Keeping your Toddler in Bed

Because Miss O co-slept through infancy, we didn't have a TON of trouble keeping her in her bed when we moved to a toddler bed in her own room around 16 months.  Sure, there's the occasional night that she would get up and come to the living room when she heard us and friends chatting during our Financial Peace University class or Bible Study.  And we've had a few sleep-walking type events at midnight or 1am.  But these things are truly the exception not the rule.

Mornings, too, haven't been a huge issue.  Because O loves cuddling in our bed (and so do we!), if she wakes up "too early" in the morning, she comes straight to our room.  So long as she has a binki, she cuddles in just fine for a few more minutes of rest for mama and dada.  And again, while it's rare, a little Curious George on an iPhone will keep her busy for 30-60 minutes if mom and dad want to sleep LATE (aka, 9am).

But even before O, we had friends who SWORE by the concept of a toddler clock.  You might know the type (this one seems to be the most famous brand).  The idea of these clocks is that your toddler learns what colors mean what-- blue as time to go to bed, yellow as time to wake up (or get out of bed)... and the fancier ones have timer functions as well with red for "time out" and green as "reward time."  I've always heard AMAZING things about these guys.  And even considered buying one, not as a need to keep O in bed, but as a want to teach her independence with her daily routine/schedule.  The problem for this cheap-o mama... these guys can cost $50!!!

But this week, I learned about a GREAT idea that I think would possibly work just as well.  The simple dial timer!  My family bought these a couple years back when our home was broken into.  We decided to put timers on the living room lights so that they come on and off in the evening, even while we're out.  And despite the fact that our anxiety about burglars has significantly reduced, I still enjoy having the timer on difficult to reach lamps.  I change the times along with the sunset times at different times of year too, which helps cut down on using lights during the day time when we can use sunlight from the windows instead.

But the brilliant idea this week was to install one of these little guys onto a lamp or string of Christmas lights in the toddler's room!  You can set the timer to turn the string of lights on at the "right" time to get up and out of bed.  With the slightly fancier ones, you could even set a second timer to turn the lights on at the end of a previously scheduled nap time too!  And the BEST part, these guys cost about $4-5!!  Amazing.

What work-arounds do you and your family use to save money in comparison to the typical item on the Toys'R'Us shelf?

Am I the only one that didn't know these existed?

Many moons ago (maybe when I was pregnant?) I saw these cute little guys in a store while I was window shopping:

"Cute, funny, intriguing," I thought to myself, but I'm trying to get out of debt here... I really don't want or need to spend money on these things.  But when I saw a similar product on a shelf at a CVS (or was it Walgreens), a few months ago for a lower price (I think I paid $3), I decide to go for it!  I mean, sure, the ones I got were plain yellow with no cute hedge hog face... but come on... I waste more than $3 on other things, even if this was a flop, it was worth trying.

Little did I know that The Dryer Ball would be my new favorite invention!  Have these things always existed and I just didn't know it?  We L-O-V-E our dryer balls.  Let me count the ways...

1) My mom always told me never to use dryer sheets with towels.  Not sure why.  Something about making them less fluffy?  Or less effective?  Yeah... less effective... which I never really understood, but did anyway.  But now that I process it, it makes sense because...

2) You're not supposed to use dryer sheets with cloth diapers, because the dryer sheet leaves a coating on the cloth diaper that makes it less absorbent.  So any load that I wash that has cloth diapers in it, automatically no dryer sheets.  And that means that the clothes in that load (I often wash my own delicates with Olivia's cloth diapers) don't get the benefit of dryer sheets either!

