greenliving

5 more to keep you going:

To degrease your oven and any other part of your home that needs de-greasing, try this- mix equal parts of soda bicarb with salt. Add a bit of water and a whole load of elbow grease! If it’s inside the oven, then pour on a mixture of soda bicarb and cinnamon, while the oven is still warm. Leave it soak and then brush off.

To get rid of the fishy smell on your hands (or the strong odor of onion/garlic), sprinkle on a bit of salt, rub your hands together and rinse off in warm water.

To clean wooden floors, brew two teabags in hot water. Leave to cool and then swipe onto the floors with a mop. No need to rinse off and your floors are sparkling clean.

For a super disinfectant (and if the earlier recipe was too much to handle), mix 2 tbsp eucalyptus oil with 1 pint water. Shake well and spray on the offending area. Store in the fridge for up to one month.

House plants act as natural air filters. Keep a few in the bathroom and kitchen and get rid of your aerosol spray can. Keeping a few beeswax candles on hand is also a good idea.

For more excellent tips, visit www.busymadeeasy.com

My 5 Green tips for under $10 and $ 5 went down quite well, so I’m going to do a series on cleaning tips. Here are 5 to get you started.

Instead of using store bought furniture polish in an aerosol can, try this simple recipe: Mix one part beeswax with one part turpentine and add a few drops of your favorite essential oil. Voila! Instant furniture polish.

To clean sterling silver (not silver plated, because that can be quite delicate), mix 1 pint water with 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking soda. Add a strip of aluminum foil. Bring to a boil and drop the silver into it for a few minutes. Remove with tongs and gently buff to a shine with a soft cloth.

And speaking of buffing, keep old t-shirts and soft cotton shirts for use as cloths to buff silver and as dusting rags. Cut them up into squares and store them for instant use. Rewash and reuse them as much as possible.

When dusting (with the above-mentioned rags), don’t forget to clean your light-bulbs. How many of us actually do that! Yet, cleaner bulbs increase energy output, making them more efficient.

In the kitchen, make you own disinfectant to clean kitchen counters by infusing leaves of rosemary, eucalyptus, lavender and thyme in water.

For more excellent tips, visit busymadeeasy.com

If your home does not have a garden, then an alternative option is to consider an indoor wormery. Worms eat up to half their body weight and breed rapidly. This is an excellent way to get rid of your kitchen scraps and peels, while producing small amounts of rich compost, ideal for an indoor or balcony garden. The wormery also produces a liquid, which when diluted makes nutrient rich plant food.

If worms are not to your liking (and you really can’t be blamed for that!), then you may want to try the Japanese method of Bokashi composting. By purchasing a bin and Bokashi bran, you can get your composting done right in your kitchen. Simply sprinkle the purchased bran onto your food layers. The bran acts as a fermenting agent, helping the food to decompose rather quickly. Bokashi bins are odor free and amazingly easy to use. They are best bought in pairs. Once one bin is full, leave it to ferment while draining off the liquid. This liquid can be used as plant food. Start using the second bin and by the time it’s full, your first bin should be converted into compost.

Yesterday, I wrote about composting and a friend asked me what I would do if I didn’t have a garden. The answer is to try joining a local composting scheme. In many areas, you can choose to either deliver waste or have it collected from your doorstep. It’s then made into compost to be used in local gardens and parks.

If you do have your own compost heap, remember to protect it from the rain with a rain cover. Or alternatively, invest in a compost bin with a lid. This might also be a good idea if you have animals visiting your garden or of course, have pets and children at home.

If you are worried about insects being attracted to your heap, one solution would be to dig a hole in the center and bury your kitchen waste in the middle of it. And to keep it fresh, try adding lemon peel and basic, both which smell good and are excellent fly and bug deterrents.

Did you know that one third of the waste we put into our trash cans is made up of compostable matter? Once this material reaches landfills, it breaks down into ‘methane’ gasses, which are far more potent than even carbon dioxide.

Compost is the final result that occurs when hundreds of thousands of organisms such as worms, bacteria and fungi feed off the compost heap, breaking down the organic material into rich mulch that your soil will love. Composting is a man-made way of creating what nature intended. Besides producing excellent nutrient rich soil to fertilize your garden, making the compost creates heat which will destroy plant diseases and weed seeds in the pile.

