Category : Kids Health
The sun is shining and it always seems to emphasize dust – especially in a vehicle. My van is a typical mom mobile – it is for the most part really, really messy. Today we deep cleaned our van and I realized this is another area of our lives where traditional, toxic gimmicks advertising ‘cleaning’ and ‘freshening’ are not necessary! Here are a few simple steps for cleaning your vehicle’s interior without products that contain formaldehyde, phthalates, or fragrance that off-gass into the small confines of your van or car.
Eco-friendly Interior Vehicle Tips
Grab your Dr. Bronner liquid soap. I’ve written about this gentle, organic, fair trade, made in the USA product so many times. But it is my all-in-one household cleaner that also works great on a vehicle’s interior and exterior. Load up a soapy bucket of water with a few squirts of Dr. Bronner (scented or not) and dust the dashboard and any other hard plastic parts of the car. Eliminating dust is important because dust carries lead, phthalates, and can easy be blown around in the small confines of a vehicle. The rag picks up the dust and dirt and leaves behind a wonderful scent – my favorite scented Dr. Bronner soap is the almond scented liquid soap.
How would you ‘air freshen’ your vehicle? Certainly not by purchasing a traditional air freshener seen in any nearby gas station. These contain synthetic fragrance that besides for giving you a headache, contain phthalates once they are hung and start off-gassing your vehicle. There is a must simpler way; dust using a vegetable based soap with essential oil or simply add essential oil directly into water and dust. Or the most obvious – open your car windows and drive! I blurred the below picture so not to pick on any specific brands but it’s the shelf that represents any gas station in North America and they are all filled with synthetic ingredients.
Interior car windows also need cleaning so before reaching for that bottle of Windex that contains carcinogens that will blow through the small confines of a vehicle, grab a squirt bottle with a few drops of essential oil/water mix and your microfiber window cloth or newspaper. You will have streak free, clean windows without using toxic window cleaners. For people that love fuzzy dice or Angry Bird stuffies – give these friends a monthly freshen with a trip into the freezer or put in direct sunlight to eliminate dust that will collect on these rear-view window or dashboard friends.
My interior van carpets probably take the biggest beating especially with kids eating in the car. All four of my kids recently discovered spits for the first time this baseball season…my van’s floor looks like the under belly of the bleachers at the field. <grin> Before we head to the gas station with the high intensity suction, a sprinkle of baking soda works to absorb carpet odors in the carpet. My kids love to sprinkle baking soda so it’s a great activity for them. I would recommend using the high suction gas station vacuum and then following up at home with a Dyson or HEPA filter if your kids have bad allergies or asthma. The high suction vacuums are great – but I noticed they blow a lot of dust around so it’s great to follow up with the Dyson.
Time to make your dashboard shiny! Traditional wipes or dashboard sprays that are used to ‘polish’ the hard plastic are no longer needed! Just like cleaning my stainless steel kitchen appliances, I put some olive oil on a paper towel and wiped down the dash and plastic cup holders in the back of the van. My kids helped and thought this method of cleaning was brilliant! I’ve only tested the olive oil polish on our plastic dash board, if you are trying to a different material, test first in a small corner of the dash to ensure it doesn’t stain or discolor your dash. I have to say – this is the best tip for reducing toxic cleaning supplies with cleaning your car’s interior – my dash board is shiny and looks fantastic. No smell either – even with parking the van in the hot sun all day.
Picture of my shiny dashboard:
After following these few steps – you’ll have a shiny, clean, car interior without any toxic fumes! We saved the bucket of Dr. Bronners from the interior because it also works great on the exterior of the van. It’s important to understand in a small space like a vehicle that freshening the air with traditional methods is a really bad idea. Any ‘sprays’ like Fabreeze are horrible for human health – read this funny post to understand how I view products like this near my children. You can avoid blowing formaldehyde around your car interior with doing more than ‘masking’ odor… which is all these air deodorizers do by simply opening your window. And with the method of wiping away dust, you are also removing other toxins like lead and VOCs that are carried via the dust sitting on your dash. I would love to hear back from anyone that tries the olive oil method of polishing your dashboard. Remember not to polish the wheel – it does make it slippery and you want to avoid that when driving!
To learn more about Eco-Cleaning Tips for your home – read here!
