I’m a crunchy mom. Really, I am.  Wanna hear my credentials? Well, there’s the prenatal stuff: I did prenatal yoga, had a doula, and a midwife.  There’s the parenting stuff: I breastfed (even tandem nursed), coslept (didn’t even set up the crib with our second baby), and  babywore.  Our kids attend Montessori school, we practice gentle discipline, and we selectively vaccinate. There’s the green stuff: we recycle, use natural cleaning products, we're vegetarian, and nearly all the food in our house is organic.  Have you ever heard the song, “Hippies Lament” by Wally Pleasant?  There I am (ha, ha)!

The thing is, I have a confession to make. It’s something that separates me from crunchy mamas everywhere.  Are you ready? I didn’t cloth diaper my kids. Nope. In fact, with my first child, we used straight up Pampers Premium (I’m ducking as green and crunchy things are being thrown at the screen). I suppose I have excuses: I grew up helping my mom cloth diaper my sisters and remembered the folding, the pinning (the poking my fingers), the stinky diaper pails.  Cloth diapering seemed old-fashioned, and quite literally a pain. Plus, I run a business with my husband – so never was a full-time stay-at-home mom (I’ve done a combo of WorkAtHome/BringBabytoWork/WorkWithaNanny).  When I did a little research into cloth, it seemed like such a large up-front investment. And frankly, I’m horrible at laundry. It just didn’t seem like cloth diapering would work for me.

But, really? These are just excuses, not justifications. 

Because the thing is, all excuses aside, I should have cloth diapered.  I should’ve done my research. I should have realized that the growing pains associated with starting cloth, were likely to have been short-lived. I believe now that had we stuck it out and found a set of diapers that worked (we did try – very briefly – cloth diapering with a few Fuzzi Bunz on loan from a friend, and a bunch of gDiapers, which I later returned), we would have ended up saving some money in the long run (we used mostly Pampers premium & 7^th Generation with our first child and solely 7^th Generation disposables with our second child – in other words: expensive) particularly with reselling the used ones, we would potentially have avoided the seemingly endless succession of diaper rashes our daughter had (did you know that Pampers Premium diapers contain the additives: Petrolatum, Stearyl Alcohol, and Aloe Barbadensis Extract?), and maybe most importantly, though certainly most assuredly, by cloth diapering, we would have kept pounds and pounds of stinky non-biodegradable waste material out of landfills and out of the ground water. Waste materials, mind you, that will be there for hundreds of years.  Soiled diapers that will still be decomposing long after we and our conveniently-diapered children are no longer earthside. 

To put it plainly, the clean air council indicates (I’ve decided to cut & paste the exact text because the numbers are so startling that they need repeating): An average child will use between 8,000 -10,000 disposable diapers ($2,000 worth) before being potty trained. Each year, parents and babysitters dispose of about 18 billion of these items. In the United States alone these single-use items consume nearly 100,000 tons of plastic and 800,000 tons of tree pulp. We will pay an average of $350 million annually to deal with their disposal and, to top it off, these diapers will still be in the landfill 300 years from now. Americans throw away 570 diapers per second. That's 49 million diapers per day. [source: http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html]

Back to my words: 49 million diapers a day.  That’s disgusting. And it’s not fair to our children, nor to our children’s children’s children.

Why am I telling you this?  To assuage my guilt?  Maybe that’s a little of it.  But mostly, I think I’m confessing to let moms - crunchy or not - who might be leaning towards disposable diapering, know that while the potential “convenience” of disposable diapers is tempting, it just doesn’t compare to the inconvenience to our environment. The amount of trash you’ll leave behind (that I left behind) for those years of convenience just. isn’t. worth it.  Everything I’ve read and understood and seen firsthand from friends who made the environmentally-friendly choice, is that choosing to cloth diaper your babies is nearly as convenient as disposables (especially with the advent of AIO cloth diapers), less expensive than disposables, leaves far less of a carbon footprint (especially if you line dry), is eons “greener” than disposable diapering, and, means you don’t have to end up writing a crunchy confession post like me.

