In changing your ways to greener living, the key thing to remember is:

“little things mean a lot”

Meaning, you don’t have to go out marching in Washington or move your family to a yurt in the wilderness to save the earth.

Take your weekly trips to the grocery store, for instance. Just by being aware of what you buy can make loads of difference. For me, the main thing I’ve done in my home is to switch the cleaning supplies I use from the nose-burning, toxic, chemical-laden stuff to non-toxic, bio degradable brands. It was the smell that actually bothered me the most (especially when I was pregnant), so switching to the lovely natural stuff I use now as a surface cleaner, which uses orange oil, is such a great thing.

A small local company in my area makes most of the stuff I buy now (more points for saving on transport fuel) , but even the bigger guys are starting natural, eco-friendly lines now, like Clorox Green Works, which launched early this year. Did you know they bought Burts Bees too?

Here’s a part of a good article I found which should help you in the grocery. Read and heed.

Buy local. When food doesn’t have to travel far, it requires less packaging materials, fewer preservatives and often fewer pesticides. Not only are these processes bad for the environment but they also take away from the taste of the food. Another benefit to buying locally grown food is the shorter distances the produce needs to travel, which results in less damaging greenhouse gases.

Buy environmentally friendly products. Many companies are trying to be more environmentally conscious so look for brands that offer natural products in recycled packages.

Take fewer trips. Car emissions continue to be a major contributor to greenhouse gasses in Canada making carpooling and fewer trips to the grocery store a must. Making a grocery list in advance can help cut down on trips to the store for one-off forgotten items. Organizing a grocery store carpool with friends or neighbours is also a fun way to spend time with people while reducing the number of cars on the road.

Cut down on plastic bags. Canadians use approximately 10 billion plastic bags each year. Reducing that number means bringing reusable grocery bags with you to the store. If you don’t already have some, most stores have their own brand of reusable bags you can purchase while you are there. Another alternative is to use cardboard boxes to carry your groceries or paper bags that can be recycled.

Enter “Eco Balls”, amazing little balls which, when thrown into your wash, do all the work your regular soap does (and claim to kill bacteria too) without any chemicals, detergents and the like. When you work out what you save on soap, the savings are enormous, with something like 6 cents a load with the balls, to approx. 80 cents with detergent, more depending on what brand you buy. You can buy kits which come with refills, stain remover (it doesn’t do that great with heavy stains) as well as dryer balls for “fabric softer” role.

So does it really work? While I wait for my order to arrive, I found a good review worth checking out. The verdict? Some liked it, others were disappointed with its cleaning power. There was also one complaint about how the ball came apart and broke her washing machine. Either way, its a product I think worth trying out for yourself -because I think eliminating detergents would be a great thing.

I’m lucky enough to have hardwood floors in my home but between the kids’ spills and pet mess (we have an elderly dog and a new puppy), cleaning our wooden floors is a challenge. At a loss with what to use, I have simply been using plain water in a bucket with a couple of cap-fulls of citronella. For more severe mess, I keep a spray bottle of water with Citrus Magic all purpose cleaner and use that to mop as well once a week.

Yes, there are lots of products around you can buy, one of the best ones is the one pictured above by Method, who I must say make some really sweet-smelling stuff albeit a bit pricey. My next project is to spend a weekend concocting my own brews to care for wood. Here are some of the recipes I found online that I’ll be trying out:

The Daily Green
Vinegar: Whip up a solution of 1/4 cup white vinegar and 30 ounces of warm water. Put in a recycled spray bottle, then spray on a cotton rag or towel until lightly damp. Then mop your floors, scrubbing away any grime.

Green Living Ideas
Furniture Polish: Mix 1 cup lemon juice with 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp water; lightly apply to furniture using a soft cloth. Let sit for a couple of minutes, then buff.

Eartheasy
Wood Floors: apply a thin coat of 1:1 vegetable oil and vinegar and rub in well.
Furniture Polish: For varnished wood, add a few drops of lemon oil into a 1/2 cup warm water. Mix well and spray onto a soft cotton cloth. Cloth should only be slightly damp. Wipe furniture with the cloth, and finish by wiping once more using a dry soft cotton cloth.
For unvarnished wood: mix two tsps each of olive oil and lemon juice and apply a small amount to a soft cotton cloth. Wring the cloth to spread the mixture further into the material and apply to the furniture using wide strokes. This helps distribute the oil evenly.

