green home Archives - Page 2 of 3 - TheHippyHomemaker

Posts Tagged ‘green home’

Thieves Oil - The Secret To Staying Alive During The Bubonic Plague

The season of germs, runny noses, congestion, and coughing is nearly knocking on our door. Since I JUST got over being sick, it occurred to me that all of those cold and flu medicines on that were in my medicine cabinet could be replaced with more natural alternatives that wouldn’t be near as destructive on my family’s bodies. I have been obsessively reading and re-reading “Treatment Alternatives for Children” by Dr. Lawrence Rosen and Jeff Cohen. Read more »

Make Your Own Non-Toxic Baby Wipes

I have been using the yellow microfiber cloths to wipe Syfy’s bum, but I hadn’t yet made a baby wipe solution. I had only just been wetting the cloth with water and that was it. Finally I decided I could do more with my baby wipe situation. I remembered that I had an old Pampers wipes container and decided to use that as my baby wipe container. I took four of my yellow microfiber cloths and cut them into four equal-sized pieces so that they would fit in the container. Read more »

Make Your Own All Natural Dish Soap

After our dishwasher broke, we waited for a month for the maintenance crew to actually fix it. Long story short, it’s been 2 months and no one has come to fix our broken dishwasher. That’s ok! The hippy husband suggested that we wash our dishes by hand for a few months and see the difference it makes on our electricity bill! (You gotta love a husband who so willingly follows in the quest of living a more sustainable lifestyle!) After I finally ran out of the Dawn dish soap that I had been finishing up, I needed a new dish soap that I could make just like all of the other cleaning products in my house. At first I tried only using castile soap as my dish soap but I needed something to cut the grease. The first recipe I tried combined castile soap with lemon juice and vinegar, but I eventually realized that the reason that the solution curdled so often was because I was mixing castile soap (a base) with vinegar and lemon (an acid) which was advised against by Dr. Broner’s themselves because the acid/base chemical reaction makes the soap de-saponify causing it to no longer be soap and render it useless as far as cleaning. Read more »

Going Green With Your Pets (They’re part of your family, so why not?)

If you are anything like me, you just love animals of all shapes and sizes. I have pretty much had every kind of pet that you can think of (except a bird as I have a fear of them thanks to Daphne Du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock.). I have had the normal; dogs, cats, and fish. I have had the “small animal”; hamsters, gerbils, rats, guinea pigs, and mice. I have even had the exotic; ferrets, lizards, frogs, salamanders, and (my personal favorite) snakes. In fact, I love snakes so much that even as a child I adored them. When I was about 10 or 11 (this was when I was in 4th or 5th grade in MN) Easter was coming up, and I wanted to do something special for my mom. I knew that the baby garter snakes were out in full force and thought my mom would just LOVE to have a bunch of them as her own pet. Read more »

The Skinny on Essential Oils and Their Many Uses Around The Home

Over the last few months, I have learned quite a bit about the main uses of many different essential oils. They are so versatile and helpful, I am surprised that I grew up thinking that natural herbs were just herbs and nothing more. There are many herbs that have antibiotic, antiviral, antiseptic, and anti-fungal properties. They’re great for cooking, cleaning, and even for medicinal purposes! I’ll give you the skinny on the most popular ones to use around the house, and what they are good for! Read more »

Green Cleaning in the Living Room

Between writing about myself for you guys (because you all seem to be more interested in my personal story, rather than any of my other articles) and watching the Olympics, I have been a little slacker when it comes to my next installment of Green Living. It’s a day late, but you guys didn’t want to clean anything yesterday anyway, it was Monday! I am my own worst boss. I can’t stand it when I turn something in late, get lazy and decide I only need to write every other day, or take three day weekends! Read more »

Green Cleaning in the Bathroom

What is considered to be one of the grossest rooms in the house? I am pretty sure every one of you said the BATHROOM! Going green in the bathroom is not that hard to do. Switching out a few things can help reduce your footprint greatly! There are tons of natural cleaners that work wonders in the bathroom as well! By now, I am starting to realize just how AMAZING vinegar around the house is. It most certainly is going to do some powerhouse cleaning in my bathroom too. When we first started cleaning with vinegar, I wasn’t really into the smell that went with it. Read more »

Green Cleaning in The Kitchen

The kitchen is the one room in the house that produces the most amount of waste. We throw away food, wrappers, containers, silverware, water bottles, cleaning supplies, grocery bags, etc., etc., etc. The list could go on for days, the amount of things that we dispose of in the kitchen. By making a small investment now, you will be able to cut your costs for your kitchen by as little as half, just by switching to reusable products that you wash and reuse. Read more »

DIY Upholstery & Carpet Cleaner That’s WAY Better Than Resolve!

Yesterday I got my Lavender essential oil (that I ordered from Amazon) in the mail. I was so very excited to see the UPS truck pull up to the house, that I nearly knocked my son over in the process to get to the door! I really wanted something that smelled less antiseptic than the Tea Tree oil and vinegar do. As soon as I opened my package, I set about making up a new batch of my All Purpose cleaner, only I decided to get creative in the process. What came out of this recipe was surely worth the little amount of time I spent putting it together. Read more »

Green Cleaning Shopping List

I have several other articles to write today, but first I really wanted to get a quick one out on what you actually need to purchase to start cleaning green in your home. In the beginning it may seem more costly to make this lifestyle change, but this is only because you are having to purchase the items that you are going to continue to reuse for longer than those commercial cleaners could hope to hang around your house. Read more »