Hey There- Can you believe it is March already?
So here’s what I’ve got on the iPhone this week…
One of the other blogs I check from time to time has been doing some “simple pleasure” posts that I’ve found kind of nice, so I wanted to share some thoughts on that…
I always like reading about what people find cool and useful, so here goes. So right now, I’m kind of in love with The Honest Company.
Basically, it is eco cleaning and house supplies mailed to your house. The company was founded by Jessica Alba and Christopher Gavigan (the latter being the author of “Healthy Child, Healthy World”).
Now, basically, if you know me, you know cleaning is not my favorite thing to do in the world. I appreciate it when things are neat and tidy, but in general cleaning is not my end goal. My goal in this regard is to match the S. household, an Italian family I grew up with across the street. Their house was IMMACULATE, but Mrs. S was known for her awesome rice balls (I still think about them). Apparently they made tomato sauce from scratch – grown with tomatoes from the yard. I still remember the rows of neat jars in their shed – and this was Jersey City mind you. So the house was beautiful, but there was still super tasty treats coming out of the kitchen among other things.
In general I vacillate between feeling that life is too short to spend too much time cleaning the house but appreciating cleanliness is a major reason for the health advances in the last 200 years. Plus I understand if you can’t make those chocolate chip cookies in under 12 minutes cause the kitchen is trashed, then that is a problem too. So the knife cuts both ways.
Of course, cleaning the house at the expense of adding to the chemical load in our water and soil is just not worth it. To quote the Super Baby Food book, “Kids are more important than the carpet".”
Now, when I share this sentiment, I hear back, from time to time, “We used these products growing up and we are all okay”. My main answer is as follows:
1) The products are not the same. They change the formulations. Oreos are smaller than they once where – it is not your imagination. (Companies are under no legal obligation to tell you when their formulations change).
2) The products are not made in the same place. With the focus on cost cutting, many of our products are made in places that have less than stringent oversight. Add point 1+2 and very often we are not talking about the same stuff.
3) We are not all okay.
However, this is not a place for an eco-rant so I will stop there and just say that certainly the eco aspect was certainly a reason to think twice about doing something I was already not terribly excited to do. When Matt is playing nicely in the tub, that would be a great opportunity to give a quick swish to the toilet – but really toilet bowl cleaner feels like it is pesticide grade practically. Why would I want to spread that stuff around when he is in the room? Heck, what could be growing in the toilet that could be worse than long term exposure to the chemicals in that stuff? Toilet bowl ring is not attractive true but I’ve not read of flesh eating bacteria attacking people via their toilets (knock on wood). Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in “kill everything at all cost” direction.
Any-who, enter the Honest Company and their nice, reasonable, effective, low environmental impact and super cute products. Did I mention how cute they were? So cute! Plus they are not too extreme, they just seem very sensible to me. So totally under the column listed “simple pleasures” I can write – my monthly box from The Honest Co.
However, if an aversion to cleaning is genetic, Matt did not get it. Ex: I’ve been trying to do more project time with him, especially as he is getting older…
I saw this kaleidoscope painting thing on pinterest. Basically you take an empty container, poor some paint in with a small ball (marble or something) and shake it around to make designs…
Raw Supplies
Matt loved pouring in the colors
This particular project fell down a little cause I didn’t have a little marble or ball – so in hunting around the kitchen I had some very old, not edible, cashews. I figured they’d rattle quite nicely in the container but no such luck. If you decide to try this project, I think an actually marble might be the-way to go (or maybe more watered down paint)? It certainly was very gloopy.
One thing I learned doing this project is that clearly, Matt doesn’t like a mess…
p.s. Still cold weather means one or two more cottage pies before the weather gets warmer and it won’t feel right to eat them…