One of the mantras in my household is “Wash your hands please”. When the kids get home from school, before mealtimes, before cooking, after playing, after touching the pets and so on. But when you’re out of the house, using water and soap obviously isn’t the most convenient thing. And the solution a lot of people have been using come in the form of antibacterial gels, which are cheap, plentiful and found just about anywhere. The problem with it though, is that terrible ingredient, triclosan, an antibacterial agent found in a lot of products nowadays, from soap to socks! But the fact remains: Triclosan is no better than plain soap.

Several months ago, I read a very disturbing article by a Mom, aptly called: “Cancer or Germs? I’ll Take the Germs!”. She took the time out to do research on the stuff (the things a Mom will do!- bravo) and it made me ban triclosan from my household forever – why? because among other nasties, it causes cancer and is bad for the environment. Enough said. If you want to know more about it, or what products contain it, please go here.

Okay. So we know antibacterial gels with triclosan are bad, but that doesn’t really solve our problem about killing germs while we are on the go. Mind you, soaps have it too, so be wary and always read labels. Well, the best solution is to buy the natural stuff (like Clean Well), or better yet, make it yourself.

Here are some ideas:

Grapefruit seed extract: diluted with distilled water, makes a great all-around germ-killing spray for hands, air, surfaces and even wounds!

Vodka and essential oil: Mixing vodka, essential oil (like lavender) and distilled water, is another easy and cheap alternative. Put it in a spray bottle and keep it handy.

Essential oils and water: Simple yet effective, take your favourite essential oil and mix it with water to create a very natural antibacterial. The most potent are: cinnamon, cloves, verbena, lavender, angelice, juniper, sandal, cedar, thyme and lemon.

The night after her baby brother’s birthday party, my 6-year-old daughter came into our bedroom at around midnight saying “Mom I feel si….” and promptly projectile vomited in the middle of our doorway. The next 24 hours were awful, she couldn’t hold anything down, had a fever, and felt absolutely terrible. Classic symptoms of gastroenteritis. And what I find most annoying is that earlier in the week I had received a letter from her school saying that there were multiple cases of gastro going around the school, and it gave necessary measures on how to avoid it – washing hands, keeping clean, etc. Obviously not easy to do for 6-year-olds in the playground or school canteen.

So now that she had indeed caught the bug, the only thing I could do was to protect the rest of the family, especially her two little brothers. Aside from issuing a strict handwashing policy at home, I took on the task of disinfecting crucial areas like the kitchen, toilets and places my daughter used. I resisted the urge to buy the heavy-duty Lysol, and instead found a website which had some great information on how to make your own less-toxic disinfectants – so you save money, save the earth, keep healthier and hopefully kill a few germs while you’re at it.

Home-made Alternatives

Disinfecting/Deodorizing Cleaner
Add 1/2 cup of borax to 4 litres of warm water.

One hospital used this formulation for cleaning for a year. The monitoring bacteriologist reported that the solution satisfied the hospital’s germicidal requirements. (Dadd)

Disinfectant
Mix 2 teaspoons borax, 4 tablespoons vinegar and 3 cups hot water. For stronger cleaning power add 1/4 teaspoon liquid castile soap. Wipe on with dampened cloth or use non-aerosol spray bottle.

Tea Tree Disinfectant
20 drops tea tree oil (approx. 1/5 tsp. or 1 ml)
20 drops emulsifier
1 cup water or vinegar
Put emulsifier in container. Add oil and blend. Add 1cup water or vinegar.

Cinnamon Disinfectant
12 drops cinnamon oil (approx. 1/8 tsp. or 0.6 ml)
12 drops emulsifier
1 cup water or vinegar
Put emulsifier in container. Add oil and blend. Add 1cup water or vinegar. Shake before using.

Welcome to Yurto, the blog about eco-friendly living in the home. Inspired by the yurt, an ancient circular dwelling place built in tune with nature, we hope to explore the ways we can all make a change for the better in the world that we live in – beginning from our homes.

Why is it so important to go green? Al Gore, who woke up the world with his now-famous documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, puts it succinctly:

“…Some of the leading scientists are now saying we may have as little as 10 years before we cross a kind of point of no return, beyond which it’s much more difficult to save the habitability of the planet in the future…”

10 years??? Now that’s a scary thought.  If you have children like me, that’s enough reason to stop procrastinating and do something about NOW.

So from plastic to canvas, wasting to conserving,  lets find ways to care for the earth while we can and live healthier, happier lives.