It’s official.  We’re done procreating around here.  Sad, but also relieved to be moving into a more sleep-filled future, we rounded up the baby gear (which was all handed down to us or purchased used) and gave it to a pregnant friend.

And here’s the bonus—my friend had read our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, and heeded its wisdom completely!  She and her husband have made it known that they’re open to all used gear and have been loaded up with hand me downs from family and friends.

Their nursery is almost complete and the only thing they have bought thus far is the paint.  The crib, the dresser, cloth diapers, changing table, car seat, clothes and much more have all been given to them.  When they shared what they read in the book about buying used instead of spending thousands on baby’s first year alone, they became heroes in their social circles.  Baby rearing families all proclaimed that they wished they would have bought less paraphernalia and acquired more of it used.

Yahoo!  I do wish all newly pregnant families could read The Eco-nomical Baby Guide just to consider it before the baby buying pressure reaches its full potential.  We gave a book to a friend when she was five months pregnant.  She thanked us profusely a week later, but also bemoaned the fact that she had bought so much already and now regrets it.  No worries!  I just hope she kept the receipts!

How are we spending all that baby money we saved now?  I’m staying home this year with our kids, we’re sending our son to preschool, and we’re going on trips to build relationships with family.  That’s so much more valuable to us than piles of new plastic stuff! (And far more earth friendly).  How are you using the money you’ve saved on baby gear?  How are you helping to get the world out to pregnant friends about buying less, buying used, and buying green?

Many of you are schlepping your babes around this summer in nearly unbearable heat and humidity.  I am humbled and amazed by your braveness!  During our trip to Maryland, we all sort of stumbled from one ice cream stand to the next, swimming through the thick air in between.  I marveled at the women who were wearing babies and voluntarily walking outside during the day.

Most of the parks and sidewalks were totally empty as desperate herds of people flocked to the vast sanctuary of air conditioning called “the mall.”  I imagine it would be tough just using your Maya Wrap or an Ergo Carrier indoors all summer, but I bet some of you brave families manage to wear baby despite the heat.

Do high temperatures get in the way of baby wearing for you in the summer?  Are you lucky enough to live in Oregon or Alaska?  (I shall never again complain about the weather here after visiting the East Coast in late July!)  Have you found any cooler baby wearing devices?  Or do you just settle baby into the stroller?

Of course, in many hot climates in Asia, Latin America and Africa, baby wearing has been the rage for hundreds of years, so perhaps we should just buck up and strap baby onto our backs!

Last month I shared my struggle to get our grocery bills down to reduce our overall monthly spending now that I’m a SAHM.  Since then, I’ve been clumsily trying to learn the trade of couponing and I have to say that it has really helped!

Here are the three myths I’ve learned to overcome:

1. You have to buy newspapers.

There are some excellent online sources for coupons including Red Plum and Coupons.com.  Only the coupons you mark will print.  If you’d like to use newspaper coupons too, see if friends or neighbors get the Sunday paper without using the coupon inserts.

2. Coupons are only on processed foods.

It’s true that there are several mainstream coupons in there, but there are also great deals on products like Kashi, Peace Cereal, or Burt’s Bees.  I’ve also found wonderful coupon deals on butter, milk, cheese and eggs that have allowed me to stock up and save.

3. Couponing takes lots of time

It does take some time, but online sites such as Krazy Coupon Lady, Fistful of Coupons, Frugal Chic Living, and Frugal Living NW put together all the scenarios for you so you don’t have to figure much out yourself.   Since Albertsons, Safeway, and Rite Aid are within biking distance for me, it only takes one trip to each once a week to get the deals.

So what are the benefits?  This month our grocery bill will be less than half of what it was last month.  Before you’re shocked, I should add that some of that savings is from our one week vacation.  (Also, Rebecca’s bill is still less than mine even with the coupons and she does have a CSA—but she has one less child and I’m pretty sure my husband is a far hungrier fellow).  Still, I can tell that the free or nearly free food we have gotten with coupons is making a dent in our grocery bill.  If I can sustain these savings, I will once again join a CSA.  For now, I’m hitting fruit stands and trying to stock up on local produce for the winter.  Have you experimented at all with coupons?  If you want to try, I recommend just reading a few frugal blogs for awhile before you jump in.  It really can get quite fun!

I did!  Thankfully Rebecca had a newborn when I was in the later stages of my pregnancy.  She guided me through the very confusing world of cloth diapers and even took me to a consignment store to help me buy the gear.

Recently I met a mom in Maryland who lamented that she would have used cloth, but she just didn’t know a single soul who had ever tried.  Were you in that boat?  Did you try them anyway?  Are you worried about trying them?  We’d love to be your guide if you’re hesitant to jump in.  Please feel free to comment or even email us if you have cloth diapering questions.  Or read our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down-to-Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet for tips, diagrams and definitions!

I’m bone tired.  The kind of exhaustion where you sit and look at all you have to do and then just sit some more.  After seven rough vacation nights full of nighttime nursing and a full day’s journey back from the East coast, I can’t seem to get anything done.

And green parenting requires us to get things done!  There’s a garden to water, cloth diapers to wash, food to prepare and summer produce to pick and preserve.  How do we keep up with all this while so very tired?

And when will my baby resume sleeping through the night?  For now, I have just resigned myself to serving my family pantry food and scrambled eggs so that I can avoid grocery shopping or intensive cooking.  I’ve watered enough to keep the garden alive, but the berries will have to wait.