I discovered recently that my kids’ school has been experiencing regular outbreaks of lice over the past few months. My family hasn’t experienced lice, even though it seems to be regular occurrence in all schools, so after I checked all four kid’s hair and sighed with relief that we didn’t have it, I started thinking about prevention. From talking to many parents, it seems like chemical treatments and natural lice treatments both take a long time to remove lice 100%, so if that’s the case …why use the extra chemicals on children? And let’s think of some tips for prevention. As most readers know, since I have a daughter that has dry skin outbreaks from eczema flare ups, I only shampoo all of my kid’s hair once a month. Funny, because barbers, parents, and family look surprised when I mention that. And my children (I think) have gorgeous hair – everyone always wants to touch my older son’s hair because it’s thick and beautiful (see below). So only occasional washing is working well for our family. And when I do wash their hair, I use a teaspoon of baking soda mixed into a cup or warm water instead of store bought shampoo. On my sons especially, their hair feels amazing after it’s washed this way. But technically their hair is on the dirty side most days rather than the squeaky clean and funny enough, Jennifer from The Smart Mama confirmed for me that lice prefer clean hair! So one more bonus of not over washing children’s hair is it’s a deterrent for lice. Hooray for the hippies!
The most popular methods of DIY lice prevention include tea tree oil. This oil is natural antiseptic and can be a preventative tool against lice. Add 12 drops to ¼ pint water and put in a spray bottle. Mist hair each morning with this solution. A Mommy Footprint Facebook fan reported success with daily use of tree tea oil to prevent lice by using this method: “I put a couple of drops of tea tree oil on my hand and they get a hair rub-down (especially at nape of neck and behind ears) before we go to school (I leave the tea tree oil in a cupboard at our front door). Other Mom’s at the school put the tea tree oil with some H2O in a spray bottle and spritz their kids’ heads (and I can report that their kids have not had lice either)”. Hang onto that tea tree oil because if you do experience lice, you can add multiple drops into your wash along with detergent for bedding, blankets and clothes. Also use tea tree oil to rub around the interior of hats & helmets – kill the lice on the hat and it will rub off onto your child’s head!
Tiffany from Nature Moms Blog recently went through lice treatment with a child and had some great tips. Her full article is here, and her all natural lice shampoo treatment recipe is:
1 Quart size ball jar
1 Tablespoon (1 squirt) Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap
8-10 Drops tea tree oil (we use Trader Joe’s brand)
Fill jar to top with water, shake before each use.
Rinse with vinegar and let sit in hair for 5 minutes. Plastic wrap is optional
Comb hair with flea comb or lice comb
This recipe sounds much easier than the mayo or coconut oil treatments recommended to work. With these treatments you basically coat hair with a natural oil (coconut, olive, or mayonnaise) and try to smother the lice. Most treatments call for wrapping in plastic wrap and sleeping, then repeating 12-14 times. Wow – the more research I did on all natural lice treatments, the more determined I am to prevent it from happening. We’ve got the occasional hair washing already happening, next I will start daily tea tree oil squirts. With base ball season and ball caps, outbreaks at school, and Spring time being the season for lice, it was a timely discussion and I thank Tiffany and Jennifer for their advice!
And here’s the picture I snapped of my oldest son’s hair – I think it’s just gorgeous. He’s only 10 years old, but I hope he keeps the easy, no-poo hair care remedies and doesn’t start using gel or spray. When any of my kid’s ends feel dry we just use a bit of coconut oil to moisturize & for styling.
Related Posts:
No Poo Anyone?
All Natural Hair DIY Deep Conditioner
I watched a documentary back in January regarding the link to BPA and obesity. The film was called Programmed To Be Fat? and was aired on The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. Click here to view the documentary and my apologies for readers in the US that might not have access. For you, I’m going to summarize the important parts of the film, but before I do, there is something you all need to know about BPA-free products and how manufacturers might be able to get away with labeling a product as BPA-free, when in actual fact, not lessening the adverse chemical effect within the product. Let’s take the most common example of a BPA-free product: toddler sippy cups or food containers. We have been lured into a safe cocoon by seeing the words BPA-free stamped on the packaging. Well what if manufactures are using a sister chemical to make the product called BPS? It is true and here is the quote from Professor Fred Vom Saal from the University of Missouri as quoted from the documentary. If you are still purchasing products marketed as BPA-free thinking they are safe for your family, this is a must read:
“Because people want BPA-free products, they are using BPS as a replacement for BPA. And the problem is BPA and BPS are both estrogen mimicking chemicals and there is no reason to think that BPS is going to be a lot safer than BPA.”
Understanding this fact might be as important as realizing that packaging stamped with “phthalate-free” while still being made with PVC (the most dangerous & toxic plastic available) gives consumers a false sense of security. And really, as consumers are WE OKAY WITH THIS? Really, to have people making products geared to babies and children, I ask again “ARE WE OKAY WITH THIS?” No we are not. What is the easiest way to avoid being duped by the huge companies profiting off poisoning our families? Avoid plastic all together. In my mind, especially in the form of food, liquid storage and food packaging. My thanks to Groovy Green Livin who shared the Huffington Post article this morning regarding BPA and alternatives – it reminded me of what I learned from the documentary. Lots of good information in the Huffington Post article, but nothing talking about using BPS in products to dupe consumers.
