My favorite sustainable household products

Lots of you know we have been working for a long time toward a smaller carbon footprint. I am still a mom of four in a fully capitalist society, and everything I buy seems to come packaged in plastic film, cardboard boxes, or both… but we’re trying. These are a few honest reviews (nothing sponsored) about what is working for us (or not.) You can find past posts on this journey here and here and here.

Best finds:

WHO GIVES A CRAP (plastic-free toilet paper)

Okay, I know it’s weird to start with this, but it was the first product I found, and I’m a chronological girl.

TP is important around here, and this TP is soft, sustainable (the kind we buy is 100% recycled paper,) and packaged entirely in paper (including the wrappers around the rolls, the cardboard box it’s shipped in, and the paper tape on the box.) I buy it in boxes of 48 rolls. Added bonus: half their profits go toward building toilets in water-insecure places.

EARTH BREEZE Laundry Detergent

At the risk of sounding like one of the ads that may have popped up on a free phone game (which is exactly how I found them,) I have to say I love this detergent. Each one of these envelopes holds enough detergent to wash 60 loads. The sheets of detergent actually dissolve in cold water without leaving a residue. I tried several brands of detergent pods, and all left sticky starch residue on our clothes if we didn’t wash everything in hot water.

No, I’m not trying to corner the market in Earth Breeze, but I did buy a year’s worth so I could send a package with each of kids to college/grad school.

DROPPS Dishwasher Pods

These pods come without any plastic packaging or microplastics in the pods themselves. I am sure the detergent would still be toxic if you swallowed one, so keep them out of reach of children, but the packaging is entirely recyclable. And my dishes get clean.

I do not, however, recommend their laundry detergent pods.

RIDWELL Recycling Service

My kids’ orthodontist turned me on to Ridwell, so I asked for a subscription last Christmas. It’s a biweekly home pickup of my hard-to-recycle items, and I LOVE IT. Every pickup includes plastic film (think ziplock bags, bread bags, cereal bags, and all that clear packaging that everything you buy is wrapped in,) threads (fabric including clothes that aren’t in good enough condition to resell,) alkaline batteries, and light bulbs, and a “featured” item that rotates. So far they have picked up our extra school supplies, corks, CCDs and DVDs, ski/snowboard equipment (this pickup might be particular to Colorado,) kitchen ware, Prom dresses, electronics, winter and clothes. You can also pay a little extra for a pickup of Styrofoam or Latex paint. Next week’ pickup is books. They’d better bring a big truck.

Ridwell does all the legwork of finding local organizations that will repurpose these items. Many of you may prefer to do that work on your own, but I just don’t have the bandwidth for that. Plus each pick-up serves as a gentle nudge to clean more out of our house.

LOOFAHS for doing the dishes

I was skeptical, but I am now a firm believer in using a loofah (made from a gourd) to clean my dishes. It is just abrasive enough to get the stuff off, and it holds up well for a time or two through the dishwasher. When it begins to disintegrate, I throw it in my compost. It never seems to get that yucky sour-sponge smell, and a sixpack from my local Zero Market lasted me a year. They also hold up in the dishwasher,

I have yet to find any dish soap that works as well as Dawn, so I use that on the loofah.

STEEL/COPPER SCRUBBIE to clean my cast iron

I no longer have a non-stick pan. I have all metal cookware (thanks, all you nice people who bought us pans for our wedding 26 years ago) and one cast iron skillet I bought at Ace Hardware. I scrub it with the copper or steel scrubbie (I think I found this one in a six-pack on Amazon) without any soap, and heat it till dry. So far it has lasted longer than the Teflon on any of my nonstick pans.

I have thrown the scrubbies in the dishwasher when they got gross. Unfortunately, our local recycling does NOT accept these for recycling, though I have read that they are recyclable in some areas.

