Category: Environmentally better

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Another monthly challenge

The december challenge is to see if our household can refrain from buying any Christmas gift wrapping or Christmas cards this year. One family group is getting their gifts in a Santa sack and we will then reuse the sack each year to house their gifts. I received the sack as part of a present a few years ago and have never really found a use for it until now. Other family groups are getting reused wrapping paper from last year that was carefully flattened and put in our gift box. Some are (hopefully) getting gift bags that I’m going to make next week out of some left over wallpaper remnants. Small presents are going to be wrapped in lovely calendar pages that we’ve kept over the years given to us as gifts originally). Some of the Christmas cards we are using I recycled after Christmas last year, others are from the Christmas box – my collection of left over cards from card sets over the years. Will keep you posted on how it goes on the big day!

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Ants and husbands

I went to clean the kitchen bench last night and found to my horror that my bottle of orange fragrant vinegar spray and wipe was empty! I was pretty sure hubby hadn’t been madly cleaning while I was at work but I still thought I’d ask. “It’s OK” he calmly replied “I used it on the ants”. Seemingly we had a trail of ants on the garden wall coming over from the neighbours and seeing as we have stopped buying fly spray hubby thought there was no harm in using my spray and wipe. I have to say he is sort of getting the hang of the ‘vinegar stuff’ as he calls it but when it is getting close to the end of the vinegar I would rather have a clean house than worry about ants in the garden. Seemingly ants aren’t supposed to be too keen on citrus or vinegar – I have yet to prove or disprove this theory – but in the meantime we have a beautifully orange fragrant garden wall and probably some lovely smelling ants wandering around the garden.

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Sign On

Sign On The world needs us | Sign On is a Green Peace campaign encouraging people to sign up to send John Keys a message. The message is that in December when he goes to Copenhagen to decide on a new global treaty to reduce emissions we want him to support a reduction target of 40% by 2020. Green Peace wants to get the message out there to sign on and get your friends to sign on.

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Will white vinegar harm my appliances?

It’s interesting sometimes to have a look at what people are searching for when they hit your blog. Some of the searches have been people worried about using vinegar on their appliances or their stainless steel. I wonder if people worry about their normal cleaners which usually carry warnings on the side re touching, inhaling etc and rarely ever disclose ingredients. Anyway just in case this type of search happens again relax searcher – I have been using vinegar for over 5 months now and am still smiling. There have been no problems on any surfaces that I have used – laminate floors, glass, porcelain, plastic bath, brushed stainless steel, stainless steel, mirrors and chrome. In general though think of white vinegar just like any other cleaner – don’t use it unless you have to. Most stainless steel is easily cleaned by a dry soft cloth or a slightly damp cloth – you don’t need vinegar for it. One of the big advantages of vinegar that I have found is I can change from surface to surface without having to change cleaner which is great in places like the bathroom or kitchen. I was a bit dubious at first about it in toilet bowls but combined with baking soda it keeps the toilets way healthier than toilet duck used to. I still have to trial it in the shower – that will be my next test. So if you’re reading this give vinegar a go without worry  – you will become a convert and your shopping bill will thank you. 

 

 

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Vinegar update

Well I’m just about to finish my first spray bottle of white vinegar and still have litres of the stuff stored in the cupboard. White vinegar as a cleaner is definitely an economically sensible purchase as well as eco friendly. The thing I still like best is the fact I can use it while I’m in the kitchen cooking if I see a stain or fingerprints all over the fridge etc as spraying isn’t going to be harmful in any way.

 

The Summer 09 Greenpeace magazine ‘kakariki’ has a page of useful eco cleaning recipes – some ecocleaning recipes can be accessed from

 

Green cleaning – share your recipes | Greenpeace New Zealand Weblog. You can also pop your own recipes on the site. I like the look of the toilet cleaning recipe. I always use toilet duck but it gets used up quickly so I would rather use a cheaper alternative. Recipe: Sprinkle baking soda into the toilet bowl, then squirt with vinegar and scour with a toilet brush. Will clean and deodorise. I still have my bathroom weekend cleaning to do so we will see how it goes!

 

 

 

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I don’t want to use your toilet Grandma

A few weeks ago my mum commented that her grandson had told her he didn’t want to use her toilet. When she asked him why, he replied that the dolphins scared him. Mum couldn’t think what he meant until she realised that he was talking about the dolphins on her toilet paper! It got me wondering as to why we scent our paper and go to the bother of printing designs on it. It would seem a rather pointless exercise. For most of us our toilet paper sits under a toilet roll cover so we hardly see the image printed on the paper. The scent isn’t strong enough to make the toilet smell nice and once the toilet paper is used there is no disguising what it has been used for – why on earth is toilet paper scented?????????

There does seem to be some indications too that certain females should stick with plain toilet paper as they get easily irritated by the scented type. Anyway at the end of my musings I realized that there is absolutely no reason why I buy scented, printed paper and I have just automatically done it all my life. So the last few weeks we have changed to plain, unscented, recycled, not re-bleached toilet paper made in NZ. It was also on special this week – 42 cents per roll so we bought up quite a bit. So far there haven’t been any complaints about the change from my rear end J.