends on April 25th and is only open to U.S. Residents.

Great luck!