So do/did you cloth diaper? Or do/did you use disposables like me?  Confess... it just feels better.  :)

Thinking back on my early childhood (I’m talking 70’s & 80’s), we didn’t do much recycling, until, I’d say, the late 80’s.  It’s then that I remember starting to crush soda cans, and saving newspapers. As a young child, growing up in Southern NJ, I recall driving by landfills – huge, hulking, smelly things, and my young mind wondering at the mass quantities of garbage that it took to create them.  At the time, saving the earth seemed more distant - like saving the whales.  The closest thing to home was the anti-littering push. There were signs along the highways indicating hefty fines for dumping, and I remember watching in amazement as a McDonalds bag full of wrappers was tossed out of a car window in front of us while driving down the turnpike (Seriously did anyone, anywhere, ever really think that was okay?). But, aside from littering, it seemed as long as you picked your trash up, and put it in its place, all was well. Reducing waste wasn’t really part of everyday concerns that I recall. I now look around my own house as an adult and see many examples of how recycling, reusing, and reducing waste have become a regular part of our lives. How times have changed - for the better!!

I asked my children yesterday if they could think of ways that we help keep the earth clean, and their answers came quickly & effortlessly.  They said thing like: We save the caps from our bottles. We open the windows when we’re hot instead of turning on the air conditioner. We don’t wash our towels every time we use them.

My heart smiled - these kids really get it - and their attitude can only make the world a better, cleaner place into the future!

Feeling inspired, we went on a search around the house for some other examples of ways we reduce, reuse, and recycle, and here’s what we came up with:

In the kitchen, we have a whole “recycle station”:

One bin for bottles & cans, one bin for paper, and a small can for plastic lids.  Our township only recycles #1 & #2 plastic, glass, aluminum, and steel cans, and newspaper/cardboard. Now, while this is wonderful, it does leave a whole lot of things un-recycled: #3, #4, #5, #6, & #7 plastic for example.  They also do not allow plastic caps of any kind.  Fortunately, we have found a solution for the caps, which previously would have gone right into the garbage.  We participate in the Recycle Caps with Aveda program.

In the midst of writing this blog post, I found a wonderful site that allowed me to locate a township just a few short miles away that DOES collect #3 - #7, including unnumbered plastic! I’m super excited about this, and it seems we’ll have to add level three to our recycle station in our kitchen! Want to find out if there is a place near you that recycles #5 plastic (i.e. yogurt containers)? Check out earth911.com.

At the grocery store, we shop with the reusable bags. 

Most of the shops around here now offer them for only $.99 at check out, and some places, like Ikea & Whole Foods, no longer even produce the plastic bags.  Meaning, you HAVE to bring your own bag. I think this is a wonderful move forward! I put this one in the Reduce AND Reuse categories.

In our kitchen, while I haven’t been able to eliminate paper towels completely (has anyone been able to do this?  Please let me know how!), we keep a stack of dish towels at the ready for drying hands, wiping spills, cleaning surfaces.

I found our old cloth diapers easily double as dish rags! Reuse & Reduce Win!

Also in the kitchen, we’re slowly moving away from juice boxes through the purchase of awesome #5 plastic juice boxes.

I’ve found them easy to clean, and the kids can put them together themselves.  Plus, they were only $1.99 a piece.  That’s just a bit more than the 3-pack of organic juice boxes I usually buy – so we’ve made the cost up quickly! 

I haven’t yet been able to separate myself from bottled water though.  At this point, our township water is fluoridated.  I’m not comfortable with ONLY drinking this water (though we do filter it, it doesn’t take out the fluoride), so I still purchase bottled spring water. But I’m stymied by the plastic – both from the waste production aspect of things, as well as the leaching chemicals into the water aspect of things.  Now, we do recycle the bottles & caps.  But I wish there were affordable glass-containered spring water. That would be a perfect solution!

In the playroom, the kids’ play kitchen itself is a Reuse curbside find!

I can’t believe it would have or eventually will hit the landfill (and I hate to even think of how many plastic play kitchens currently reside in landfills!), so I vow to donate it when we’re finished.  Though it was trashpicked, its in perfect play condition, and we furnish it with yogurt & spice containers that were heretofore un-recyclable.

