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!

It may sound difficult, but making homemade organic baby food has tremendous benefits for baby, the environment and your budget.  Also, it is by no means difficult to plop cooked food into a blending device and swirl it up.  Both Rebecca and I have conquered the art of baby purees despite the fact that both of us felt totally overwhelmed as new mothers for the first year.  Have you given homemade baby food a whirl?  If so, what are your standbys and how did you get started?  What challenges have you faced?  We find that like many other green lifestyle pursuits, most people gain the confidence to make the shift when they have friends or family who have tried it before.  Hopefully our readers can provide that online community for each other.  Thanks for sharing your baby food secrets!  And for more recipes and tips, check out our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down to Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet.

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?

Joy’s recent post on saving money grocery shopping sparked an interesting debate in the comments. Erin B. provided some great tips, including this one:

ALWAYS make a list, NEVER buy anything not on the list. Ever… ever… seriously, I know we are all grownups and we think we can walk around Target without a case of the “gimme-gimmes” (a great Berenstein Bears book, by the way!) but we can’t. Make a list with literally EVERYTHING you need and buy off the list and not a single item more. Seriously, it works.

I loved all of her ideas except for that one above, which I hear a lot. Here was my response:

I don’t agree with tip #2! I love grocery shopping and part of that is scouring around for interesting foods and deals. I always thought people wasted tons of money by meal planning first, then shopping off a list. Say they planned to make eggplant parmesan, then bought eggplants, tomatoes, and the cheeses–but none of it was on sale. They would spend a lot on that one meal.

Kate had Erin’s back. She added,

I have to agree with Erin about making a list — and about substitutions. (In fact, I love all of Erin’s suggestions.) Yes, when I try a new recipe exactly as written, I might spend a little more than usual. But I choose new recipes in part based on what’s in season and what I have on hand, and after I make it once I figure out what I can substitute for or leave out.

Now, I stand by my original assertion: making lists and sticking to them wastes money! I spend $175/month on three people (as I may have mentioned once or twice), and I believe this has to do with buying foods only when they’re on sale and then improvising with all those discounted ingredients in the kitchen.

I realize my way of thinking is unconventional, and I will admit it wouldn’t work for everyone. If you find yourself tempted to buy expensive treats at the store, the “stick with the list” rule would probably help curb your temptations. (I have the opposite problem in that I have to almost force myself to buy things that cost too much. I’m still stuck in the “no more than a dollar a pound” mentality I’ve had since the ‘90s!) It also wouldn’t work if you work from recipes and don’t like to just make things up as you go along.

So that’s my wacky tip of the day: Don’t make lists and don’t stick to them! Much like the ol’ “I don’t buy in bulk!” argument, I believe I may be in the minority on this one!

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!

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?

Shocking Truth #1:

No matter how many limits you put on the playthings that enter your home, you will find yourself amazed by how the toy paraphernalia builds up.

Shocking truth #2:

Although you may beg people not to shower your tiny infant with a million rattles, shiny singing doodads and plastic xylophones, they will.  Then they will do it again annually.

Shocking truth #3:

Your child will play with just ten to twenty percent of her toys.

Am I wrong?  I hope so, but in our household we have been amazed by the sheer quantity of stuff that entered our lives with our children’s arrival.  I co-wrote The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, a book in which we clearly state that voluntary simplicity is the way to go with baby for a myriad of economic and environmental reasons.  And yet, somehow gifts found their way into our lives and my son’s room was overrun with clutter.

What’s the magic answer for toy purging?  For us it was talking about one (hypothetical) child who doesn’t get playthings because his family can’t afford it.  We talk about what  he might like, and how happy he’ll be to get it.  If my son wants to give this imaginary boy toys but feels that he can’t get rid of them himself, he’ll even let his dad sort through the toys that aren’t being played with so that we can ship them off to Goodwill.

We also do a toy rotation, so that the items he doesn’t want to play with can be shifted out every month or so.  It feels like he’s constantly getting new toys and there’s less to trip over and clean up in his bedroom.

As for the limiting of the gifts, for our baby we specifically asked for no presents at her first birthday party and will probably limit gifts for her until she’s about three and can actually know she’s getting something.  For our son, we do ask family for gift certificates to children’s museums or swimming so that we can have experiences instead of stuff.  It doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try!

