Crunchy

A video went around facebook recently:  “Sh*t Crunchy Mamas Say”…. I’ve said most of them.  Nathan often teases me that I’m a hippy in disguise.  I use family cloth, breastfeed, cloth diaper, practice elimination communication, baby-wear, am delaying vaccinations, use homeopathics & herbal medicine, & bed-share.  I had a homebirth with a doula and midwives, and encapsulated my placenta. I’m studying the use of herbs and aromatherapy. I know how to make bread and soft cheeses at home, although I don’t do either as often as I’d like. We use coconut oil for all sorts of things. We have a “bug out kit” in the front porch so that if we needed to evacuate in a hurry we’d have the basics we need to survive on for a while. We eat about 2/3 vegetarian, and most of the meat we use is purchased locally from a farmer-friend we trust. We only use household & personal care products that are both planet and human friendly - I make as many of those products as I can.

Before I start sounding too virtuous though, I ate Chocolate Cheerios for breakfast, and polished off a couple hot dogs for lunch yesterday.  I don’t eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables.  I like the *idea* of exercise but more often than not I spend the time watching tv instead. I have a sweet tooth and would gladly eat sugary stuff at every meal of the day and snacks in between (ahem – I’m eating Chocolate Cheerios straight out of the box while I type).   I have black thumbs so don’t garden – the only thing I’ve managed to keep alive is an aloe vera and a few potted tomatoes.  Nathan & I both own cars which we drive regularly.   I don’t rinse out my jars when I recycle. I really enjoy a long hot shower, and I still shave.  I own a smartphone & can’t imagine giving up that piece of technology.  I’m pretty much addicted to facebook.  I know how to can/preserve things but am totally envious of how much food my friends Lesley & Suzanne put up each year. I’m kind of a hippy… kind of in disguise.

All that being said, there is a constant tug-of-war between my desire to live in a way that is human and planet friendly, our need to live frugally, and how much effort I want to put into these things.  We’re certainly not poor, but if we had to purchase ready-made all the household & personal things that I make, we wouldn’t be able to afford to live as eco-consciously. When you make it yourself you have full control over the ingredients, and you save both money and plastic packaging.  But sometimes I just feel lazy and so I don’t make the effort that I should.  I mostly skip canning/preserving because it means I have to wash more dishes in the process.  I hate dishes.

Anyhow - one of the products which has eluded me is Shampoo/Conditioner.  I’ve tried a variety of recipes and never been happy with the results, so I buy either Prairie Naturals or Nature Clean Herbal.  Both are good products IMO and are the most reasonably priced shampoo/conditioner I’ve been able to find.  Still, $13.99 for a 500mL bottle (60¢ per use) rubs the wrong way when you know  you can buy a bottle of cheap ordinary shampoo for less than $5 for 1000mL (10¢  per use)   So about a month ago I started something I never thought I’d do…. I went shampoo free.  Apparently we don’t really need shampoo, and we only need conditioner because we use shampoo.  I made a mix  of 15mL baking soda to 250mL water to wash with (I used about 1/3 of it on my shoulder length layered curly hair) and did the same ratio for an Apple Cider Vinegar rinse.  I’ve been told that it can take a few weeks for your hair & scalp to adjust to this new regime but so far so good.  I bought a boar bristle hair brush for $10, and that helps too as it distributes the oil from your scalp. My hair looks a little different, but I’m still comfortable going out of the house with it.  The baking soda/ACV regime works out to a measly 6¢ per use, so I'm hopeful that the good results will continue.

Making Concessions

Last week I wrote about night laundry.  Our dryer had broken, so even though it’s February I was hanging laundry on the line to dry.  The weather was clear and mild.  I was putting laundry on the line in the evening either while Nathan was watching Levi or after they’d both gone to bed.  I was excited to be saving electricity – good for the planet and our bank account. I loved the winter fresh smell when our laundry came in, and the whitening power of sunlight.

And then it rained.  I couldn’t hang the laundry outside. I ran out of room to hang laundry inside. I ran out of fitted cloth diapers because they were so slow to dry indoors.  (I pulled some prefolds out of storage to tide us over) Nathan took a second look at the dryer and discovered a small connection had been missed.  Voila! We had a dryer again. Hanging laundry outside works when the weather is clear at the times I have available to go hang it outside and we’re not expecting rain or snow before I’ll have time to bring it in again. So I’m making  concessions.  The diapers are in the dryer; the load of whites are out on the line.  I’ll take it ‘one load at a time’ and do what’s necessary to keep us all clean and dry.

