Getting to know you

I got one of those silly surveys friends sometimes send to one another in an effort to talk about themselves. Sure I answered it.

What caught my attention was a question about favorite smells. Many of the women (all moms) said they liked the smell of a clean house.

After watching more daytime television than I care to admit, and having wandered down a cleaning product aisle at the grocery store every once in a while, I can tell you, that smell is not the smell of clean.

In fact, it's probably exactly the opposite.

Many cleaning products contribute to indoor air pollution, which can be 2 to 5 times higher in your house than outside. The chemicals (or volatile organic compounds) in cleaning products, air fresheners and dry-cleaned clothes can contribute to a number of health woes, including damage to the central nervous system.

Air fresheners are the worst in my book. They provide a very strong smelling product meant to conjure images of clean, when one organization found phthalates (known to cause birth defects and reproductive harm) in 12 of 14 air fresheners testing, including those labeled as "all natural."

The truly safe cleaning products, such as those sold by the company Seventh Generation, are great, but expensive. For most of my cleaning, I stick to baking soda, washing soda and vinegar. Try to buy soap instead of detergent, which contains petroleum products.

And for a fresh, clean smell, open a few windows. You might find the outside actually smells OK.

Doing what works

I recently considered the possibility of going back to work. Now, all you SAHMs out there, don't get all hot-headed and bitchy with your "raising children IS work" argument. Sure it's work, but not the salary kind I'm thinking about.

But after some serious thinking following my initial interview, I called to cancel the second interview. In my pros/cons lists, the side came out nearly even, not nearly enough to ditch the tan, buy a car and go suit shopping.

Here's what I learned in my silent deliberations.

• Buying a car would be almost a necessity. That means a car payment, insurance, gas and the probability I'll actually use this car (unlike the clunker sans working air we currently own which I avoid at nearly all costs) meaning more money on gas. This wouldn't be very Mothering Earth-like behavior.

• Homecooking would take a backseat to sleep. Cooking good, wholesome, inexpensive meals at home is time consuming. In fact, when I went on the interview I called my husband and asked about lunch. He asked if I could just pick up Taco Bell. Taco Bell?! I haven't eaten this kind of low-grade food in months. It was delicious, but I had to run an extra mile just to justify it.

• Speaking of running, that would be the end of that. Again, sleep has to take priority. I run in the morning when everybody's home. I can't very well go for a run at night when the girls are in bed before Steve gets home. And darn it all if I don't want to spend at least 30 minutes with my spouse everyday.

• Childcare. This is a biggie. I'm not opposed to childcare, but it's expensive and it really goes against this whole simple life we've concocted for ourselves. One more year before my oldest starts kindergarten and then it's all over but the teen-age angst.

• All the little things. The line drying. The garden. The homemade cleaning products. These are the products of a person focusing on the home. I realize it would be nice to communicate with adults on issues unrelated to potty training, but potty training will come and go. Jobs will come again. This simple life of using less, wanting less and loving almost every minute of it, this could come and go.

But I'm going to hang on as long as I can.

What a line

I just want to sing the praises of the clothesline of a moment.

It's one of the easiest ways to eco-fy your house. And, unlike many very small (and cheap! hooray) changes, it packs a pretty big punch. I like to put in a load of laundry every night (I'm lucky to have a timer, but sometimes I wait until I wake up to start) and line dry late morning until early afternoon.

I do one load of laundry everyday, unless it rains. I can take it down at noon, or if I'm busy, later. It doesn't matter because line-dried clothes don't wrinkle like they do in the dryer. In fact, I have some clothes that have to be ironed no matter how quickly I retrieve them from the dryer, unless I hang them on the line.

Alexander Lee, Director of Project Laundry List, was recently quoted here:

One dryer, he knows today, eats up to $100 or more in power each year while emitting up to a ton of carbon dioxide. Collectively, America's more than 80 million dryers annually burn 6 to 10 percent of all residential electricity — second only to refrigerators and the equivalent of 30 million tons of coal or the output of the nation's 15 least productive nuclear reactors.

