A Dirt Cheap Solution

Lately, no matter what I look at, it looks expensive to me.  Food, clothes, utilities, you name it.  I know it's not just my imagination that the cost of things are going up, especially in the food department, but I can usually overlook it at the grocery store by just not buying certain things.  As an example, I refuse to pay over $1.29 for an avocado.  I just can't do it.

A couple months ago my husband sent me an article titled 'That's pricey: 13 items that cost more, or will soon'.  They talk about gas, airfare, furniture (?!), fast food (oh. darn.), FLIPPIN' CHOCOLATE!!!  I guess expensive chocolate is good motivation for me to NOT buy it, but I still like having the option...

One of the items on that list is household products.  Now that's interesting, isn't it? *wink wink*  According to the article,

'Diapers, soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, trash bags and many other everyday items all have been targeted for price hikes as companies from Kimberly-Clark to Procter & Gamble to Colgate-Palmolive respond to rising ingredient costs' 

- and -

'The Consumer Price Index has climbed 2.7% in the past 12 months, according to government statistics released Friday. That’s the largest rise since 2009.  Price increases will continue in the months ahead...'

Well that sucks. I doubt I am the only one feeling the repercussions of rising costs, but I can happily say that the rising cost of cleaning products will NOT affect me.  Don't fall victim to this baloney!  If you've read my blog before, I make it pretty well known that I love Shaklee products.  I usually go on talking about how wonderful and green and safe they are, but have I mentioned how much money they save me?  I know some of you don't give a rats ass how green they are...if I had a dime for every time I heard 'I just love my bleach, I'll never give it up!'...well, you know the rest. 

 I just got the sale papers for a couple grocery stores,and one has Windex on sale 2/$5.  That's a 26 oz bottle for $2.50, for the record.

When I mix up a bottle of Shaklee H2 windows and mirrors cleaner it costs me less than 1 cent.  Yes, less than $.01 for a 16 oz bottle.  Hmmm...2 cents (for 32 oz, not 26!) vs. $2.50 for 26 oz?  Not a hard choice.  Suck on that, Windex. 

Before I was enlightened I bought Fantastic and Clorox Clean-Up, at about $2.39 a bottle.  Then when I greened up I was buying Seventh Generation for $4.79 or even GreenWorks (which is total greenwashing, I now know) for about $2.50.  These days, when I mix up the equivalent Shaklee H2 all-purpose cleaner it costs me .22 cents...a gallon. If I was better at math I would figure out how much that is per bottle, but I really stink at it.  Feel free to jump in, math people.

I've got more, of course I do.  But I will not go on and on because I don't think it's necessary.  You want to save money where ever you can, and so do I.  This is one of the things I do that saves A LOT.  Total bonus...you don't have to walk down the cleaning product or laundry aisle at the grocery store...it stinks so bad!  I walk through there once in a great while, and every time I do I sneeze from all the perfumes and chemicals.  Yuck!  But, that's a whole other blog...

Did I also mention that you can use H2 on anything that can get wet?  Ask yourself a question:  Does this sound like you?  'But ohhh, waaahhh, I need a different cleaner for my kitchen and waaahhhh what am I supposed to use in the bathroom or on the floooooor?'.  H2 gets used on everything.  It dusts furniture, removes soap scum, cleans kitchen counters, mops floors, washes dogs, washes children, degreases grease, de-pests plants, de-wrinkles clothes, deters mosquitoes on you and fleas from your pets, etc etc.  You can clean anything with this stuff, and throw your dirty water outside and it will make your grass greener and your roses rosier.  I even shoot fruit flies right out of the air with it, and don't tell me that doesn't sound like fun.  Drink it, bathe in it, do what you gotta do...just don't forget to tell your friends about it.   

And to answer your next question, yes it works.  You couldn't put 'Always Works' in your motto if it didn't always work.  That's false advertising, and the green folks at Shaklee look down their squeaky clean noses at stuff like that.

So here it is, folks.  The solution to saving money with cheaper cleaners is at your fingertips.  All the cleaning products in the Get Clean line are concentrated out the wazoo.  You use less, you spend less, you save money and you can buy more shoes.  Want to buy more shoes save money?  Start here.  Come to the Light Side.  Do it now!!!