In the laundry room in the winter, we detach the dryer vent so it vents indoors! 

In this way, anytime a load of laundry is drying (most of the time with a family of four!), it helps heat & humidify our house. Reduce win!

Finally, in the Reduce category, over the last few years, as our incandescent bulbs have burned out around our home, we’ve replaced them with fluorescent bulbs.http://www.projectporchlight.com/ Over time, the savings from switching to fluorescent really adds up –in reduced electric bills, repurchasing of light bulbs, and reduced trash.

 A few of the bulbs were provided by Project Porchlight (they stopped by our door last year, and gave us three!). They’ve distributed nearly 3 million fluorescent light bulbs door-to-door in neighborhoods - for free!  If you’re interested in getting involved in their volunteer program, visit their site here:

So how are you Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling in your life?  I’d love to hear some more ideas!

We have many houseplants – I don’t think you can ever have enough!

Houseplants are proven air cleaners. They add oxygen, regulate humidity, filter out toxins, and beautify your space.  I believe they add positive life energy to a home, and help children learn about caring for living things.

NASA did a study on houseplants and indoor air pollution.  Certain plants are able to remove dangerous chemicals from the air like trichloroethylene, benzene, & and formaldehyde!

Read NASA’s findings on interior landscape plants for indoor air pollution abatement.

Based on that study, here are my recommendations for best air cleaners: 

Top chemical removers:

Gerbera Daisy (Gerbera jamesonii)

Marginata (Dracaena marginata)

Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum “Mauna Loa”)*

Janet Craig (Dracaena deremensis)

Bamboo Palm (Chamaedorea seifritzii)

Mum (Chrysanthemum morifolium)*

Mother-in-law’s Tongue (Sansevieria laurentii)*

Other great air cleaners:

English Ivy (Hedera helix)**

Golden Pothos (Scindapsus aureus)*

Chinese Evergreen (Aglonema modestum)

Green Spider Plant (Cholorphytum elatum)

Heart leaf philodendron (Philodendron oxycardium)*

Ficus (Ficus benjamina)

Dumb Cane (Dieffenbachia)*

*NOTE: I find it interesting that many of the aforementioned plants are considered toxic– particularly when ingested. I wonder if this is partially because they are so good at absorbing (and thus, perhaps harboring) chemicals? I have marked the toxic plants with a star * in the event that you have small children or pets. Those with two stars ** are particularly toxic, and I definitely do not recommend for households with small children or pets who could consume the leaves.

For a list of toxic & non-toxic plants for pets, please see the ASPCA’s page.

For a list of toxic & non-toxic plants for children, please see the National Poison Control center’s page

That being said, all plants have the ability to clean air.  If you are uncomfortable with keeping any plants in your house known to have some toxicity, I’ve compiled a list of  common non-toxic houseplants (not listed above). Now, while these specific plants may not have been studied to show the ability to drastically reduce toxic chemicals, they will still do their job cleaning your air & beautifying your environment while being safer to have around children & pets:

African Violet (Episcia reptans)

Begonia (Begonia sp.)

Boston Fern (Nephrolepis exalta)
Christmas Cactus (Zygocactus truncatus)

Hoya (Hoya sp.)

Jade Plant (Crassula argentes)

Kalanchoe (Kalanchoe sp.)

Lipstick Plant (Aeschynanthus lobbianus) – this is a favorite!

Peperomia (Peperomia sp.)

Ponytail Palm (Beaucarenia recurvata)
Rubber Tree (Ficus elastica)
Wandering Jew (Tradescantia albiflora)

For a list of hundreds of houseplants with description, photo, and care instructions, check out this site.

Which houseplants are your favorites?  Please let me know!

I’ve been thinking lately about our indoor space. I suppose this is only natural when its 30 degrees with blowing wind outside, making it extremely uncomfortable to be anywhere BUT inside!

But the cold weather & closing up of windows & doors always makes me uncomfortable.  Cleaning products, dirty shoes, dust… not to mention the continual offgassing of carpets & paints; I can’t help but think of the accumulation of unhealthy particles.  So I dedicate this post to trying to keep our indoor air healthy this winter!