Also, if you’re looking for some good reading material on this, check out Sharon Schneider’s Handbook for an Integrated Life. Her book is about how to align your economic power with your internal compass. Somehow she managed to synthesize so much (and more) of what we’ve spent years figuring out into a highly readable book.

Seven Quick Takes: Are We There Yet?

One: It’s been a year since Jonah came home for spring break with his laptop and backpack of clothes and then found out he wasn’t going back. As we all know, a year is a long time to be doing… whatever this is we’re doing. It’s not quite perpetual quarantine, but I sure hope this isn’t the new normal.

I definitely had more side effects with the second dose of vaccine: go, immune system, go!

Two: There are signs of hope: vaccinations are rolling out, and I’m so encouraged by the research showing their efficacy. I’m not ready to eat at an indoor restaurant yet, but I did hug my fully-vaccinated parents (and was so happy, I forgot to take a photo.) Jonah is back at college- it doesn’t look like it did pre-pandemic, but he’s on campus and is so grateful for that.

Three: Work is… weird. For everyone’s safety, our office has moved most of our visits to telehealth. It’s great for chronic disease management (looking at you, diabetes!) but terrible for well-child care. So much of my diagnosis is really made through history, but there are some things even a good history can’t tell you. Every day, I see four or five people who have survived their own personal COVID-19 infection and at least one who has lost a loved one to it.

My neighbors made care packages for my medical assistants at work.

Four: I have been walking. I developed a bad case of metatarsalgia in September and haven’t run since. Thanks to a used-car’s worth of orthotics, my foot pain is, better, but I’m still not running. Walking instead is different, but good. I can definitely go longer, and it can be more social. I just passed 200km for the year so far.

A cold walk on New Year’s Day with two of my favorite people.

Five: Owen picked a college. Now we just have to get them through the next seven months till it starts. Early action (that’s the one where you apply early, hear early, but aren’t committed to a school you can’t afford before you get the aid package) is really great. I wish more schools offered it as an option.

I realize what a gift this is: that my kids have had choices, and that they received enough financial aid and scholarships to make it possible for them to choose based on preference and not just dollars. But it also feels like major vindication to me, after all those years of wondering if our choice to homeschool would hamstring my kids. It hasn’t, and for that I am enormously grateful.

Six: The girls and I have been watching The Great British Bake-Off. It is the first time I’ve really appreciated “reality TV.” Now we walk around the house saying things like, “Just a few minutes shy of a perfect bake” and “it’s not bad at all” and craving self-saucing pudding.

Seven: So here we are in 2021, which so far looks a lot like 2020.

As much as the pandemic has been difficult on so many levels, it gave us a bonus ten months together as a family. The massive amounts of time at home together showed our fault lines and took away many of the distractions we’d been using to ignore our problems. For months of 2020, it was just the six of us, the cast of Community and a handful of mental health professionals we were lucky enough to find early on.

February flew by in a haze of doctor’s appointments, parental surgeries and hospital visits. Here’s hoping “in like a lion, out like a lamb” applies to more than weather.

New Year’s Thoughts, 2021

Normally at the close of a year, I spend a little time looking back at what worked and what did not. I like to examine the year’s goals (which recently have been hopes for tweaks in my routine more than resolutions, per se) to see what was “successful.”

But 2020 isn’t a year I can evaluate that way. I haven’t even looked back at last year’s “goals.”  Any metric I would normally apply to 2020 feels pointless. Did Sam and I increase our giving to causes that are important to us?  If we did, I’m sure it wasn’t enough. Did we move the needle toward a more sustainable life at home? Did I write as much as I’d hoped, or meet my exercise goals? No, I didn’t: there was an f-ing pandemic. I didn’t exercise, or write, or spend quality time with my people in any of the ways I had hoped in 2020.

