All that baby stuff

All of you parents out there will know this problem fairly well: What do you do with all of that baby stuff? There are a few options, some green and some not so green.

You can store everything for your next baby in hopes that you will be able to reuse everything and save some money. Of course this makes a lot of sense, but there are certain things that you probably shouldn't hang on to for too long. For instance cribs and car seats are constantly getting upgraded to make them safer and safer. If you want to get one crib to keep for future children as well I would suggest going with a very basic crib, in other words one without a drop side (which is often a cause for recalls in cribs) and slats that are fairly close together and preferably one made out of a nice solid wood or some other material that will really hold up. I know my son was very tough on his crib, but I anticipated that and bought him a solid wood crib without a drop side. I will admit the crib wasn't as convenient to use as some of the higher end cribs on the market, but it is still in good shape after he used it for 2 years and then had it as a daybed in his room for another 6 months. Of course saving everything can take a real toll on your storage space and you need to make sure that your possessions are protected from the elements. Also keep in mind that when you pull all of these things out of storage later they will need a really good cleaning before you can use them again. It is possible that not everything you stored will be in good enough shape to be used again either.


You can hand your old baby stuff down to a new mommy who could make good use of your old baby stuff. We were the recipients of some old baby stuff when we were expecting our little man so I can attest to just how helpful this can be to new parents. Of course keep in mind that not every new parent is happy to receive less than new stuff for their baby, but there are plenty of parents who would be more than happy to get their hands on some gently used baby stuff. Probably the best benefit of this method for dealing with all that clutter is that you get to see how happy it makes someone else to have your old things. Of course the downside is that this can be a very time consuming and sometimes frustrating method for clearing out the clutter. You will have to decide if the great feeling you get from helping someone else is worth the added time and effort on your part. That being said I really do think that if something was handed down to you then when you are done using it (if it is in good shape still) you should hand it back to the person or pass it on to another person.

You can sell your old baby stuff to a second-hand store or on Craig's List or eBay or at yard sale, etc. You get the idea that the ideas as to where to sell your gently used baby stuff is seemingly limitless. One advantage to this is that you will make a little extra cash which may help you buy some more gently used stuff that your little one needs as they grow out of their things. Kids always seem to be outgrowing their clothes and always seem to be in need of more stuff. Of course the disadvantage of this method is that it can take time to get rid the stuff since you need to wait for there to be a need for the things you have. It may be worth it to you to try to sell the big ticket items in particular though. Also you may get to see someone get really excited to get their hands on your old stuff for a great price.

You can donate your old baby stuff to a charity like the Goodwill, Salvation Army, or even a women's shelter, or other charity of your choice. The big advantage this option has is that you can probably get rid of everything at once and they may even be able to pick it all up from your place of residence for you. You also get a tax write off on your donations. This is a great way to go if you just have to get rid of a bunch of stuff quickly.

You can reuse some of your old baby stuff. Maybe make a quilt out of baby's old clothes (especially the ones with holes or rips in them that make them no so reusable). You can repurpose those receiving blankets as napkins. Just get creative and you would be surprised with some of the things you can reuse.

Remember that no one option is right for every person and no one option might be the only option that works for one person either, but all of these options are far greener than the last option which is to simply throw it out. Granted I'm sure there are probably times when throwing something out might be the only option you really have, but it should really be a last resort only.

Foothills Green Expo

Today we went to the first ever Foothills Green Expo which was hosted at Pacific Outdoor Living and was co-hosted with Phat Energy. Let me just say that I was really impressed by this very small green expo. The amount of services these two companies offer is rather astonishing. We are getting very excited about working on our yard now, previously I think we were a bit nervous about the whole thing though we were slowly figuring out what we wanted to do with the yard. Today these two companies just helped us to see how to really kick up the green in our yard way beyond what we had imagined.

Pacific Outdoor Living offers tons of services. They will even come out to your house and help you design your yard as well as what order things need to be done in and help you keep it all in your budget. We were most excited by the way that they can put your water storage underground and then put either a water feature or a permeable paver patio deck on top of the water storage area. I know it sounds a little confusing so I really recommend if you are intrigued by this look at their website or call them or even go down there and talk to them in person. You will be amazed at this, so cool not to need to have rain barrels all over the yard to store water for irrigation of the yard.

Phat Energy had these super cool Phatports. They are structures similar to a pergola style patio cover but they have solar panels on the roof area. You can use these as carports, patios, etc. We are really excited about the possibility of putting one in our backyard to cover our patio area. We had thought previously about an umbrella or a sail canopy or possibly even building a pergola style patio cover. This is super exciting though to think of having a covered patio that produces electricity to help offset our electrical usage.

Master Bathroom

I have finally figured out what I want to do with the master bathroom. It isn't that we really dislike the way it was when we bought the house, it is fine. It is more just a case that the decorative tile in the shower and other details in the bathroom just go unnoticed. The decorative tile in the shower goes unnoticed until you get into the shower which seems like a shame to me, why spend money on decorative tile if you are just going to let it go unnoticed. Knowing that I wanted to make the decorative tiles and other small touches in the bathroom stand out more is where my idea stemmed from. I decided that in order help pull out the blue in the decorative tiles and add to the French theme that the towel bars and toilet roll holder and a lot of the other smaller things in the bathroom seem to have I would go with a nice traditional blue toile for a curtain. This would also help make the room appear more finished as having a bare window in there right now just makes the room feel unfinished to me.