3) Here's the kicker... did you know... that... the dryer sheet not only coats your clothes, but it also coats the inside of the dryer?  So if you use a dryer sheet with one load, then the little dryer sheet particles will still be in there for the next load... thus even when I keep the dryer sheet out of my cloth diaper load, they're getting residuals from other loads!

and 4)... you all knew this was coming... not only is it a green choice (less waste, not disposable, made of good stuff...) but it's CHEAPER!  These things last supposedly forever.  So my initial investment of $3 divided over the number of loads I'll use them for???  WAY CHEAPER THAN DRYER SHEETS!  What a win. :-)

Ben and I have started using these little guys in all of our laundry.  We don't have a single issue with static cling.  I think we actually have less lint.  And our diapers are SUPER absorbent, rarely ever need stripping.

All in all, I HIGHLY recommend 'em!

What's your favorite green/cheap household product/invention?

The dark side of "reusing."

"...by one estimate, used clothing is now the United States’ number one export by volume..."  


Really?  


Take a look here:


The Afterlife of Cheap Clothes


It makes me think that I might possibly never shop in a 1st hand clothing store again.  Why would I when I have such awesome resources here in Boston for 2nd hand clothing anyway?  Some of my current favorites:


Goodwill - close, convenient, easy to drop off things I don't want or need anymore.


Savers - a little bit farther out of the way from my house, but in comparison to my local Goodwill, they sort their store more, so I can more quickly find exactly what I'm looking for-- a certain size, a certain length of sleeve, etc.  And they have member discounts frequently.  Discounts at a 2nd hand store?  Now you're talking my language...


Kid to Kid - a franchise 2nd hand store, focused on children.  Interesting.  And a very accessible website.  


Two Little Monkeys - like supporting local businesses?  This is your gold mine.  She closed the shop on father's day!  How cute is that?


Boomerangs - like your proceeds to go to a good cause?  Check out Boomerangs!



Where do you do your 2nd hand shopping?

Good Karma

Last fall I wrote a short post on a company I'd discovered called Thred Up, which was an online clothing swap company.  Well, without ever using the service even once, I've discovered this week that they have changed their business model and no longer are doing swaps.  Instead, they're now a platform for consignment!  Interesting change.  I wonder how they're business is doing now with the switch.

Anyway, I've meanwhile found another interesting "reused" children's clothing site.  And given that I seem to be writing about reduce, reuse, recycle this week, I thought I'd share it all with you!  Warning, I've not used this service and I have no attachment to them... I'd love to hear from any of you who have/will though!

Good Karma is a web based business where you can, for a small monthly fee, get a rotating wardrobe for your wee one.  It seems like a great idea, as baby clothes are rarely ever "worn out" before their out grown.  Sure, it's not the most frugal option -- and since I have frugal options at my finger tips, I'm more likely to pursue those than this -- but for a mama who feels reusing and reducing our overall consumption is important but doesn't have the budget restraints that I have, this might be an excellent option!

I also love that they have a system for your church/school/organization to host a fundraiser by donating gently used baby clothes toward Good Karma.  Maybe I should consider this with some of the organizations with which I work!

The frugal side of "Reusing"

I'm happily spending part of my maternity leave doing my best to be a frugal mama.  This feels especially salient to me as I enter the half of my maternity leave that is unpaid!  I've become obsessed with craigslist as well as the JP Moms, Garden Moms, and DotMoms groups on Big Tent.  I stalk the classifieds for free items that can be of use to me... sort of obsessively... maybe too often. :-)

But this spring, I've successfully brought home 3 trashbags of infant clothes, a boppy, a breast friend, a nursing stool, an infant travel bed, an (unused) nursing sports bra, and a pack of 30 size 1 diapers... FOR FREE.  All I had to do was go to the person's house and pick them up!

On the other hand, at 7 weeks old, Baby O is getting big enough that she's outgrown some of her clothes as well as a few of the house hold items that we acquired for her arrival.  Thus, I'm also selling some of my own items on the same sites!  I've sold tiny gdiapers that she's outgrown, a bag or two of unisex newborn sized clothes, and a spare playmat that she doesn't need since she ended up with two.  And I've brought in $70 and a gallon of organic milk in return!  Not bad, eh?