But 2020 was still a success, and I know this because I wrote it down in real time. Day by day, I recorded in a 10-cent spiral notebook (3 of them, actually) exactly what happened last year. In excruciating detail. I can look back and tell you the day that school was canceled. The day that one of my long-time patients died. The day my daughter and I were supposed to leave for Spain (and instead stayed—you guessed it—at home.) The day my friend entered isolation for COVID-19, and the day she emerged. The day I ran/walked a 10K by myself instead of in solidarity with my BRF and 998 strangers.

I can tell you that one of my kids became an activist and somehow used the pandemic as a vehicle to fuel her work. One of my kids had the courage to start working through years of hurt I’d caused him and honored me by letting me do that with him. One of my kids wrote some fantastic college entrance essays and is seeing it pay off.  One of my kids asked for help, and we listened.

Whether you are a Big-Picture Goals person, a Small Habits Reap Big Rewards person, or a person who thinks New Year’s is a crock, I’d encourage you to write it down.  Instead of (or in addition to) looking forward at goals we may or may not accomplish this month or year, take a few minutes each day and record what did happen.  It might be a list, or a doodle, or some stream of consciousness notes. You don’t have to start it January 1, or even the first of any month.  Start today, whenever that is.  Write down three things you’re grateful for, even if those are as mundane as indoor plumbing, a really good apple and the morning quiet before everyone else wakes up. At the end of the week, or the month, or the year, you might discover amid the chaos there was more to celebrate than you thought.

What worked for me in 2019

What didn’t work for me in 2019

What worked (or not) for me in 2018

What worked in 2017

What worked for me in 2016

What worked (or not) in 2015?

What worked (or not) in 2014

Do you keep a journal? What is your favorite part of it?

Provision

Photo credit: Lourene Roode

Anyone tired of the pandemic yet? Yeah, me too. It feels like a repeating cycle of the same mistakes: denial, blame, and no one wanting to do what it takes to get it under control. Everything seems so big, it’s hard to pray. As the numbers of cases and deaths climb, my prayers get smaller and smaller. It reminds me of my experience during the cholera epidemic in Haiti. You can read more in The Well.

Making mistakes

Hey, friends. I’m still here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about white privilege and how it works inexorably in my favor, and against my neighbor. It’s hard to talk and think about, and I’ve been silent on this platform, because I’m uncomfortable with the conversation… so I’m listening and learning. This is work I have to do. Being uncomfortable is good for me, and I hope in the long run it will make the world a better place.

Also, I’ve been thinking about our home school- you know, looking back at this year and our successes and failures and all the meh moments in between. I’ve been thinking specifically about failure, and how important it is for learning. Julie Bogart of Bravewriter talks about how homeschooled kids never get a math problem wrong because their parents won’t let them. It’s funny here, but that was exactly how we worked in our house until I read that statement. Now after I mark their math work, I look for the patterns and decide which problems (if any) I want them to correct. Recently, it’s never more than one or two.

Likewise, I used to correct every little thing they did “wrong,” even when most of them were purely style. I did this in their reading aloud, in their writing, in the way they set the table, in the way they made their beds… all in the spirit of “learning to do it right.” How exhausting for them.

You know what? With most things, there are lots of ways to do it right. And who’s to say that my way of making the bed is better than theirs? Really, it’s just my preference.  My kids learn so much better from making real mistakes, whether it’s getting lost on their bikes, or not having enough money for something they want to buy because they spent some last week on candy.

But then I got to thinking about how my black friends don’t have the luxury of letting their children make mistakes.

If one of my kids talks back to a teacher in a classroom, I’m going to get a phone call. If my black friend’s kid talks back to a teacher, they’re much more likely to get embroiled in the criminal justice system, because we put police in schools.

If one of my kids is driving our car with a broken tail light, they’re going to get a warning or a ticket. If my neighbor’s black teenager gets stopped for driving with a broken tail light, who’s to say he will make it home alive?

This plays out in a million ways, most of which I’ve had the privilege never to consider.

