Notice how even some of the greenest cleaning products come in plastic bottles?

I took this photo at the Concord Co-op, our best local source of green products, bulk food and fairly affordable organics.  I was paralyzed by the choices.  I don’t have a clue how to decide which products are worth buying and/or worth using.  I’m going to continue to try to scrub the bathrooms with baking soda but there are only so many hours in a day.

And I’m clearly not the only one struggling with the proper amount of plastic to let into my life:

Trine Tsourderos of The Chicago Tribune spent a week attempting to live plastic free. With a 7 month old son in diapers, a sippy cup wielding toddler and a husband. The good news is that she was so flummoxed as to what to eat that was not encased in plastic that she lost some weight. The bad news is that plastic is so pervasive in our world that she was unable to be plastic free for even one day.  

When she noted that her green-clean house smelled of salad dressing and Christmas I both laughed out loud and made a mental note to buy tea tree essential oil — the t.t.o. is allegedly antibacterial and doesn’t smell like Christmas. I guess our house will smell like salad dressing and…tea?

With the aforementioned 5 boys, that will be pretty good.

I’ve got a green hangover this morning.

Last night we hosted the Concord High Alpine team for a pre-race pasta dinner. 20 athletes plus assorted parents, coaches and siblings.

I tried to be really green: no disposable plates or cutlery or cups or napkins.

Oh, and also no water in the kitchen. The pipes to the sink and dishwasher are frozen — so now all this has to be carried into the mud room and hand washed in the utility sink.  Just thinking about it makes my already chapped hands hurt.  We’ll see how those Skoy cloths hold up to all this.

Despite the extra work, it was really pretty easy to green the team dinner right up. I have about 40 plastic dinner plates that I have bought on sale over the years for outdoor barbecues. I’ve already mentioned my giant collection of metal forks from the Salvation Army Store, and unlike a recent meat loaf disaster, the pasta didn’t require a hacksaw knife to get it into bite sized pieces.  Last year I picked up about 20 packages of cloth napkins at the Company C tent sale (four for two bucks!) and I bought soda in cans (and wine in bottles).

I’m also feeling pretty good about all the money I didn’t spend. I am thinking it would have cost at least $20 to buy disposable products for that many people, more for cute stuff.

Still, and I know it’s wrong, but a tiny part of me wishes we had just filled a couple garbage bags with paper plates and paper napkins and plastic forks and plastic cups, and had gone to bed with a spotless kitchen.

The Skoy cloths arrived from an E-Bay store, The Healthy Cottage, and my snap judgement (typically wrong) is that they are decidedly odd. Hyped by a bunch of green bloggers, Skoy is supposed to be the environmentally friendly alternative to paper towels. Allegedly each cloth replaces 15 rolls of paper towels.  I buy used to buy 2 rolls of the Seventh Generation brand a week for $3.00 so the 15 rolls would be $22.50, and the skoys were 3 bucks each.  Green and cheap?  Is that even possible?

Well…….

First of all they are kind of small, about 7 inches square. B: They have to be wet to work, which to my tiny brain seems counter-intuitive. That they are wet and floppy just adds to my perception that they are a new generation of the dreaded, ever-smelly Handi-wipes that my mother always had draped over the faucet in our 1970s kitchen. So I keep using them as a sponge and not as a paper towel.  and 4:  they are kind of clammy feeling.  I am so the old dog.

At least they are cute.

More once the stranger danger wears off…..

Maybe it’s because I was raised by the neatest woman in North America, the kind of woman who had three extra cords spliced into her vacuum so that she could buzz through the house without switching outlets and a pair of rubber gloves stashed beneath every sink, or maybe it’s because I have five boys who take the horseshoe and hand grenade approach to toilet usage (i.e. close still counts) but I have to confess that I love the smell of bleach.

Can a girl who loved her Tang give up the chemicals and their powerful odors to green up house cleaning? I am a little skeptical about both the cost of green alternatives, and the ability of the nice stuff to really get the bathroom clean, but I’m willing to give it a try. Today I took the advice of Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish and bought an industrial sized box of baking powder and about a gallon of vinegar. I plan to try to use some rags (no shortage of those, thanks again to the 5 boys and their ever decomposing wardrobes) and maybe some newspaper to clean glass.

When my beloved Tide runs out, I’ll need something for the high efficiency washer we have just bought, so if anyone has any thoughts on that, please let me know….