This isn't necessarily the exact toile I will use to make the curtain for the bathroom window, but it provides an idea of what the curtain will look like. Now that the curtain was decided I was left figuring out what else to do with the room to make it feel more finished and make it work better for us. I knew we also needed to find a new paint color for the bathroom because to us the bathroom is just not that inviting. It is a muddy shade, not a bad color really but just not something we feel is appropriate for a large bathroom like ours. I know we both loved the bathroom of our last place at grad school and that was a rather bright bathroom with a retro feel to it. It was two different shades of green with bright white as the third color. I don't think that color scheme would work in this bathroom of course, but I know we both like a nice cheerful bathroom. I think that when I have a brighter color on the walls of my bathroom it helps me to wake up and start my day off on a more positive step. I think that a nice light and fairly bright shade of yellow would be a good match for the blue in the toile and the decorative tile work. I still have to pick the exact color for the walls, but a friend suggested The Freshaire Choice for a non-VOC paint. I did notice that they have at least one yellow that might work for our bathroom (it's kind of hard to tel when looking at paint chips on the computer) - Delightful Daffodil. I still need to get paint chips for The Freshaire Choice line of paints and see if I can find some other good non-VOC paints that are available locally. A non-VOC paint is very important to us for the interior of our house because we really don't want to breath in all that stuff while we are painting or to need to air the house out for several weeks after painting. Non-VOC paints are just a much healthier paint option.

Bottled Water

I will admit that sometimes it is really nice to have a bottle of water beside you, but I really hate to think of throwing out all of those plastic bottles. Yes, I know they can be recycled and yes I do recycle what I can, but to me that doesn't mean it's alright to discard stuff just cause it can be recycled. Recycling is the third part of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. We should always first try to reduce what we use, then we should reuse what we can, and only after those two have been done should we recycle what is left.

For today's little project I took an old glass soda bottle with a screw on lid and cleaned it up and removed the label from it and now I have a lovely glass water bottle to keep on my night stand or on the table while we are eating our meals so that there is always water on hand to refill our glasses with. I like it so much that next time I buy soda I may keep the bottle again for keeping fresh lemonade and other good stuff in.

Greener Laundry

We have a rather unique way of doing laundry in our house. We have a single unit that is a washer and a dryer in the same unit, no it is not a standard item in stores so we had to special order it. One of the great things about the washer dryer we got is that it also has a delay timer on it so we can set it to do our laundry while we sleep which then allows us to conveniently use off-peak electricity to do our laundry. Of course to further increase our savings I hang some of our things to air dry on racks in the house and in the summer I love to hang the clothes outside to dry.

One of the odd things with our washer is that if I am going to use the dryer to dry my clothes I can only put in a half load of laundry (luckily half of a huge load is still a very large load) and set my washing machine to do a wash and dry. Of course since we have both the washer and dryer in one unit it takes a while for the clothes to dry because it runs on 110-volts of electricity, but since we run it while we are asleep anyhow it really doesn't matter to us that it takes longer. Our washer is also very water and energy efficient so we qualified for rebates from our water and electric companies when we purchased it. The rebates helped to make the washer a little more affordable. I also love how clean our clothes get in our new washer. I only use about half of a portion of detergent (I then split that between the regular wash cycle and prewash cycle) about half a portion of softener and some OxyClean. That gets almost all of my very rambunctious two and a half year old's stains out of his clothes, no pre treating or stain sticks or anything.

Go Green Expo - L.A.

Business-to-Business Expo
Friday, January 22, 2010 • 10am - 5pm

Open to Public
Saturday, January 23, 2010 • 10am - 6pm
Sunday, January 24, 2010 • 10am - 5pm

The Los Angeles Convention Center
1201 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015
www.lacclink.com

THE LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER IS THE FIRST CONVENTION CENTER IN THE U.S. OF ITS SIZE AND AGE AND THE FIRST L.A. CITY BUILDING TO BE AWARDED LEED® GREEN BUILDING CERTIFICATION FOR EXISTING BUILDINGS BY THE USGBC

Tickets:
Friday: Complimentary to Business Buyers (please bring your business card for admission)
Saturday & Sunday: $10 for a full weekend pass / open to both business buyers & consumers.


for more information: http://www.gogreenexpo.com/events/index.php?evid=13

Vintage finds

Shopping vintage is one of the greenest ways to find some stylish clothes and accessories. It is also much kinder on the pocketbook than those big department stores and those cute boutique shops. At $14 for the red suede heels and $10 for the sequined and beaded blue flats you really can't do better, especially since the red heels are the most comfortable heels I have ever worn - even more comfortable than the Easy Spirit Spa's that I used to own. I really love the satisfaction I get from finding a great and stylish bargain that I will be able to love for sometime, I try to only buy items I truly love and enjoy.

DIY - tiered serving tray

With one dozen cupcakes for our little New Years get together last night I was left wondering how to serve them up in style. I decided on creating my own tiered serving tray to display them, I figured that adding a little height to my cupcake display would make them look more stylish. How did I make a tiered serving tray at the last minute you may wonder. It was actually very simple. I took one full sized dinner plate placed a coffee/tea cup in the center of the plate upside down, then I placed my dessert plate on top of the coffee/tea cup as to balance the plate. Then I just added the cupcakes to the plates. Next time I do this to display my cupcakes I may try adding some museum putty to help hold all the pieces together. Of course you could get some flea market finds or even use some chipped dishes and permanently bond them together to make a tiered serving tray.

It's cupcake time

I love to bake yummy treats for the holidays and parties. In doing so I feel like I have used more than my fair share of those paper cupcake liners. Well I finally decided to treat myself to a dozen silicone cupcake liners. I absolutely love the bright colors they came in and that I can use them to heat other things up in. I used one to heat some leftover gravy up in the oven with. I just put it on the same dish as the leftovers and popped it all in the oven to warm up a nice meal of leftovers. I also love that these are a way to green up my baking a bit more, I already use organic ingredients and when possible eggs from the local farmer's market.