I've got many other items posted and am hoping to continue the trend of buying or obtaining for cheap/free and re-selling the items after Olivia gently uses them.  In this way, I hope I can continue to minimize the cost of having my little treasure and teach myself (and others) that providing for your child doesn't have to be a million dollar industry.  I love that I'm keeping things out of landfills, reducing the USA's overall consumption, and also connecting with some other moms near by in the process!

In what ways do you benefit from hand-me-downs and "reusing" with your kids?

Diapers Diapers everywhere!

One of the main reasons to avoid disposable diapers is the environmental benefit.  As detailed on the Real Diaper Association as well as a variety of other places, disposable diapers take forever to decompose, they make up 1/3 of landfill material, and are made of awful awful things such as oils and plastics.

However, one month into my attempts at green parenting, I'm fully convinced that diapering will be the most expensive part of raising baby O for a while.  We don't think we need a million toys (and what we do want we can get used), we've found great sources for cheap and free clothing, I'm nursing (so food is "free").  But diapers... they're gonna cost some money.

Various sites out there suggest that disposable diapers for the average baby will cost at least $1500 and maybe as much as $4000 between birth and age 2 and a half or 3 when a child is potty trained.  Where as, dependent on which brand you use, they argue that cloth diapering can cost as little as $200 to $300 for the same amount of time.

Unfortunately, these calculations don't take into account laundering costs.  Folks that do cloth diapering typically do laundry every 3 days or so.  And given that I live in an apartment where laundry costs $1.50 for each wash and $2.00 for each dry... for that 3 years, we're talking about increasing the cost of cloth diapering from a few hundred back up to a few thousand.

Hmm... that's a lot of math to think about.  To make the math even more complex, Ben and I started out our cloth diapering life by choosing the brand gdiapers.  I really like they're company's environmental view point.  And they sell one of the most popular/commonly known brands of hybrid diapers.  Hybrid diapers have a cloth outer layer but a disposable inner layer.  And in this instance, the disposable inner layer can be disposed of either by putting it in the trash, flushing, or composting it.  And to top it off, little Baby O looks so darn cute wearing the little things.  The picture on the right is her, just a few days old, in her first tiny gdiaper.

Now that she's a little bigger, she wears size small.  Which comes with a bit more variety on color.  But the cost of the disposable inserts is quite high.  They're more expensive than a disposable diaper... which makes sense to me since they're a specialty item-- most organic and environmentally healthy choices are more expensive than the opposite option.  However, what I'm beginning to realize is that if I did an extra load of laundry every 3 days for the next 3 years, that's only $1277 in quarters.  And the cost of inserts for gdiapers will probably be closer to $2000 for that three years, even if I buy them on sale (hello Amazon Moms!)

So my question now is... am I really ready to commit to cloth diapering not only for the environmental reasons that I knew, but now also for the financial reasons?  Do I really want to be washing diapers every 3 days for the next 3 years?  What types of gear do I need for the house and the diaper bag to make cloth diapering 100% of the time successful?  And can I figure out the answers to these questions before my current case of gdiaper disposable liners is all used up?

My Foray into Home Made Baby Foods

The benefits of home made baby food are, in my mind, almost innumerable.  Just to state a few, we've got:

Enhanced flavor - have you ever tasted jarred baby food?  The stuff is intentionally made blander than adult food because supposedly that's easier on baby's growing taste buds.  Homemade baby food or blenderized adult foods, in contrast, have the same nutritional input as we get as adults and have quite strong tastes in a lot of cases.  Sure, there may be flavors your little one doesn't like... but you're teaching them about real food taste from day 1 of eating solids-- as a feeding therapist, I think that's great.