Making mistakes is part of childhood.  It’s a necessary part of learning, and it’s an opportunity we’ve stolen from our brothers and sisters of color, and their children.  I don’t know how to change it, but I want to be part of the culture of change that will give everyone’s children the opportunities I’ve had.

What worked for me in 2019

A few years back, I started a year-end review framed by the two questions, “What worked for me this year?” and “What didn’t work for me this year?” (The questions came from Modern Mrs. Darcy; the answers are my own.) Here’s what worked for me this year:

1. Leaving the twinkle lights up all year

All right, so this photo is from this morning. But imagine the room
without the stockings and still with the lights. Cozy, right?

When we took down all the Christmas decorations last Epiphany, we left the twinkle lights up.  They make those long winter nights (and long, dark mornings) so much cozier.

2. Asking, “How can I support you in this?”

I’m a problem solver, and my go-to response when someone tells me they are hurting is always to try to fix things. This might work most of the time for my own problems, but it’s counterproductive as I try to support those around me. The last thing I want to do (especially for my kids) is make them think that they don’t have the resources to find solutions to their problems.

Asking “How can I support you in this?” has been especially helpful with my kids. It shows I trust them to find a solution, and that I have their backs as they figure it out, whether “it” is advanced academic work, dating, mental health, taking up cello, dancing, travel, or balancing school and work.

3. Writing questions down and leaving them up for everyone to think about

This idea comes from Julie Bogart’s book The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning and Life. She suggests writing questions of all kinds on sticky notes, posting them somewhere you’ll see them a lot… and that’s all. She promises that seeing them every day will produce multiple answers and follow-through, even without intentionally revisiting the questions. Our two “how” questions have prompted significant changes in our driving:biking ratio, the trade-in of our larger minivan for a more gas-efficient vehicle, and a reduction in the plastics we bring into our home. (One of our other questions was, “What will happen to Spiderman now that Sony and Disney split?” I’m not saying that they worked it out just because I put it on a sticky note, but…)

4. Listening to audiobooks

I have three different audiobook apps on my phone (two from the library in addition to Audible), and while it’s confusing, using them has made my reading life so much richer.

5. Bowls

I have changed our cooking to include many more “bowls.”  It has made the challenge of cooking for two vegetarians and 3-4 omnivores easier. (By “vegetarian,” I mean a teenager who won’t eat meat but doesn’t necessarily eat vegetables. By “omnivore” I mean a person who will eat meat but on the whole is just as picky as the aforementioned vegetarians.)

Our bowls are built with a base (salad, roasted vegetables, rice, quinoa, farro or pasta), a variety of toppings (fried eggs, roasted tofu, meat, vegetables, seeds and nuts) and a sauce. My two favorite sources for bowl ideas are Run Fast. Eat Slow and Run Fast. Cook Fast. Eat Slow by Elyse Kopecky & Shalane Flanagan. I think it’s the variety of sauces that make this feel like you’re not eating the same thing twenty-one times each week.

• The kids’ cleaning schedule

A few months ago, I told our kids I was frustrated with how much cleaning I was doing, especially when I saw them sitting around having screen time. They came up with a plan and have faithfully followed through with it. It has been a real gift to me, and seems sustainable.  I’m trying to be as faithful in using my free time for the writing and studying I was missing.

What worked for you in 2019?

What’s working lately?

We are 1/3 of the way through our year of school. Here’s what’s working right now.

Field trips:
We’ve taken some pretty awesome field trips thus far.

Washington, D.C.
Highlights included our days at the monuments, the Library of Congress, and the National Portrait Gallery. (More on the trip here.)

The Denver Art Museum. We met my parents for the Monet Exhibit, which was packed but beautifully curated.

(Look how Monet captured the water and the reflection of the boats. It makes me want to paint the photo I took above of the Washington Monument reflected in the Potomac.)

Monet’s Grainstacks in Snow have always been my favorite.