The Ghosts of Products Past

As I am sure many of you did, I grew up with bleach, ammonia, Tide, Downy, Mr. Bubble, and Twinkies.  Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies were the best, and who can forget your mom's Diet Chocolate Fudge Soda, chock full of artificial sweeteners and who knows what else.  Remember getting the first Equal gumballs in the newspaper insert?  I do, and I ate the first one (and I still don't like aspartame).  The tub got scrubbed with the worst of the worst cleaners, and then we soaked up the residue in our baths.  Baby powder fights, weird concoctions of lotions to slather on, bare hands touching chemicals of all kinds.  To compound my chemical exposure, when I was a teenager I got a job at a pet store.  Every day, I would go in and bleach the heck out of the puppy kennels...with bare hands, inhaling the fumes.  But we all turned out ok, didn't we?

Ok, let's not actually answer that.

The first green products I learned about were for cleaning.  One day I was bleaching my kitchen floor...the next day I was packing up all the toxic stuff and sending it off to the garage.  I started using Seventh Generation, Method, Green Works, and a few others.  They were expensive and not usually effective, but I was dedicated to using green products and stuck with them.  (This was before I discovered Shaklee).

Very shortly after my cleaning product revelation came my enlightenment about personal products.  I packed up all our Pantene, Bath & Body Works, Johnson's and whatnot, and offered the fuller bottles to my mom and sister.  What they didn't absorb (no pun intended) got squirted into the garbage or the toilet, and the bottle recycled.  Ya, seriously, I stood there and emptied each bottle so I could recycle it.  Who DOES that?  Anyway, I was left with a few items I couldn't get rid of 'just in case' and of course I get stuff now and then that I'll never use...whether by gift or freebie or whatever.  These unusables get stashed away and forgotten.

In my quest to replace everything we ever use anywhere, there was definitely a trial and error process.  There have been numerous natural products that have not worked out, and end up sitting in a cabinet or closet.  Just because it's natural or non-toxic doesn't mean it's going to work or be the right product for us.  The Beebs and I found that out the hard way.  After a very scary incident with an allergic reaction to the 'Fragrance' in a Burt's Bees baby wash (97.3% natural!), and a very humorous incident (I wasn't the one laughing) with a face wash/lotion for me where I ended up looking like I had lobster-red sunburn on my face, I realized that not everything from the health food store is going to automatically be the right product. 

So the question is:  Where do your abandoned products go?

Well, I suppose we can call it the product graveyard.  I've definitely got one and to my husband's chagrin it is in the garage.  A big old cardboard box full of Windex, bleach, wipes, bathroom cleaners, kitchen cleaners, floor cleaners and more; all full of the type of chemicals that I do NOT allow in my house anymore.  Pretty much all my Shaklee cohorts have a similar box in their garage.  And those personal products...?  Lucky for me I've got a little extra storage space in the bathroom closet.  I'll never use that paraben-laden sunscreen on the kids, or the lotions, or makeup, or hair products, but there it sits.  I don't even use perfume, though I have half-dozen bottles of it sitting in the closet.

Crazy, you say?  I'll admit to a little crazy.  But the thing is...I've done a lot of research on this stuff.  I might seem paranoid or over-the-top to some, and others might say they are way too attached to their signature fragrance or mascara or favorite bathroom cleaner to ever give it up.  Fine.  I'm not trying to convince you to give up what you love.  Do what you want.  But be informed about what it is you are bringing into your home or putting on your body, especially if you have kids at home. I could use this opportunity to tell you how great and green and non-toxic everything Shaklee makes is and how that's mostly what we use now, but me selling you better products is not the point here. 

The point is simply:  When you've come to your senses and learned enough about the ill-effects chemicals can have on your family's health, and you replace all your bad stuff with good stuff, there is a solution for all those unused products!  And it's not that you have to stand at your garbage can squirting out six bottles of Johnson's baby lotion!

The easiest and most economical way to get rid of these chemicals is to use them up.  Then you can recycle the bottle and be done with it.  If you don't want to do that, and I don't blame you for not, read on.