What can be made into compost? Almost any organic material, such as vegetables, fruit, peels and even fish and meat, can be used in a compost pile. The pile needs a proper carbon/nitrogen mix. Carbon is produced from dried leaves, grass clippings, hay, straw, dead flowers and wood chips; nitrogen comes from your kitchen waste. An ideal ratio needs to be achieved, with more carbon producing substances in the mix. While using kitchen refuse, remember that meat will eventually decompose, but can also smell and attract insects. Everything you add to the pile should be chopped for quicker decomposing. Some other excellent organic compostable material includes seaweed, sawdust, tissue, peanut shells, feathers, teabags and coffee dregs. Avoid pet refuse and disposable diapers.

How does one select a site? Selecting a compost site depends on the kind of area you have available, but generally, a sunny spot works well. Use a compost bin or build the pile over grass if possible, to encourage earthworms and other insects to visit it. Remember to turn it over regularly, and keep it moist, especially during hot summer days. If you want to continue composting over winter, you would need to invest in an insulated compost bin.

To collect kitchen scraps, keep a closed container in your kitchen, and remember to top it off with grass clippings, leaves or wood chips. Tip it into your compost heap on a weekly basis. Compost will be created depending on the time and effort you invest in it. Once finished, it has a crumbly texture and should smell like fresh earth. Spreading on a layer over your soil, should serve as an excellent organic fertilizer, especially for your flower beds and herb gardens.

And finally, if you don’t have a garden or even a small patch of grass to fertilize, you may still want to think of composting and donating the final product to your local nursery, garden or municipality.

My husband recently got an invite to participate in a group clean up day at work. That in itself is a great thing for companies to organize. However, what was even more interesting was the invite itself. It came on 100% post consumer recycled paper, and was embedded with seeds. The idea is to plant the sheet in soil, add water and wait to see the plants grow! Over 1000 invites went out. This translates as that many times 10 seeds per person. And if they were all planted, think of the amount of greenery it would generate!

With summer coming, and invites to barbecues, beach parties and camping trips going out; if you can’t do the greenest thing of all, which is to send an email, then think of using this option for your invites. Do a Google search and you’ll come up with quite a few companies that produce this kind of paper. Some, like www.flowerseedpaper.com offer custom made paper, with 2 ingredients, for $6 per sheet. They also give you over 30 different flowers, herbs and vegetable seeds to choose from. The paper itself is tree-free and made from 100% natural cotton fibre. www.greenfieldpaper.com offers you various options such as grow a note and grow a card. Select the appropriate one and you’re good to grow!

Take a quick look around the room you’re sitting in right now. How many things in it are battery operated? Your cell phone? Your laptop? The kids’ toys that are lying around? The recent upsurge of battery operated items has led to an astounding increase in the purchase of batteries. According to treehugger.com, Americans purchase around 5 billion batteries each year and leave behind a minimum of 146,000 tons of battery waste, annually. I love quoting figures because that really puts things into perspective. Can you imagine having to dispose of 5 billion batteries each year? And that’s only in America!

Happily enough, there are some alternatives that one can use, maybe not for everything we need in our daily lives (and note, I do use the word ‘need’ because certain things have unfortunately become a necessity), but for at least some of them.

Solar powered items: Think sun energy! Solar powered toys may be a bit pricey, but they will provide your little ones with hours of battery free fun. Apart from the traditional cars and trucks, look for science kits that educate and entertain. Nothing like your kids getting a head start in the field of energy saving, non-polluting devices.

Rechargeable: If you do need batteries, how about switching to rechargeable ones? They may be more expensive to purchase, but they do work out to be cheaper in the long run. You can also pick up a solar powered rechargeable battery- charger. I didn’t even know they exist till I came across them at sundancesolar.com, but they seem like a great buy!

Manual cranking: Give your arm a bit of a workout by opting for manual cranking devices. I’ve just picked up a radio-flashlight, which works by cranking up the handle. True, this is not the most ideal item for daily usage, but it works well in my emergency pack. And the best part is that I need never worry about running out of batteries or worse still, having to look for some during an emergency.

Good old fashioned play: If your child does receive a battery operated toy, try the following: Let the batteries die out (or better yet, don’t put them in), hide the remote device and see if your kid doesn’t have fun just pushing it around. While I’m all for kids enjoying battery operated devices, which can be fun and lets them develop a healthy sense of marvel and amazement, I do believe that if the battery dies, it doesn’t have to be replaced. Let your child use his/her imagination and the doll will talk, the truck will zoom and the plane will fly, all faster and better than ever before.

And finally, a quick note on recycling your batteries. Unfortunately, most non-rechargeable batteries are not recycled, but rechargeable batteries are! Contact your local municipality to find out if they accept batteries. Otherwise, visit sites like www.rbrc.org to find a center which accepts recyclable batteries and cell phones batteries.