Fragrant Baby Wipes Recipe

The Smallest is cutting teeth with a vengence (read two and three teeth at a time) and the normal mixture of water with a few frops of lavender oil, is doing little to cut through the acidic velcro like mess welded onto her bottom, so I thought that I would share my more complicated (haha) recipe.

1/2 – 2 cups of water

1/4 cup of Aloe Vera gel

1/8 – 1/4 cup of Extra virgin olive oil

2tbsp of Organic Baby Shampoo

2-3 drops of tea tree or calendula oil (optional)

2-3 drops of Lavender (to help discourage mould)

This is lovely to prepare before hand, and even to leave in the fridge so that it is super cooling (I never bother as my house never gets that warm!) It’s just that bit more able to cut through the gunge.

Another quick and easy soothing bum wipe mixture is to make a strong camomile herbal tea, use 2 teabags, add a couple of drops of lavender or tea tree oil if you wish and let cool, this is the low fly version if you can’t be doing with all that measuring.

The Smallest is really appreciating the extra effort going into keeping her botty happy, as shes getting a rash even after a minute or two of contact with the poo at the moment poor girl.

About time too.

Its all gone now, but we could really do with some more proper winter weather – maybe then we wouldn’t all be struck down with virus after virus. Looks rather lovely while it lasted, no good for finding the dog poos though! The Artic wind is still blasting so thats something at least.

Waste Weigh In

So far the current running totals for rubbish over the last few days are:

Wednesday: 50gms – mainly milk bottle tops, jar lids and a pasta bag

Thursday: 40gms – more milk carton tops and a couple butchers bags

The biggest distinction between this week and last is that there is no dog muck going into the bin, due to the new dog poo digester, I have got photos of this to post with the instructions on how to make one using an old bin, but things are a little busy here right now, so I’ll do that when I have more time one night.

The uncooked food waste either goes into the wormery or the fire, as at this time of year the worms ability to eat large amounts of kitchen waste diminishes with the cold weather. If we didn’t have the fire we would collect it up and take it to the allotment compost heap – there isn’t enough garden for one at home.

I (being the main cook in this household) have made fantastic inroads into reducing the amount of cooked food waste that we have. What we do have left over is more often than not possible to recreate into a new meal, and what doesn’t generally goes into the dogs dishes, but even then there are certain things that they can’t eat – or won’t eat – which as we are having fires is wrapped into newspaper and burnt. Its not a great amount but we are working our way towards not needing to find other ways to dispose of it, although I’m sure that there’ll always bit a little left over for the hounds. At some point (nudge nudge the DH) we will have our rayburn fitted, and that will be our main source of heat and cooking in the house so waste can be dropped into that as it is a solid fuel one, so a few scraps won’t do it any harm.

As a family we aren’t big consumers so waste in regards to purchases is pretty minimal, although the Tallest had a friends birthday, we managed to find a toy in a cardboard box, Tallest drew a picture on her own card, we recycled the envelope and wrapped the gift using an old paper bag decorating it with coloured paper and the Tallest did some more drawing on it. So when the friend gets it home, everything bar the envelope can be recycled (they have an open fire so thats that dealt with I think).

All in all we are doing pretty well, although that bar of chocolate I had yesterday added to the pile – you can’t recycle the foiled paper – so for yesterdays sin I had better be saintly today.

Inadvertant Rubbish – The Post

….and here was me thinking that we were doing so well…. typical!

Well you see my point!

These are all from companies/organisations that we have bought from or are members of, so they will need to be contacted and either asked not to send it or to send a paper-free version if they have them. I think that that may be impossible with the Campsites book though.

It was all going so well and then along came the post….Damn!

Waste Weighs in…

After weighing in my non-recyclable rubbish last week (10.5kg – 8.4kg of this was dog muck ehw!) Yesterdays total weight is 100g, this comprises mainly of food wrappings and milk container tops – we have the milkman, but with a three year old and a Coeliac in the house we get through an awful lot of milk.

The dog waste; the main offender of our black bin (in more ways than one) is being gathered in earnest(!) for the grand openning of the dog poo digester which I will post the making of at a later date.

The most obvious area of our day to day lives that needs addressing is when out and about shopping. We are not big consumers, we use a shopping list, have a budget and use our own bags, but still the occasional slip up is still had. To be honest I am the main culpret when we are at sales or car boots and
I see things that would be nice for the girls, as far as toys go, Tallests collection while small is 95% second-hand, and the Smallest who has only really discovered them in the last couple of months has all hand me downs. The same goes with their clothes. It’s food shopping that causes the most amount of grief.

We try to buy local, we get our beef and pork from a local door step supplier, where everything is wrapped, is this better than sealed plastic meat trays I don’t know?

What veg we don’t grow is bought from the local butcher, which is portioned into a plastic bag, I suppose I could take the veg out and give it back to him, but does this reduce the amount he uses or does he just end up throwing it away?

So so far amount of waste definately reduced, but still need to address the shopping dilemma a bit more.

Waste Free Week Begins

Today is the first day of Waste Free Week, I’m hoping to post things that we have done differently to usual, and make comments about whether or not I feel that the changes I make will be permanent or lasting, and whether they make a significant difference to our waste reduction.

I have already decided that one thing stands against me – my Coeliac Disease – as my special foods are invariably always packaged too much, I understand that alot of gluten free foods are more fragile than their gluten containing alternatives – but some things verge on the point of the ridiculous. Like biscuits that have a box, a sleeve and a tray. So I’m trying to make sure that the foods I get on perscription and buy are as good on the packaging front as they could be.

Watch this Space