Toxic products can't actually be recycled, per se.  Disposing of chemicals improperly can cause a lot of environmental problems like soil and water contamination...check out what happens from chemical runoff.  You can take your stuff to a hazardous waste collection facility, or most communities often host events for gathering all the unwanted products...and some even do it year-round.  Contact your village or your local solid waste or sanitation department to find out when and where you can take yours.  Hopefully there isn't some dude in each town with a garage full of cardboard boxes...

For anyone who didn't notice the first time...let me point out that these products are considered hazardous waste!  If they have to be taken to a hazardous waste collection facility to be disposed of...why are you using them in your home?!?!

To find out what products are bad, check out this awesome glossary, or visit EWG and Cosmetics Database. To get the green and non-toxic products that you now know are much better for you, go here. My intention is to educate you about healthier products so you can make better choices.  If your choices include Shaklee, great.  If not, that's ok too.  I am just as happy hearing that you learned something here and will stop using the toxic chemicals you've read about!!

Hot MAHMA!!

I've been a stay-at-home mom for over 7 years.  Sometimes I question my sanity, but mostly I am just glad that I'm here.  For us there have been some challenges financially, but we've made it this far.  Actually, in general we are all lucky that we've made it this far, because there are days...oh, there are days where everyone better just count their blessings that they lived through it...

As a SAHM I cook, clean, schedule, run taxi service, decorate, undecorate, bathe people, clothe people, treat what ails them, etc. etc. whatever.  It's what I do and it takes me all day.  Even though I worked for almost two years after the boy was born, I still can't imagine how the moms out there who have full-time jobs get everything done on top of working.  Kudos to you, ladies!

One of the things I've done over the years is try and make (or save) money anywhere I can to help our family finances.  I could probably dedicate another whole blog to my home business mis-adventures.  I've watched kids, done Tupperware, ebay, crafting, couponing on a massive scale, etc. I have to laugh when I think of how many ads in newspapers I've seen for work from home jobs that are total scams, or internet sites about how you can make jillions of dollars by following their simple system...just spend $500 on their package to learn how!  Assemble crafts at home for $350 a week, or stuff envelopes, or something equally too good to be true.  Be a secret shopper! Or internet jury!  It was fun, but none of these things lasted very long or made enough money, though I do still find myself selling stuff on ebay just cause I like it, and I've got a listing on Amazon, too. 

When the boy was in kindergarten three years ago,  I discovered Shaklee.  Since I was already using green and non-toxic products and trying to make money from home, it seemed like a perfect fit.  I got the business presentation, tried a couple of the cleaning products, and I was IN.  The difference between this stuff and the 'green' products I was using from the grocery store is like night and day.  I used to pay $4.79 for a very popular brand of non-toxic cleaner that didn't really work all that well.  Then I moved to paying $2.79 for a different, yet equally popular brand of so-called green cleaner which worked better, but that I later found out was 'green-washed'.  Then I tried Shaklee's all-purpose cleaner to the tune of about 10 cents a bottle, and it cleaned circles around the other stuff while at the same time being green and non-toxic and cheap and just freaking all-around lovely.  By the way, YES I said 10 CENTS per bottle.

Since I became a Project MAHMA mom and been working my business part-time with one or both kids at home, and I've been making a decent amount of extra money.  Now that both of my kids are in school full-time (GOD BLESS whoever created all-day kindergarten) I need to justify my presence at home all day a little more heavily, so I've revised my plan and created my goals.  Three years later, my Shaklee business is on fire, I'm still at home, and I'm significantly contributing to our household finances.  Maybe not full-time corporate job $$ yet, but it will be, and it won't take me too much longer to get there either.  At this point, I don't intend to EVER go back to work.  And at the rate I'm going I won't have to.

Some people really love their jobs that they do outside of their homes.  Some people don't.  I've never been good at taking orders or doing what other people wanted me to and I can't honestly say that looking back on any of the jobs I've had that I was ever a very good employee.  But I am my own best employee, now! 

I'm my own boss too.  I'm really good at it and I'm a pretty darn cool boss if I may say so myself.  You can ask my kids how good I am at bossing them around, they'll tell you.  Heck, if the kids aren't home all day for me to boss around, who else am I going to tell what to do?