Caloric/Nutrient density -  How about looking at the nutrition information on the back side?  It is quite low in caloric density, meaning that your baby can eat and eat it, but it doesn't actually add much nutritional value for them.  Yes, when they're little, they should be getting "most" of their calories from their liquid intake (breast milk or formula) because it's complete nutrition.  But why does that mean we have to minimize what they're getting in their fruits and veggies

Cost - that's right, ladies and gents... it's frugal.  When you buy real foods and puree them (or dice, chop, steam, etc based on whether your kiddo is old enough to do a little mashing/chewing), you're paying real food prices.  You're not paying for extra packaging, shipping, etc.  You're also not paying for ingredients or procedures intended to extend their shelf life in little jars.  Which brings me to...

Quite simply, You know what's in it - I'm trying (though not always succeeding, I'll be honest) to eat foods that my grandmother would recognize as foods.  That means that foods shouldn't have a million ingredients.  And I should be able to pronounce and identify all of the ingredients.  I think this is going to be especially important in those early months when I'm learning what my little girl is or isn't allergic to and does or doesn't like to eat.

Thus, this week, I began my foray into home made baby foods.  Yes, I realize that I'm 8 months pregnant.  And yes, I realize that my child won't eat pureed baby foods until she's AT LEAST 4 months old and possibly older.  But I've got some veggies in my organic delivery box that I need to store before they go bad-- it's hard to eat all of these things when I'm not feeling like cooking and I've been cooking for 1 this month while Ben's been out of town.

Tonight's experiment was to roast, puree, and store some rutabega.  I use my oven, my blender, and my new So Easy Baby Fresh kit that my friend, K, got me for my baby shower and put myself to work!  The little ice cube trays for storing the food are excellent, in my opinion.  Once they're frozen, I'll pop them out and put many of them down in a ziplock or other storage container.  Each little cube is 1 ounce, which will make it easy for me to know how much the little one needs and is eating at each meal.  They're also a bit sturdier (and have a lid) than regular ice cube trays, so I'm hoping that means the frozen pureed rutabega will pop out a little more smoothly.

All in all, it was a great experience.  AND... in a bit of selfishness (or maybe just to see what happens), I can also borrow a couple of those cubes to mix into other foods for the adults in my house... popping a couple down in some mashed potatoes or a little bit of spaghetti sauce means that hubby is exposed to a few more vitamins than normal... always a goal of mine.  And in a small volume, he'll never taste the difference.  Shhh...

Any experienced moms out there have advice about home made baby foods for me?

Healthy Baby requires a Healthy Mama!

So as many of you know, bi-weekly (or is it semi-weekly... I always forget how to use those terms) I receive a fruit and vegetable delivery from http://www.bostonorganics.com/.  What a great company, btw!  They're reliable and definitely a great cost-effective, easy choice for me to make to take one step towards organic and healthy living.

This week in my Organics box, I got celery.  I'm ashamed to say that two weeks ago when the celery arrived, I let it sit in my fridge, unused, and it ended up going bad.  But I refused to let that happen again! Thus, tonight I decided to make some cream of celery soup to put away.  I'm using a slight variation on this recipe, from The Humbled Homemaker.  I, of course, am tripling the volume so I have some to use this week if I want and some to put up in the freezer for later.  I'm using up the end of some milk that is just about to go bad, so it feels like a frugal choice.  And I'm also using my own home made veggie broth in it instead of chicken broth.  One step closer to organic, healthy, and home made!  Finally, I'm using more celery than she calls for, and I'm going to puree it too, 'cause I like it creamy and smooth and my celery mincing and garlic chopping was more coarse than it probably should have been.

In the future, I can use my homemade cream of celery soup as a base for all kinds of casseroles, cooked veggies and chicken dishes.  Sure, these aren't "baby foods"... but for the next year or so as I breastfeed (or pump and bottle feed breast milk if necessary), my food IS the baby food.  So as the title says, a healthy baby requires a healthy mama!

Maybe THIS is nesting?

I still struggle with knowing whether or not I'm "nesting."  It might have started when I was painting every room in the house... but that was just finishing a project from before I was even pregnant.  Or it could have been the day of winterizing the windows, but we do that every year.  The next "nesting" thing that I'm doing isn't really nesting either. 