Now that you harnessed with the information on why to ditch plastic permanently, here is a bit of information on the documentary called Programmed To Be Fat? It was a very informative look into chemical exposure and another terrific documentary on CBC!
Experts believe that it’s not just our modern day lifestyles that are making us fat, but modern day chemicals. Why? Obesity rates have almost doubled in the last 30 years and is happening not only in the US, but in all countries with a western lifestyle. Also since 1950 on, newborn babies have been born heavier. When scientists starting examining the effects of BPA and reproductive science, they kept seeing a side effect in their lab animals and test – Fat. The main problem is during development (as fetus) and the newly found obesogens. This is a term coined by Bruce Blumberg in 2005, after getting the results of a ground-breaking study of pregnant lab mice fed a marine pesticide (and more importantly a endocrine-disrupting chemical) called tributyltin. He discovered that it was also turning reproductive cells into fat cells.
The link between obesity and diabetes is well known. What’s new is the possible link to chemicals. Programmed To Be Fat tells us that 20 years ago there was approx. 30 million people worldwide with diabetes … now there are 250 million (!!). Being fat can cause cancer. We know all of this and despite our best efforts to change this in society it is still happening. Why is that? Bruce Blumberg and other scientists will tell you they suspect endocrine disrupting chemicals and BPA is one of these.
The most important precaution they suggest in the film is to reduce chemical exposure and focus on nutrition if you are pregnant. What we’re doing is programming people so that they will develop obesity later on in life that will be passed on to future generations. The focus needs to be precaution since we’ve allowed these chemicals into the marketplace without proper testing.
Related Stories:
Category filled with articles re: BPA Plastics
Have some squirrely kids at home these days? Mine are all climbing the walls and going to school full-day and having physical activities afterwards isn’t denting their energy! I’ve realized this time of year it’s extra important to get that dose of fresh air! We tend to go into hibernation mode this time of year but kids need to get outside even more. Many schools keep kids indoors if it’s raining so they get very little outside time in wet North American climates. I get a lot of inspiration from the websites I’ve listed below – they have amazing ideas for keeping kids engaged with unique activities for encouraging the outdoors! I’ve also teamed up with a new sponsor this season and it’s very exciting. A local mountain, Cypress Mountain has offered my family some excursions on their Mountain to experience this ski season. This is my favorite mountain to ski and I’m so excited to enjoy some bonding time with my children up the mountain. Can I be honest? I went up Cypress Mountain with my boys last winter and it was one of the best days of my parenting journey. I don’t know what happened… could it have been all that fresh air, the memories of skiing when I was a child? I don’t know but some magic clicked that day and the one-on-one bonding time a had with the boys was intense. You want maximized quality time with your children? Take them into the wilderness or up a mountain. Talking while riding up a chair lift, the comradely checking on each other while going down the slope, the exhilaration you experience while enjoying a truly beautiful sport is wonderful and it’s one I hope all parents can enjoy once with their children. If you don’t ski – I would suggest an equally great time is snow shoeing, tobogganing or tubing on a ski slope. It is carefree fun and your kids need to see this side of you, completely relaxed and loving the outdoors.
This is a picture of my sons and I on New Year’s Eve. Our first time night skiing and the city lights in the backdrop were stunning!
Two sites that offer wonderful tips on enjoying outdoor winter activities are:
Let The Kids Play – an blog that is probably aimed at more preschool aged children but their articles are so incredible, order children would benefit for the activities too!
The Grass Stain Guru – helping parents make a resolution to impact physical and mental health for their children – PLAY MORE!
Related Articles:
Resources to Get Parents and Children Outside Enjoying Nature
Summer Fairy Garden and Fairy House
Geocaching – Eco Activity For Entire Family
I wrote a guest post for Yummy Mummy a few weeks ago and I’m so grateful because the topic was ‘greening your Christmas’ and it helped me set a plan for this Christmas. I think these steps can help anyone, no matter where you are on your greener journey, so please take a look at these suggestions. I’ve added a few more since the Yummy Mummy article as I had an epiphany of sorts thinking about Black Friday shopping this year. If you follow me on Facebook – you’d know this stuff!
How will I get rid of it?