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra’s concert for Beethoven’s birthday. This year I bought our tickets early, and we got to sit right behind the orchestra. It was fantastic being so close to the musicians, and being able to see the conductor’s facial expressions. Plus, the CSO rocks.

By the time the performance started, all the seats across were full.

The Denver Botanic Gardens. This trip was made especially wonderful by Aunt Mandy, who was here visiting.

One year, I tried to schedule us a field trip once a week. That was too much, even though no one was juggling AP classes or extracurriculars yet. One year, I just didn’t have it in me to schedule anything ahead, and I didn’t manage to arrange any field trips. By the time February rolled around, we were all sick of each other and our work.

This year, the kids are old enough that I (mostly) let them opt in or out of our field trips, depending on how their work is going. They’ve mostly opted in, which makes me think one field trip per month might be just about right. (Thanks, Goldilocks.)

We are still loving our weekly Poetry Teas. (Poetry Tea is a suggestion from Julie Bogart of Brave Writer.) We don’t have a huge agenda. We just drink tea and read or write poetry. Sometimes my 10th grader tags along for tea and does her biology homework while Phoebe and I write poetry. Sometimes all three of us exchange words and write poems together. It’s my favorite part of our week.

Okay, so not everyone gets tea. Sometimes they get milkshakes.

The other thing that’s working around here is the habit of work. Charlotte Mason promised me when the kids were little that laying down the rails of habit would pay off later. How I clung to that promise! And for the most part, it has worked. The kids are in the habit of getting their work done every day, and doing their chores, and treating each other with kindness and respect. I am so grateful for the work we did in those early years to make routines and habits of work and kindness.

What’s working in your home school this year?

Happy Mother’s Day

I ordered Sam a gift for Father’s Day. I know he’s not my dad, but my kids stink at doing anything for Father’s Day or Mother’s Day, so I thought I’d pick up the slack for them just this once. Anyway, when it came, my daughter was convinced the box contained something for her and she talked him into opening it before I got home. So he found his gift already. Happy Father’s Day.

I know many moms want to spend Mother’s Day spending wonderful family time together, but my M-O has always been to spend Mother’s Day doing something away from my family. For years, I would leave them immediately after church and disappear for hours until dinner. Sometimes I’d go to a coffee shop to write. A few times I took a hike. Whatever I chose, it was always by myself: a smidge of the precious alone-time that fills my tank. Now that my tank has a little more in it than it did when I had littles, I like to spend Mother’s Day working on Labor and Delivery. It’s a chance to pay forward all the coaching and cheerleading I have received over my many years of being a mom.

One of my favorite parts of my work is helping new parents transition from life-as-adults into life-as-parents. It’s a very different task, and one that requires not just education, but a cheerleader. When I was a new mom in 2000, I was still using a camera with film (anyone else remember what that was?), and all the photos of my oldest child are either with him as a tiny speck far away, or really close up and really blurry. When I transitioned into part-time work in 2003 to spend more time at home, I discovered parenting blogs on the internet. There I found a community of parents who were struggling and were honest about it. Uploading photos to the internet was still a pain, so the pictures of messy houses and chaos were painted in words. Those stories of how hard parenting could be held me up through the next few really busy years as we moved to Colorado, had baby #3 and began to home school. Soon after that, I joined the ranks of (mostly) moms sharing stories of the good, the bad and the ugly online.

What I see now online lately is a new beast, one with perfectly curated photos and “influencers” who make everything look like it’s going to beautiful and easy if you only listen to this podcast or buy this pressure cooker or monthly subscription box they are advertising. What used to be a lifeline for me has turned into yet another place I can go to feel bad about yelling at my kids and having a messy house and weak abs.