Any other ideas?  Have any of you had success with actually keeping the wave of shiny new toys at bay in those first few years?

With my husband being a stay at home dad last year, our income took a dip and we vowed to cut back.  We carefully recorded all our expenses and tried to spend less.  And we did in many ways, but not at the grocery store.  We went to one budget store for dry goods and hit another one for organic produce and healthier foods.

We felt great about our choices until we recently checked our overall grocery spending.  It had skyrocketed to nearly as much as our mortgage payment!  (I must confess that we have a really low mortgage payment, but still!)

Now that I’m the one at home, our income has dipped even further and I’m in charge of trying to cut back expenses.  The grocery bill is our biggest monthly cost, and I’m eager to bring it down, but I don’t want to give up on organics.  So far I’m trying to offset the cost of organics by couponing a bit more and checking out Grocery Outlet for organic deals.  We’ll also be eating a lot from our garden this summer and picking local fruit, but I hope that I can figure it out without feeling like I’m sacrificing my ideals.  We don’t need processed foods now that I have more time to cook, but somehow just produce, dried beans, and basic canned goods add up to quite a lot!

I have to confess that if the choice was between giving up organic foods to allow me to stay home with the kids and working to pay the grocery bill, it would be pretty clear to me that being at home was my priority.  Surely things aren’t this black and white if I continue to pursue gardening and try to pick local produce.  Right?  Please provide inspiration!

My husband thought it would be romantic to get me a steam cleaner for my last birthday. (Okay, okay. I may have planted the idea in his head.) I’d first heard of this miraculous cleaning contraption in Raising Baby Green by Dr. Alan Greene. A woman wrote a testimonial about how great this thing was: It uses no chemicals—just steam—and kills germs and bacteria. It improves the air quality of your home and is essential for sufferers of allergies.

I would have rushed out to buy a steam cleaner right then and there, but she said she paid $400 for it! With a price tag that high, it would really never pay for itself. One of the advantages of the product is that is eliminates the need for cleaning potions.  Although the average family supposedly spends $600 a year on cleaning supplies, I’m sure I don’t spend even $20.

Anyway, years later I discovered that there are many steam cleaners for around $100—much more reasonable! They have nozzles for steam cleaning grout and attachments for mopping the floor, washing windows, and removing wall paper. I just had to have one.

I settled on the Wagner power steamer and cleaner (now on sale for only $75!). The verdict? I do enjoy using the steam cleaner once a week in the bathroom for the grout and floors–it completely removed some mold on the grout I hadn’t been able to get rid of, and it made the fifty +-year-old grout white again. I’ve tried out the various attachments on other cleaning adventures, and I’ve been impressed with the results.

However . . . I guess I feel a little guilty for justifying the steam cleaner as a green purchase! If you are a stickler for germ-killing (and I confess that I am not) or need to sterilize things for health reasons, the steam cleaner has to be better than chlorine bleach. For my cleaning needs, I could have survived using old fashioned ingredients such as vinegar and baking soda. But now that I own the steam cleaner, I will enjoy it and make good use of it.

Does anyone else have a steam cleaner? Do you recommend it—or not?

I see you everywhere, your bellies budging, your skin glowing, and your eyes lingering on my chubby baby.  The secret smile we exchange signifies that we both know that you’re on your way to my new native land: motherhood.

For me, in the beginning, it seemed as though my baby would never arrive. And then, it happened.  Suddenly we were hurtling forward in a free fall towards the biggest transition of our life.  My biggest maternity clothes didn’t fit, but even more immense than my belly was the feeling that I might just not be ready.

Not ready to push this person out of my body, or settle it into the incomplete nursery.  Not ready for the sleep loss, and not ready for giving up everything (and I mean everything)  I once thought was my own.  (That includes sleep, time, personal space, and clothes not covered in kid-generated goo.)

If you’re expecting a baby, you may feel the desperate need to buy more stuff to brace yourself for the shift.  Don’t. Of course, we won’t be offended if you purchase our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, and give it a read, but if you’re short on time, here’s the summary.  You can do this.  You don’t need stuff.  In fact, it will just require you to take care of a whole bunch of objects in addition to your child.  All you really need is a few diapers, a place for baby to rest, a few clothes, the crook of your arm, and the croon of your voice. Welcome!  You’re going to be great at this!