We’ll start with the shoes.  We’ve always kept a shoe rack by the front door and, as strange as it may be, I do ask everyone to remove their shoes on entry.  This prevents the continual tracking of icemelt salt, dirt, and other gunk, through the house, and on/into the carpets.

So… carpets. And paint. Sigh. In a perfect world, where I could design my own house, I’d have chosen natural ZERO-VOC paint for the walls, and toxin-free tile or wood for the floors.  In reality, our home came with carpeted floors & painted walls of unknown origin.  To this end,  whenever we’ve had to do paint touchups, I’ve purchase all natural paints from BioShieldPaint.com (I don’t operate nor am affiliated with, but I’ve had good experiences with).

To clean our carpets, I use hot water, a squirt of dish detergent, and essential oil of tea tree & lavender in the detergent compartment of our steam cleaner.  I’ve found the essential oils + gentle cleansers work just as well to remove the surface & ground in dirt & dust while leaving the air fresh-smelling, and no chemical residue in the carpets!

Speaking of chemical cleaners, we use only all-natural chemical-free cleaners inside the house. I do, unfortunately make an exception for bleach – as I’ve yet to find a reliable way to remove mildew in the bathroom.  Tea Tree Oil does a good job at keeping the mildew & mold at bay once the bleach kills it, but it doesn’t get rid of it when its already there.  If anyone knows a more natural solution for bathroom mildew, please let me know!

Next, lets talk about the HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) air purifier, and why I believe its important to sleep with one. The bedroom is the place in your home where you spend the most time.  You breathe & re-breathe the same air for hours on end.  The ease of your breathing is linked with good sleep, and good sleep is linked with good health.  It makes sense to me that keeping that air clean, circulating, free of dust, mold, animal dander, and dust mites (yuck) helps insure that we sleep better, keep our lungs clearer, and our bodies healthier overall!  So why HEPA? Because its proven to remove the tiniest sized particulate from the air – from large dust down to tiny viruses. For info on how a HEPA works, read here.

One drawback to HEPA purifiers is that they require a fan to operate – because in order to trap the particles, they need to pass through the filter. So you have to get used to the white noise while sleeping.  However, we’ve embraced the sound of the fan over the last 15 years – and find we can’t sleep without it! 

Note: Not all air purifiers are the same.  Some, actually, can be detrimental to your health. Please stay away from air purifiers that use ozone to clean the air, or have an ozone feature.  They have been shown to create unhealthy levels of ozone in the indoor air which can lead to decrease in lung function, aggravation of asthma, etc. You can read the EPA’s report on ozone generators.  

Next up, the house heater filter. We’re currently using a 1” pleated allergen filter in our heater/air conditioner to filter the whole house air as it goes through our furnace. The drawback with this, as opposed to the standard flat fiberglass filter, is that it reduces air flow – so it does reduce the efficiency of the heating system overall.  This does likely lead to a slightly higher heating bill because the heat has to run more often.  But, I think the benefit of particulate reduction far outweighs the negative of slightly increased electricity bill in the winter. I recommend checking for a high MERV (minimum efficiency reporting value) rating (the one we use is a 12) as well as a high MPR (microparticle performance rating).  The higher the number, the smaller the particle the filter can capture.

Now those last two items CAN be rather pricey, and not everyone has a blown air heating system, or wants to sleep with white noise. So, the third idea thing I recommend for clean indoor air is houseplants! Houseplants are proven air cleaners. They add oxygen, regulate humidity, filter out toxins, and beautify your space.  I believe they add positive life energy to a home, and help children learn about caring for living things. They also are relatively inexpensive if you purchase from a bigger nursery, but particularly if you can obtain cuttings from friends who already have established plants.  Schools & other non-profits tend to have houseplant sales as fundraisers. We’ve also had some luck with obtaining houseplants through garage sales (and the benefit to this is that they already come potted!).  For a list of best air-cleaning houseplants, see my post on Houseplants as Natural Air Purifiers.

Thanks for reading.  Please feel free post your comments & ideas! I’m always open to suggestions, and continually working towards a more natural toxic-free home.

