Insta-Monday | The Random/Green Edition

A little big sneak peak into the past week...

 

 

1. Monday night, the bit woke up after just an hour of sleep coughing, puking mucus and unable to breathe. Luckily, the ambulance services here on base were here within minutes. A ride for the bit and mama in the 'be-oo-whe-oo' (ambulance), some steriods, a couple of nebulizer treatments and he was back to normal. Looks like he had croup. We sat on a cot in the hallway of the emergency room for over 4 hours, and this hyper/exhausted kiddo was amazingly well-behaved. And that brought our ER trips up to 3 in less than a week :(

2. Guess who painted their own toenails at 35 weeks pregnant with twins?? oh yes.

3 & 4. Big boy got around 40+ hot wheels for Christmas and his birthday. Thus, I finally had a reason to make a car caddy.  (Idea from here- still planning to add heat transfer numbers!)

 

5 & 6. We are in an ADA acceptable house on base. For some reason, this means that all our doors are an inch and a half off the floor (why??). This means lots of noise and light despite closed doors. For the past year, we have been using a towel thrown on the ground, ugly and annoying. I finally made draft stoppers. Knee high socks that I already had (for my business) and a 5lb bag of rice. Cute and practical! (We roll them away when we go to bed for the night to promote air flow.) (Idea from here) 


7. Somebody had too much fun in independent play time. Every.drawer.emptied. And once again I am glad we tethered his dressers to the wall.




And now the green edition part. It all started with cloth diapers 2 years ago. Since then, we have been slowly working towards being more self-sustainable and reducing our waste. This includes gardening, composting, hunting, etc. One of my focuses has been reducing our use of disposable products- specifically plastic and paper products. We use cloth diapers and primarily cloth wipes. We have reusable grocery bags that we use when we go shopping (and I am working on making some for clothing/store shopping as well). And this week- I ordered reusable tissues, can't wait to see how those work out!

 

  
8. Reusable produce bags for buying kiwis, bananas, pears, apples, broccoli, asparagus, etc. Instead of the plastic bags, we stick them in here to be weighed. Although, most are not stored in these but placed loose in the fridge or counter. (we need to go grocery shopping today! running low on fruit) (Find them here) 


9. These bags are for onions, potatoes, and other large items. These bags are made to release any fume build up so we keep the produce in them and they hang right on our wall in the pantry. (Find them here) 


10. Un-paper towels. Clean basket and dirty basket. I made these out of a double layer of flannel (like the cloth wipes, but bigger, these are 9x9). We use them exactly like paper towels- single use. I wipe off the counter, it goes into the dirty basket, I clean up a spill, into the dirty. I love that I feel like I am getting a clean, germ-free paper towel every time (instead of rinsing it and leaving it to mold in the sink until I use it again), but then when we get low, they get thrown in with the wash and are all clean! I have 32 I think, and that lasts at least a week or more. We now use 1 roll of paper towels every 3 or more weeks, instead of every 3-4 days! (Next time, I will use a white flannel/terrycloth, so they have different scrubbing textures and can be sun-bleached easily, ours are pretty stained!)




Although we like the idea that all of this is eco-friendly, I will be honest and say that our primary push is to save money and be self-sustainable. The more we can reuse and create ourselves, and the less we have to buy/import, the better. 


What do you do that's 'green?' We have more, but I'll leave you with this today!