If you are shopping for someone in your home (kids, spouse, etc.) ask yourself this one question “how will I get rid of it?” In this article, we learned that from day 1 after purchasing anything to 6 months later, we are only still using 1% of our purchases. The Story Of Stuff video asks us to look at our consumerism and wonder if it’s possible that 99% of ‘stuff’ we purchase is trashed? If this staggering fact is true, asking ourselves this one question every time we shop is so important. Do you want to know something scary? At the end of the summer, my household was trying to purge old toys that we’ve had for years and took them to the local thrift store. They turned away all of our toys because they simply had too many. Have we junked so many household items that the donation stores are now full? Now what do we do with them? Before you purchase that plastic toy, fake Christmas tree, fake Christmas wreath, inflatable anything, plastic nick-knacks…ask yourself the question. In North American society we need to become responsible for our own crap. You bring it into your home and life – you are responsible for it’s disposal. I think this will be a huge trend for 2012…we see examples of a greener society and supporting local for 2011. I believe responsibility of one’s own garbage will be huge for 2012.
From The Kitchen
Did you know it’s cool to can? Harkening back to how our grandparents thanked the special people in their lives is making a comeback. Christmas baking, canning, layered ingredients & attaching the recipe in a mason jar is a wonderful and healthy way to say I love you this holiday season. It’s really the reason why I sourced these beautiful mason jar inserts. Adding a splash of ‘hip’ to a classic idea is never a bad idea and these inserts are gorgeous! Also a very cool way to make baked goods healthier is not adding synthetic food coloring to frosting, icing, etc. This is now easy with all natural food dye!
Gifts That Give Memories
Do you still remember the first time you saw The Nutcracker or first professional football/hockey game? Are you trying to encourage your child’s love for nature or a local aquarium? Giving gifts that will give a child experiences or a memory is a magical thing. Check your local ticket master and checkout if a play, sports event, Disney On Ice, ballet, symphony, etc. is happening between Dec – Feb. I would have never thought my boys would be interested in a symphony, but it was their favorite field trip of all time from school. I think children just love something different and if they’re getting quality time from a special adult in their life – even better!
Holiday Décor
Holiday décor is a wonderful opportunity to bring the outdoors inside! Go on a pinecone, acorn, and leaf expedition around your neighborhood and see what you find. Line the middle of your table with gifts from the earth that can later be composted. Replace traditions that involve disposable décor; paper holiday crackers can be replaced by reusable felt crackers, cloth napkins & advent calendars, and earth friendly decorations crafted with reusable cotton.
Gifts Wrapped Up
Think outside the box this year with gift-wrap. Imagine the tons of waste after each family opens gifts Christmas morning and the environmental impact. Reuse what you already have or invest in reusable gift-wrap. Start traditions within your family and trade cloth Santa Sacks that can be used every year and passed down as heirloom gift-wrapping solutions. Have an old sheet of fabric not being used? Discover the art of tying knots to wrap gifts called furochic. Start early with Christmas crafts and have your children paint craft paper or use newspapers for greener gift presentation. If you don’t have time to get crafty, source gift wrap or gift bags that have seeds embedded. Kids love the concept of giving items that friends or relatives can plant!
Toy Packaging
The plastic packaging surrounding a gift indicates the quality of the gift inside. Toys that are packaged in plastic, bound with plastic ties is a reflection of what’s inside. Talk to your family and children about how gifts are commercially packaged. Discourage gifts that are surrounded by non-recyclable, wasteful packaging. Encourage gifts that have been gently used. Shopping for gifts 2nd hand is wonderful for helping to reuse what we already have on this planet and great for staying on budget.
Shop Local
Select a few gifts on your list and make sure they are manufactured locally. Seek out companies that not only ‘design’ locally – but also look for items ‘manufactured’ local. Finding a gift that has been hand crafted is a great feeling for both the person purchasing the gift and receiving! Many locally made gifts have a wonderful story – make sure the recipient learns the story of why and how the gift was created.
Tree Debate
It’s the age-old debate: fake or real Christmas trees? Which one is better for the environment? Since learning that all fake Christmas trees are made from PVC – a toxic material that releases dioxin – my view is this: if you are currently enjoying a fake tree, by all means keep reusing! If you need to purchase a new Christmas tree, visit a local tree farm. Or switch things up this year and decorate a tree outside. Here is a full article on why fake trees are toxic.
Make this holiday truly memorable by shopping in a way that feels good. Big box shopping can be cheaper, but does it give you a good feeling like supporting a smaller store or business? Are there areas you can green and the effect will ripple? Think of your child’s classroom – most holiday gift or card exchanges are very environmentally unfriendly. Select plantable cards and organic candy canes so allergies aren’t a problem. Keeping things unique, magical, fun, and green is easy this year!