So Ben and I receive veggies every other week from this awesome program called Boston Organics.  We get awesome food that we love to eat.  But sometimes (especially when pregnant) I feel lazy about the foods and don't get enough of them fixed up and they go bad in our fridge before we can get to it all.  Well this week, I've been making a STRONG effort to use up the veggies! 

Simultaneously, though, I've been thinking about some of the "Once A Month Cooking" I've read about online and also thinking about mommy-blogs who talk about how hard it is to get the motivation to cook in the first couple weeks home from the hospital after giving birth.  Thus, I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone and cook up those veggies in ways we'll appreciate and then freeze the results for consumption in April and May!

Take a look at my results thus far:

This is a carrot/parsnip soup I was working on Thurs night in the crock pot.  Threw them in there with some water, seasonings, celery, onion, garlic, and curry... tonight's project will be to puree it and get it in containers for the freezer.  Then it's just a thaw-and-eat that Ben and I can pull out whenever!

Here's some zucchini bread muffins.  The zucchini was actually already in our freezer, pureed/chopped up from last summer/fall, but I got it out and made the muffins on Thurs night as well.  After they flash freeze on the pan (so that they're all separate), I'll throw 'em in a gallon sized ziplock and they can be brought out a few at a time for re-heating in the toaster oven.  Yummy breakfast and snack foods!

And here's the two soups from earlier in the week.  On the left side is the chicken soup- just add noodles when you defrost it and that container will make 4-5 servings of yummy, organic chicken noodle soup with carrots, celery, and onion.  And on the right side is a baked potato soup.  The advice I got online was to freeze it without the dairy products, 'cause it would re-heat better.  So it needs a bit more work on defrosting.  But I think Ben will like it more, so it's worth it. :-)

I'd like to start working on some other items besides soups too-- maybe some pre-seasoned meats that could just be dethawed and cooked by Ben or even some other bread products.  All of the Once a Month Cooking websites talk about premaking and defrosting pancakes and the like... but I'm worried they just won't turn out.

Anyone have personal experience or advice for me?

More house updates

We're slowly making headway on updating the apartment before our little bundle arrives.  It's actually sorta funny... tonight I have a ton of friends on Facebook who's status update is about "date night," but this is what Ben and I really enjoy doing on OUR date night.

(And no, for the record, I'm not painting... I just sneak in to take pictures while I hold my breath, I swear.

This one is our new Chandelier!  Ben put it on a dimmer switch.  Saving money on electricity, saving energy expenditure, etc.  A green choice AND it's pretty!

 Here's the chandelier at night, while Ben paints the "light" color in our room.  It's sorta an icing color or a robin's egg blue.

And here's the accent wall... a bit darker in the same family.  Hard to tell what color it is in this pic, but I promise it's AWESOME.  We picked these two colors as lighter than and darker than the color of our comforter/sheets that we got for our wedding nearly two years ago now.

Nesting? Or Winterizing?

So if this really IS nesting, there are ways to make those nesting instincts work in your favor if you're a green-lovin' momma like me.  In the pictures below, you'll see two exciting things happening in my kitchen.

First, my Advent Conspiracy gift from my husband and parents-in-law is that my kitchen was finally painted!  Huzzah!  I love that bright, cheery yellow color.  It goes so well with the candy apple green in my living room and I'm convinced we'll actually turn the lights on less because it reflects so much of the natural day light we get in our windows.

But second, take a look at my hubby using his mad skills to help me winterize my kitchen windows!  This is a chore I've been doing since I was a kid.  I remember my mom putting this stuff up and then enjoying poking at it, watching the cold air billow on the other side.  I'm sure what my mom loved was that we weren't going to spend a fortune on heating the house that winter!  After some coaxing to get my pregnant belly off the couch, we've now winterized everything but the bathroom window... just one to go!  What a GREEN friendly option - green for my wallet AND green for the earth!

What techniques do you use to save a little green during the winter months???