Are any of the rest of you facing the battle between your green ideals and your need for rest?  Did you get a nap today?  Please feel free to give yourself regular breaks.  This green parenting gig is a marathon, not a sprint!

Here is a friendly reminder: Chinet paper plates are eco-friendly! We discovered this two years ago when Chinet wrote us. Did you know they’re made from 100% recycled material AND they’re biodegradable, so you can home compost them?

Normally we endorse reusing, but we realize some summer festivities do require disposable dishes. Chinet is a guilt-free way to do it!

I’d love to tell you that I spent the morning stringing my cloth diapers from the clothesline in the early light.  And then hours later, tucking the soft white laundry into neat folds.

The truth is, when I hang them to dry, my cotton prefolds resemble white shingles.  They are hardened, rough, and rigid and have to be bent instead of folded.

Now, I could still hang them and them cart them all into the house while slightly damp for a quick fluff in the dryer.  Or I could just dry my prefolds and hang the polyester diapers and covers out to dry, but both of those seem too labor intensive.

So what do I do?  I hang ninety percent of my laundry all week, but I still toss my diapers into the dryer.  I can’t seem to replicate that fresh soft feel without a stint in the dryer.  I don’t mind our rough towels and cloth napkins, but I do want her diapers to be soft.

Do you have an easy solution for softening up air-dryed diapers?  Do you have other diaper truths you’d like to confess?

We have a magical contraption at my house.  You put dirty plates and cups onto its gleaming white racks, push some buttons, and they come out clean!  Well actually, they’re often a bit filmy with bits of goo here and there.

Having a dishwasher is a huge life change after eight years of hand washing, but we were sad to see that our dishes don’t come clean when using Biokleen Dishwasher Detergent.  Rebecca is also the proud owner of a new dishwasher, and she wrote a great post about the merits of Biokleen powder over even traditional detergent, but we were only able to find the liquid locally.  And shockingly, it didn’t work as well for us as other cleaners.  Should we chuck the rest of the bottle and give up on our dreams of gleaming dishes, or invest in mainstream rinse agents that may or may not work?

In desperation, we tried Seventh Generation’s rinse agent, which handles 75 loads in comparison to Jet Dry’s 40, for a similar price.  We filled our soap dispenser to the brim to compensate for hard water, loaded up the rinse agent compartment, and confidently awaited the results–which were spotty and once again covered with bits of oatmeal.  Ugh!

I tried again with half the detergent and the results were better, but not all that great.  Prior to our Biokleen purchase, a friend had given us the Method Smarty Dish tabs, which are wildly expensive by comparison, but they worked like a charm.  I shall keep you posted on our dishwasher issues, but please feel free to recommend your favorite eco-friendly dishwasher detergent options!

I had every intention of weaning my child at one year.  Breastfeeding while working had been burdensome and I dreamed of the days that my body would be fully mine again.  Then my son became very sick and had to be hospitalized for days.  The only thing I could do for him was offer the breast, and it was a huge comfort as he underwent endless tests.  After that I realized that I could feed him just in the morning and before bed, and wouldn’t need to pump ever again.  Since my supply fit perfectly with whatever demand we worked out, it wasn’t such a burden.  I ended up breastfeeding him until he was two.  I’m glad I did it as long as I did, and was also at peace with my decision to stop.

Are you trying to make up your mind about how long to breastfeed?  Are you glad you weaned when you did or wished you would have continued?  Are you successfully breastfeeding your toddler?  Please share your wisdom with our other readers who may be pregnant or in the early stages of motherhood!  (and please be gentle–there can be a lot of judgement either way on this one.)

Does baby’s nursery smell like a port-a-poddy? Do you hold your breath every time you flip open that diaper pail?  Fear not!

In our new book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, Rebecca and I recommend the “slacker” method of cloth diaper laundering.  It doesn’t involve intensive prewashing or excessive toilet dunking, and it should keep your nursery smelling fresher than it would with disposables.  (Remember that with cloth the feces is properly disposed of in the toilet rather than smelling up your home.)

So, what happens if your cloth diapers seem to give off a distasteful odor of fermented waste?  Try these handy tips.

1. Baste them with Bac Out.  Every so often, squirt a dose into the diaper pail.  It has a lovely lime scent and it’s live enzyme cultures go to work on odor right away.  You can also use it for stains and odors on any of your other laundry.

1. Blast them with Baking Soda. This odor fighting technique is far less expensive than Bac Out and will also work with the detergent when it comes time to dump diapers into the wash.

1. Beware of Build Up.  If your diapers smell like dirty socks even when your baby just wets them, they are probably coated in oils and fragrances from your detergent.  This prevents them from absorbing as well and makes them particularly smelly.  Diapers made of polyester are especially prone to build up.  To strip them, wash them for one to two loads in hot water (no detergent) and see if it makes a difference.  Also remember that your regular loads of diapers should be washed with half the normal amount of detergent you’d use on a load of clothes.  Check out products like Charlie’s Soap Laundry Powder or Biokleen Laundry Detergent to see if a different soap will help.)

1. Fill it with a filter. Several companies make charcoal filters for compost bins that also work well for diaper pails.  If you’ve tried everything else, it’s worth a few dollars to check out this option.

Any other ideas?  Are you also struggling with smells this summer?