Now, somebody go make me a reuben!!

Mom vs. Vomit

Kids and cleaning products were made for each other.  As were kids and candy, kids and puppies, kids and padlocks, kids and boarding schools.... *ahem* sorry, I got carried away. But seriously, what would one do without the other?  My kids, as I'm sure yours are too, are capable of the most fantastic messes my imagination couldn't hope to compete with.  The Cat in the Hat's got nothing on them.  I always say crumbs seep out of their pores and they can destroy an entire room (that it took me 3 hours to make sparkle) in 3 minutes flat.

One of the most common things I come across in my daily cleaning is spots.  Spots on the couch, spots on the carpet, spots on laundry.  Some of those spots take more of the shape of intentional marker scribbles, but who's counting?  So, I arm myself with cleaning products (non-toxic of course) and go to work removing spots from every surface.  Another day, another load of laundry full of stains and spots.  Lucky for me I have this Shaklee stuff called Nature Bright to remove the evidence of 'having a good time', as my mom always says.  Without Nature Bright, a lot more stuff would go in the Goodwill pile because of stains.  I am secure in the knowledge that there is not a spot I can't conquer with Nature Bright.  I absolutely will not use chlorine bleach or any other stain removers (or cleaners, detergents, soaps, etc.) that will maim, directly or indirectly kill you, irritate the heck out of your skin, cause an asthma attack, or at the very least make your eyes water.  I believe that last statement covers probably 95% of the stuff that is sold in grocery stores.  Anyway...

As I mentioned in another post, my 9 year old son is involved in Taekwondo.  This past weekend there was a tournament two states away from us, which involved about six hours of driving, an overnight stay with relatives and a 55 MPH ice rink commonly known as I-294.

The boy has participated in quite a few tournaments before, and never really had a case of 'the nerves'.  That is MY job, and I do it well.  So, what happened this past Saturday probably can't be explained away as nervousness. This was a smaller tournament than the last one and he felt very prepared for the events he participated in, even excited to compete in one particular event for the first time. 

As we turn onto the street of the high school where the tournament took place, I hear a meek little 'Mom, I don't feel so good' from the back seat.  I swear it was slow motion...I turn around in my seat while simultaneously asking 'Are you going to barf?' and grabbing the nearest plastic bag.  I got it in his hands not a second too soon.  Thinking it may have been nervousness, we sat in the car a few extra minutes for him to chill out (and see whether there would be a repeat), then headed inside.  He seemed ok, if a little wigged out, and was even able to laugh about it a little.  He managed to get through his first two events, even placing 2nd in one of them, before it was time to toss the cookies again.  Thank goodness for extra large garbage cans on wheels.

His next two events were a couple hours away, so we bundled him up with our coats and he chilled out in a corner with a Sprite and some crackers to wait.  One or two more trips to the garbage can and he seemed to really perk up, like whatever it was might have been out of his system.  With the help of another TKD mom, we got him to agree to participate in one more event, which he did, and then we headed back to our relatives house an hour or so away.  We hadn't quite turned into their subdivision when I heard the distinct sound of liquid hitting the bottom of a bag.  A paper bag.  That leaked.  All over the seat and the stark white pants of his TKD leadership uniform, which ran us a cool $150.  The poor kid had to strip in the car and hang around pants-less while I ran in the house to collect all our junk and bring him new clothes.  Another hour or so car ride later and we're home in time for him to lose it again, this time into the kitchen garbage can.

The barfed-on TKD uniform pants came out of the wash sparkling clean and restored to their original bright white...or so I thought until I investigated the inside of the pants, and found the evidence that this really was a flu bug, and not a case of the nerves.  But hey, what did I say about conquering stains?  That's right.  I'm not afraid.  Already through the washer and dryer usually means an item is doomed, but not at my house!!  And this is one stain there can't be ANY evidence left of, EVER.  Nature Bright to the rescue once again.  

So bring it on, life!  Hit me with whatever stains you've got, I'll conquer them all - blood, sweat and tears...and vomit -  and do it safely with non-toxic products.   But really, I can wait quite a while before being put to the test again.  At least until AFTER the next taekwondo tournament.  And please, no blood!!