If you have access to fresh food and freezer/refrigeration, making fresh, homemade baby food is a green, economical, DELICIOUS, and incredibly satisfying way to ensure that your child is receiving the highest quality food that you can provide. I decided to make homemade baby food after I opened a jar of organic peas and began gagging because of the horrid smell! I did not want to feed my children anything that I was not willing to taste (or sniff) myself. Read more…

We’ve written before about the wondrous powers of baking soda here at The Greenists, but here’s another cheap, easy-to-find substance with all kinds of uses: hydrogen peroxide. When I was a kid, my mom used hydrogen peroxide to bubble away the germs after I skinned my knee or got into a rambunctious fight with my brother that ended up bloody. Little did I know that hydrogen peroxide can be used for all sorts of things around the house, even when one is too old to be roughhousing with her brother anymore.

Why buy expensive products when you can get the same job done with a $2 bottle of hydrogen peroxide that you can find at any grocery or drugstore? It’s cheap, it’s effective, and it involves less packaging — win/win/win. Read more…

Please welcome today’s guest poster, Jacob, who blogs at Jacob’s Land of Bliss and Blisters.

Image credit: thebeernut.blogspot.com

I should warn you, my being new to the Greenists and all, that I am a beer geek. I see a Guinness and think “light beer.” (It’s actually lower in alcohol and calories than Budweiser.) I’ve taken notes on every single new beer I’ve ever tasted.  I once spent a week working in the brew house of a brewpub for free just so I could see what it was like.

That being said, I’m not a jerk, so I’m not going to belittle your beer choices. Heck, I even accept my uncle’s offers of Miller High Life on occasion. Just because I like the finer ales in life doesn’t mean I have to be an antisocial blowhard about it. I’m also going to refrain from beer geek speak in this review. Honestly, a lot of beer geek jargon, like the phrasing you see in wine reviews, comes across sounding like gibberish to almost everyone outside of a small subculture of people.

Okay, enough of the warnings and explanations. The beer is Fuller’s Organic Honey Dew. The brewery describes this as being 100 percent organic, meaning every ingredient and all of every ingredient was organic. From what I’ve gleaned from some of the brewers I’ve talked to, this is actually a big deal as a beer is actually allowed to be labeled “organic” even when not all of the ingredients are organic. This originally was intended to make allowances for the fact that organic ingredients for beer were not always easy to come by, although according to several brewers I’ve talked to, the selection is quickly increasing and the quality is rather good. Read more…

WARNING: Once you start cloth diapering, it becomes an obsession. Once you try one Kushies Ultra-Lite Cloth Diaper, you WILL purchase more!

Kushies sent me a Trial Pack of Infant (neutral colored) diapers to sample on my little Owen. The Infant diapers are sized to fit babies from 10-22 pounds. I discovered that the diaper did not fit him properly until he was about 15 pounds – the only drawback to this incredibly soft and vibrant diaper (every baby is shaped differently – just because they did not fit Owen properly until 15 pounds does not necessarily mean it will be the same for your little one). As one of the least expensive “All-In-One” diapers on the market at $12.49 or less, I additionally purchased a Toddler Pack of 5 (boy colored) to use on my 2-year old son. Read more…

I wear silver jewelry almost exclusively, but it’s a real downer when the oil from my skin tarnishes the metal, leaving it dull and dirty-looking. Recently I realized I hadn’t been wearing a few pieces I own that I really like, and it was just because the tarnish made them less shiny and pretty than they used to be. I knew I could go out and buy some expensive, toxic silver polish to restore my jewelry to its original shininess, but after a little research, I discovered a natural way to get the job done that doesn’t involve toxic chemicals.

So I did a little experiment using a silver necklace my parents brought back from a trip to Alaska a few years ago. I hadn’t worn the necklace in years because it had turned so dull, but after just 15 minutes or so, it’s just like new again! Here’s how I did it: Read more…

There are a lot of different angles to this whole “environmentalist” thing, probably because the “environment” is basically made up of “everything.” That makes for a lot of angles. So we have the energy angle and the transportation angle and the food angle and the multi-purpose undergarments angle and on and on and all the rest, most of them overlapping and cross-pollinating ad infinitum. But just as with biological vs. adopted children or guys surnamed Jonas, we inevitably choose favorites: I like the wilderness angle (also, Nick; he’s the real talent.) Or maybe we should call it the land conservation angle. Whatever. It was my first love (for the record, we’re no longer talking about Nick Jonas.) Through all the recycling and hypermiling and organic strawberries and “if it’s yellow, let it mellow,” I have one image in my head- a place worth saving, and to me it’s the kind of place where none of those other angles even apply because they haven’t made it there yet. They aren’t willing to walk that far.

Read more…

All right . . . weak joke . . . but this baby bottle is so green that it could’ve grown in my garden!

Pura generously sent me a Pura Kiki stainless steel baby bottle in this beautiful shade of aqua blue to try out on Owen, my new little boy. I cannot comment on its function as a baby bottle, as my little Owen is exclusively breastfed. However, this toxin free, environmentally friendly baby bottle is also able to function as a sippy cup simply by changing the attachment on top. Read more…

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gyuvallos/71410563/

Summer makes me happy. I love going swimming, watching baseball, and not wearing socks for four months. But if there’s one thing about summer that bugs me, it’s … well, bugs. Not only are mosquito bites itchy and painful, they’re also dangerous. Going outside, especially into a wooded area, with no insect repellent is not an option.

But insect repellents, as you can imagine, are neither eco-friendly nor particularly good for you. Many are made with DEET, which is highly effective in warding off pests but not something you want swimming around in your bloodstream, which is exactly where it ends up after you spray it on your skin. Fortunately, for those who want to protect their health by avoiding both bug bites and chemical-based insect repellents, there are all kinds of do-it-yourself recipes for natural bug sprays. Read more…

Our own Allie Larkin’s debut novel, STAY, hits bookshelves TODAY! In celebration, this week’s posts on The Greenists are inspired by the book.

In Stay, a heartbroken Savannah (“Van”) Leone finds herself home alone, drowning her sorrows in grape Kool-Aid and vodka. Seven drinks in, lonely, blurry-eyed, and engrossed in an old Rin Tin Tin rerun, Van realizes that what she needs more than anything else at that particular moment is a puppy. Specifically, a German Shepard puppy, from anyplace on the Internet that will sell her one.

And really, who can question such rock solid, vodka-fueled logic? I mean, haven’t we all been there? Some people drunk dial; other people punch their credit card number into a Slovakian pet adoption site. Me, I’m more apt to get drunk and eat seven or more things I am not even hungry for. Or perhaps to get drunk and feel a little looser with the Facebook comments. Or maybe dance around my living room, arms and legs flailing in a manner not appropriate for public viewing. (OK, so that last one I might have just done a few minutes ago, completely sober. What can I say? Some nights, Gogol Bordello unavoidably demands such a response.)

I digress. My point is, I can’t fault Van her drunken Internet activity. I can, however, fault her drink of choice. Come on. I haven’t mixed grape Kool-Aid and vodka since the days my dorm-mates and I semi-seriously planned our class schedules around Days of Our Lives and the Jenny Jones show! Van. Honey. You can do better! Please, let me help.

Read more…