When talking about my childhood, I have always (somewhat proudly, I’ll admit) said my mother never let us eat junk food. Perhaps more truthfully, what I really mean is that we weren’t allowed to have Kool Aid or Froot Loops (to the detriment of many a juvenescent friendship: yes, in the 70’s/80’s that made me just, plain, weird.). And, instead of Fla-vor-ice, we had homemade orange juice Tupperware popsicles (more weird).  However, I clearly remember we had tins of Charles Chips delivered to our house on a regular schedule.  So, never say “never” to junk food, I guess. But my mom DID teach us to read food labels.  And as such, we learned that “artificial colors” and “artificial flavors” were to be avoided at all costs. “All natural” was the way to be.

Around age 15, I decided, rather abruptly, at a family picnic in fact, to become a vegetarian. As in, “What do you want on your hot dog, Kel?" "Hot dog?! I don't eat hot dogs, that’s disgusting!” (Oh the grace of a teenager).  Of course, back then, (late 80’s/early 90’s), the only vegetarian “meat-replacement” item out there was tofu dogs.  One brand: Utterly Nasty, I believe they were called. So my vegetarianism, for many years, equaled cheese fries and grilled cheese. I didn’t actually learn that cheese wasn’t a valid substitute for all things flesh until several years later into my herbivore travels.  My mother was constantly concerned that I wasn’t “getting enough protein”, and in her defense, the conventional wisdom of the time was the vague notion of protein combining which stated that you had to combine several sources of “incomplete proteins” at each & every meal, meal in order to achieve nutrition perfection. Needless to say, back then, I lived under the constant hazy apprehension that I would keel over one day from LACK OF COMPLETE PROTEIN. I am, as a side note, for those concerned, still thriving nineteen years later, sans “complete protein”.

Shortly after the vegetarianism decision, I met my (then meat-eating, now nearly vegan) husband, Adam. We have since continued on this journey towards all things more natural together, and when I refer to I as we on this adventure, from here on out you’ll know who I mean. :)

We took a big step towards “all natural” when my daughter was conceived.  Suddenly, scanning food labels for the dreaded ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS/COLORS became less of a habit and more of an obsession.  I started questioning OTHER ingredients, like, say for instance, glycerol ester of wood rosin (yes, this is an actual ingredient) in our drinks or BHT in our food.

And I started looking at other labels too, not just at what we ingested, but at the potentially damaging ingredients in what we put on our skin (and how all of these things might potentially affect the growing baby inside of me!). We began the slow but satisfying process of getting rid of the items we were used to using every day like antibacterial soaps or saccharine-laden toothpaste, and replacing them with more natural substitutes.

About 6 months after our daughter was born, once she started tasting things other than breast milk, we realized that she had some food sensitivities.  We had inklings of this from just a few weeks old – angry patches of eczema on her otherwise perfect baby skin, and stubborn cradle cap that wouldn’t go away (for years), and oh yes, how can I forget (seriously, HOW can I forget; Hello McFly): colic. When she was around 10 months old, she went back to all breast milk, and I went on an elimination diet (a la Dr. Sears – pediatrician extraordinaire) and switched all baby products to California Baby, and the eczema, and colic, drastically improved.   

That experience, in fact the whole of our last nearly 5 years of parenthood (an amazing journey in itself) has introduced us to some truly scary things, such as the presence of synthetic hormones in dairy (rBGH), the controversy surrounding soy milk & hormone disruption (in light of that info, we ditched soymilk altogether, and switched to organic grass-fed milk), the presence of phthalate, lead, and BPA in toys and food/drink containers, and the prevalence of indoor air pollution (in light of those frightening revelations, we've been working on choosing safer plastics, using zero-voc paint to paint the kids' room, and choosing only toxin-free cleaning products). But it's brought to light some awesome things as well, such as the amazing abilities of probiotics and herbs/essential oils in healing & cleaning! 

Join me on my travels as I blog about what I’ve learned so far & continue to learn about natural living, vegetarian & healthy eating, and greenifying our lives overall... with a little attachment parenting, breastfeeding, Montessori schooling, perennial gardening, serious puzzling, music, art, & literature thrown in. Namaste!