Stop all that just by hanging your laundry. Lee has a new blog for his organization that gives tips, musings and news all about the clothesline. I swear by it!

Awesome reasons for line drying

Yesterday, I tumbled dried a load of laundry due to a cold and rainy day. But because I'm me, the housekeeping equivalent of a forgetful nomad, I forgot to take remove the clothes from the dryer in a timely manner and ended up with a wrinkled mess.

My solution? Take the worst wrinkled, which are generally the things that should look flattened like dress shirts and cotton pants, and hang them on my sunny line for a bit.

Sunshine fresh and no iron. Who wouldn't love that?

Laundry a go-go

Today, my new high efficiency, front-loading washing machine was delivered.

It was almost too much excitement for one day, proving once again how incredibly lame I am. I don't even like to do laundry (no, really, you ask) but this new piece of machinery, along with it's low-energy use and ability to actually clean my clothes rather just get them wet while I scrub them vigorously with a toothbrush, really has my blood pumping.

But I do have a bit of a dilemma. Turns out, you can't use any old laundry soap with these machine. Oh no. That would be too —oh, I don't know — common. Instead, I sent my husband to the store for HE (high efficiency for all you commoners out there) soap, which was $12 for 64 loads.

Are you kidding me? I just spent a year making my own soap for about $2 a month.

So I checked the Web and found high sudsing is the main culprit for messing with these new washers. Homemade soap does not do much sudsing. This site here does a good job of pondering this dilemma.

For now, I'll stick to the Tide we bought, but I'll return to this issue soon. I just think if we're going to make washers that save energy and money, we should save a little money.

Cheap Green Tip 6: Switch to vingear

Once in a grocery store, I walked by a pretty, little co-ed musing over the vinegar selection.

"What's the difference," she asked her equally pretty boyfriend, "between balsamic vinegar and white vinegar?"

Well, one is used for cooking and the other for cleaning toilets. I left the young couple to mull over this quandary.

White vinegar is an amazing cleaner and can substitute for products from fabric softener to Windex. It's so inexpensive you'll think about treating yourself to some high quality red wine vinegar. Who am I kidding — I meant red wine.

But don't stop there. Regular household cleaners contribute to indoor pollution, which can be 2 to 5 times as high indoors. Scrub the bathtub with baking soda. Substitute lemon juice for bleach. Did you know you can make your own laundry detergent?

And with all these natural products, no risk of poisoning your family. Fill a spray bottle with 1/3 vinegar to 2/3 water, give the kids a rag and let them help with light cleaning. Internet recipes abound but here are a few of my favorites.

Tip: The biggest complaint about vinegar is the streaking. Help by wiping down the cleaned window/mirror with wadded up newspaper (that's a old-timey tip I got from my grandma) and never clean in direct sunlight.

Cheap Green Tip 5: Line dry

Hanging the laundry out to dry is one of the easiest, and best feeling, ways to go green. I honestly think the whole process of hanging clothes is the quintessential example of how being more eco-friendly really means getting back to basics.
And this, in turn, means saving money.

Line drying can save you $100 a year in utility bills (there are other great reasons to line dry at that link). Also, dryers are tough on clothes so line-drying helps them last a little longer.

Bonus for busy parents, line-dried clothes don’t wrinkle as much, which means you can leave them out until you’re ready to revisit the laundry. The same cannot be said about clothes left in the dryer.

Not all communities have this kind of romantic impression about clothes swaying in the breeze on a blue-skied spring afternoon while you're wearing a flowy white dress. In fact, many homeowners associations prohibit laundry lines.

If you’re an unlucky owner of a home in one of these evil lovely neighborhoods, you can always buy a simple wooden dryer rack. It’s a great, absolutely free humidifier in those super dry winter months. Or if you live in Arizona. Or you like moisture.

Tip: If you’re hanging a line outside, consider two levels. The lower level can hold kid clothes and they can help with the laundry.