I use ecoballs in my wash and they work very well. I've been using them for probably just over a year now, so really they work out as fantastically good value. You can always add essential oils or even fabric conditioner if you want them to smell pine fresh or whatever. I actually add teatree oil, because a nurse told me to once (to banish MRSA) and I daren't not. And if you want bluey whites just add a little borax to your wash once a month.
I don't go in for other cleaning products much. Using the proper tools, rather than an endless array of mystic potions, is much more effective. I have a scrubbing brush, a pan brush, a mop and bucket, a dustpan and brush, a broom, three dishcloths (lancashire stockinettes), one in the wash, one in the sink and one in the cupboard and then it's just hot soapy water and disinfectant all the way for me. And cola, of course. Mind you, I probably clean vastly more than any of you folk, unless there are some fellow carers about, so I'm probably thinking on a different scale. I don't do the vinegar and bicarb thing. I don't really understand the point of it.
One thing I do use, indefensibly, are Tuffies. I know it's wrong; I use them for cleaning down medical equipment. I haven't figured out a safe and practical green alternative. Yet!
I try to keep my waste down to a minimum and for me that's mostly by trying to keep it out of the house in the first place. A while ago, overwhelmed with rubbish and tired of lugging the crap about, I just stopped buying things with crazy packaging. I don't have a car (although admittedly I would have one in an instant if I could afford it), and I get my shopping delivered. We get a weekly fruit and veg box from northern harvest and a monthly meat box from fishleigh. That certainly cuts down on waste and I admit when I order from tesco or similar I'm always surprised now by the profligate packaging. Although you can give all your bags back to the driver, and your wine bottles in their cardboard caddy too, so that's something.
We do recycle but we don't often use the kerbit schemes. In posh areas they have slim wheelie bins but here they have open black boxes which you're to put on the pavement. But, you know, this is Moss Side. I mean, I love it round our way but... After the first few bottlings on our road I got a bit wary of placing a handy supply of weapons directly outside my front door. We keep them in the back and just impose a box upon a car-bound visitor every now and again.
And we do the compost thing! I have a worm farm and I love it. I'm a bit obsessed with it actually. I have a PH meter and everything (these are my sad, fannish tendencies manifesting, I suppose). I made all the compost for the raised bed I built in the back (out of a knackered IKEA shelving unit) and now I grow my own herbs in it, which I help along with fairly traded coffee grounds and oh GOD! It's like some kind of appalling eco version of The Aristocrats where I just keep getting more and more absurdly right on until I declare that I actually weave my own electricity from natural sodding yoghurt.
But yeah, hm. Stuff I do that works: ecover, daylight bulbs, a mooncup (so BRILLIANT), ecoballs, icecubes instead of running the tap, paper-packing the freezer, worm farm and water butt, just saying no to bags in shops (I say, 'no, thank you; I have hands' or similar), a half brick in the toilet, warm front, ragging and quilting, reclaiming yarn, generally fixing things and errrrr...
This concludes my essay on recycling, by Dody, aged seven and three quarters. |