So Happy Mother’s Day to you. May you find a safe place to cry if that’s what you need. May you have enough quiet to hear the truth that you can do this. It’s not going to be perfect, or even beautiful most of the time. But you are enough. You have what it takes, even if the neighbors might hear you yelling at your kids now that it’s warm enough to have the windows open, and your kids are more resilient than you know. I believe in you.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Growth v. Confidence

This has been a challenging year for us as a family, and as homeschoolers. I can’t share much of that here, but I want to reflect for a minute about one particular pitfall of homeschooling, and how I’m trying to work around it.

My school experience as a kid was one of boredom. I spent years finishing my work before the rest of the class and having to sit quietly at my desk while other kids finished. When they “pioneered” a gifted-and-talented program at my school, it meant that after I finished the regular work, they would pull me out and give me more work. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that maybe a few of us should have different work, or be able to work at our own pace.

That experience led me to design our homeschool to be a place where my kids could work at their own pace(s). When they master a concept, they move on to the next thing. The idea was not to “waste” any time sitting around being bored by repeating the same old information they’ve already mastered. On the other hand, if they need more time on a topic, we can spend as much time as they need before moving on.

We’ve been doing that for twirteen years now, and for the most part it has worked well. Most of our time is spent at the growing edge, or at the place where we’re all being stretched.  I have noticed one problem, though, and it’s this: living at the growing edge can be pretty uncomfortable. And tiring. Working at the growing edge doesn’t ever let you rest in a place of mastery, which builds confidence.

There are several sources of confidence. One is internal, where the experience of repeated success causes us to trust our skills and our mastery of a subject or skill. The other is external, where we are able to see our mastery in comparison to others, or hear from others that we have mastered a subject. (Think: exams, teachers, certificates, races, performances, etc.)

While I hated the boredom of my own education, it was pretty great seeing that I was ahead of everyone else academically. That built my internal confidence. I had many teachers who gave me a lot of messages that built my confidence externally.

In our homeschool, my kids have very little opportunity to compare themselves academically to their peers. Instead, they compare themselves to one another, which leaves my younger children feeling lost as they compare themselves to a much-older, academically very gifted sibling. Our homeschool has effectively erased a major source of external confidence. On top of that, I have eliminated the sense of mastery that comes from lots of repetition by engineering a learning space in which we spend most of our time with new material.

Where do I go from here?

We are trying to spend more time resting in mastery. As much as the repetition grates on me, I need my kids to see how much they know. This means different things for different kids- one needs more opportunities to perform. One needs opportunities to do things without an older sibling making suggestions over her shoulder. Another needs to spend more time reviewing material we’ve already done. They all need opportunities to compare their work to their own peers (instead of to their older siblings.)

What does the balance between growth and confidence look like for you? I’m looking for ideas here, friends, so please don’t be shy sharing in the comments.

Mid-Winter Update: What’s saving my life right now

I’ve enjoyed Modern Mrs. Darcy’s What’s Saving My Life series for a few years. In that spirit, here’s what’s saving my life right now:

Thick hand cream and rubber gloves:

During the winter (and with all my hand-washing in the clinic) my hands get so dry they crack. There are lots of expensive options out there, but I like the $4 Vaseline’s intensive care deep moisture cream. This is not a sponsored post. I think it works; I like the price; I can still open doorknobs afterwards. All the same, I still need to use rubber gloves for all my household tasks involving water.

Candles

For the first time ever, I recently returned a candle to a store because the fragrance was too strong. (No, I hadn’t burned it yet.) Generally, I love candles, the more the merrier. Burning them all winter long (especially in February) makes me feel cozy and warm.

Books

Normally in February, I reach for old favorites. I hate investing my imagination in a new book and discovering I have chosen poorly. Currently on my reading table: Pride and Prejudice and The Westing Game.

Getting Outside

There’s a direct correlation between how much time I spend cooped up indoors and my mood. At this stage in our schooling and in life, I have to be very intentional to make my outside time happen, but when I make it happen, life is better. For all of us.

Music

My current favorite music to listen to includes Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, the music from the musical Waitress, and Ingrid Michaelson.

What’s saving your life right now?