Care to dust anyone?

My friend was over a while back and we were sitting in the living room talking. She was telling me of this wonderful place that she likes to go. She was describing where it was at, but I just could not wrap my brain around it. I am so geographically challenged. So she leans forward, puts her finger on my coffee table and begins to trace out the directions.....in the layer of dust. As she is talking, I am thinking to myself, "Man...how did there get that much dust on my table? And when is the last time I dusted? A few days?....no...A week? Possibly a couple of weeks? I can not even remember the last time I dusted". She keeps drawing, and drawing a pretty detailed map. I can see it perfectly because my table is dark, and there is so much....dust! Wow...that is embarrassing. She finishes her sketch, and we keep talking as if nothing happened.

After she left, did I immediately go and dust that table? No. I thought about it a lot though...does that count? I did learn a few things though. 1.) I have a cool friend who didn't even bat an eye at the thick layer of dust on the table and 2.) If I know that someone is coming over, just swipe a little cloth over that one table to freshen up the room a little and make it look as if I am the Happy Homemaker. :)

Is "green" Good?

My little Mascot

In my quest to become green, I have learned a couple of valuable lessons. I bought some powdered soap for my dish washer. It was simply called "planet". Wow..pretty powerful. It must be powerful soap. I was practically moved to tears in the store envisioning how our planet would live on a little bit longer as I made these simple changes in our household. It seemed to clean OK, but it always left an "environmentally friendly" layer of white powder on my dishes. Huh. That can't be good. I ended up either re-washing them (thus using MORE water, defeating the purpose of saving the "planet"), or rinsing them off. Not very cost effective, or time effective, let alone 'pain in the butt' effective. Now as for my washing machine. I bought some natural liquid detergent. "Seventh Generation" was the title. Does that mean that 7 generations after me are going to be living in a better world because I use this detergent? I must be mindful of my great, great, great, great, grandchildren. Cool. The first batch I did, Nathan put his clothes on and said, "These stink!". I assured him that it was just a new "natural" smell that he would eventually get use to. He brought up the fact that farting is natural and it always stinks. Clever. (I have to kindof agree with him, the clothes did smell kindof funky). My run in with vinegar as a cleaner was not good, so natural cleaners and me don't get along. What is the lesson I have learned? If the lesson is that it is a good thing to ingest environmentally "friendly" white powder, and smell like a white flower & bergomot citrus freak, then going green is OK. I, on the other hand, prefer to smell the familiar scent of Tide, and feel the squeeky clean (which makes my skin crawl as I unload the disherwasher when they feel so squeeky! I can hardly stand it), powder free, dishes washed by Cascade. Hello Tide. Hello Cascade. We have missed you around here. Welcome back.

Going "Green"

Now that Jonathan is crawling around, my conscience has turned to more "kid" friendly and "environmentally" friendly cleaning products. I have been pondering this for a while, and decided that I would make the change for the health of my family and if it helps out the planet? Why not? My friend told me that she uses vinegar to clean her wood floors. I thought to myself..."Vinegar can actually be useful? AND kid/environment friendly?", so I gave it a try today. I dug around my house looking for some vinegar. One always has a random bottle in their cupboard, that you buy thinking that "someday" you will need it. Well..today was the day. I dusted it off and got to work scrubbing my floors. It seemed to work pretty well, except that it has a NASTY smell. I kept thinking that it would die out a little, but it continues to live on. You really notice it as you walk out and come back inside. Pee-uu! If this is what environmentally friendly smells like? NO thanks. I decided to go online, and do some research on vinegar. Why on earth would anyone want to keep using this stuff, when it makes your house smell like a truck load of rotten cole slaw has been dumped in your living room? One thing I read said, "Don't worry about your house smelling like vinegar, the smell goes away after it dries.." yeah right, It's been 7 hours now, and it still stinks. And then I read on and learned a valuable word. A word that made the whole universe come back into alignment. What is this word? Dilute... Use 1/4 cup vinegar to 1 gallon water when cleaning vinyl floors. Oh. That would have been helpful. Didn't think about diluting the gallon of vinegar. Dilute. One word, that makes all the difference.