The other concession I’ve had to make lately is in the area of sleep and night weaning.  Levi was a great sleeper until a growth spurt, teething, and the time change collided on the same weekend when he was 6 months old.  He was up every couple hours all night long.  To preserve our sanity, Levi started sleeping in bed with Nathan & I so that he could nurse as needed through the night while I at least rested.  3 months of this came and went.  I was supposed to go on-call in late February. Nathan could manage to distract Levi with solids and a bottle during the day, but if I got called out to a birth and Nathan had to feed Levi in the middle of the night – that would be a whole different matter.  I made the decision to night-wean, and Levi would go back to sleeping in his crib next to our bed.  I would hold, rock, bounce, jiggle, and sing to him as needed – but no milk. And no bed-sharing either because then Levi gets desperate looking for the milk.  Not that he’s hungry, he mostly likes to twiddle and play.  Let me tell you – that’s a little distracting to sleep through!  It’s been going reasonably well.  He’s still awake a few times a night.  If it’s a good night I can pat his bottom and he’s back to sleep. On the hard nights I’m up bouncing him multiple times. I said from the beginning that if he cried or was obviously hungry then *of course* I would feed him. That hasn’t happened… until this weekend.  Thursday he slept from 10:30pm to 6:30am.  I was overjoyed.  I thought we’d finally turned the sleep corner.  Yeah right.  Friday night he nursed to sleep at 10:15 but woke up for more milk just as I was going to lay him down.  He went to bed at 11, I came to bed at 11:30, he was up at 12:30.  I patted him back to sleep.  12:40 he woke up;  I patted him back to sleep.  12:50 he woke up;  I patted him back to sleep.  1:00am he woke up; I finally get out of bed to bounce him back to sleep – that usually works in less than 5 minutes.  Not this time.  After 45 minutes of trying, Nathan got up to take a turn while I rested.  After 45 minutes of Nathan trying it was my turn again. It’s now 2:30 in the morning.  I really get desperate and turn the tv on to watch a movie in the hope he’ll be mesmerized to sleep.  Not the healthiest choice I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  Uh huh.  That didn’t work either.  By now it’s 3am and Levi is wide awake and irritable.  As am I.  I manage to find a moment of clarity though in which I realize the only reason I was night-weaning was because of going on-call in March.  I’m not on-call after all.  Forget it then!  Let’s feed this kid some milk and call it a night.  3:30am I tuck him into his crib and burrow down for a few good hours myself.  You guessed it.  4:30am he’s awake again.  But it’s okay.  This time he’s just coming to bed with me.  I don’t go on-call again until the end of April.  By then he’ll be pretty much a year old and Nathan won’t have to mess with defrosting breastmilk to feed him.  Let’s just go to sleep.

I had been determined to hold firm.  On using the laundry line, on night-weaning, on so many things.  But life is too complex to hold firm.  Sometimes you have to make concessions, let go, change your mind.  For sanity’s sake.

Night Laundry

I've noticed lately that it's been taking our dryer longer and longer to get things dry.  An average size load takes over two hours, and sometimes even that isn't enough.  We mostly line dry in the summer, but it's February.  Seriously?!  What kind of nut line dries in February?  Apparently me.

Our dryer died this week, the same day our electricity bill arrived: 

5 kilowat hours/day during On-Peak time

5 kilowat hours/day during Mid-Peak time

33 kilowat hours/day duing Off-Peak time.

Yes, it's great that we've managed to arrange our lives so that over 75% of our electricity usage is during the lowest-cost Off-Peak period.  But 33 kW?!  That's a lot of electricity compared to the rest of the day.  The main thing we do during Off-Peak hours is laundry, especially drying.

I put two and two together (broken dryer we can't really afford to replace + electricity bill which shows the dryer is our biggest energy hog) and decided that we'd try going without a dryer.

11pm laundry under a skiff of snow.

What can I say?  I'm frugal.  It does take a bit more time, but so far it hasn't been too much of an inconvenience.  I wash one medium load of laundry in the evening, hang it on the line for overnight through till the next day sometime, then bring it in and hang it on a rack under a furnace vent in the basement to finish.  I do the same with a small load of diapers each night.  If its snowing or raining, clothes go directly to the indoor rack.  If we are due for a multi-day stretch of clear weather, then I do towels & bedding. Strictly speaking the outdoor step isn't necessary, but it makes our clothes smell great (winter fresh!) and it allows me to have multiple loads going at once.

I thought I'd hate it.  I thought I didn't have time. I thought only crazy environmental frugalistas line-dried in the dead of winter. Nathan immediately dismantled the whole thing to find what was broken and repair it if possible.  When it started blowing the breaker each time we tried using it, he was willing to buy a replacement (used) dryer by the end of the week if needed.  But if we don't have a dryer, we can't use it, and that means a lower electricity bill.  Yep, I'm that kinda crazy.