This past weekend was a jumble of various green-related ideas, chores and other goodies, so today I’m just going to give you a smorgasbord of green-related thoughts–green food for thought, if you will. Hope you find some useful nuggets:
* Green & Black = Delicious Chocolate
The public relations agency that represents Green & Black’s Organic chocolate got wind of my green Valentine’s Day post from last week and then got in touch with me. They were interested in having me include Green & Black’s in my Valentine’s Day roundup, though, obviously, it was too late. Nonetheless, they shipped me about a dozen candy bars of all of the different Green & Black’s flavors–mostly because I’d told them that I haven’t been a huge fan of the brand, ever since someone had given me a bar of the coffee flavor. Hey, me loves the coffee and me loves the chocolate, but me didn’t love the Green & Black’s coffee-chocolate combination.
OK, so now I’ll eat my words–after I eat some more Green & Black’s chocolate. While it’s disappointing that this chocolate doesn’t come in a tradiational heart-shaped box for Valentine’s Day, the taste of the flavors beyond the aforementioned coffee flavor (blech) more than makes up for packaging. Let’s just put it this way–my daughters recently picked up Girl Scout cookies from their friends, and this weekend chose to eat the Green & Black’s milk chocolate bars over Thin Mints. I’ll be heading out to Target soon to pick up more of these milk chocolate bars, including a couple of the almond ones for me!
* World’s Best Stain Remover Ever
When it comes to stains on my clothing, I’m a bit obsessive about getting them out. Maybe it goes back to my frugal roots, where you had to get as much wearing out of each article of clothing before you could toss it in the rag bin. Also, since I buy most of my kids’ clothing, I know how much I’ve paid and I’m not going to let one bloody knee or chocolate-stained top render a piece of clothing a rag.
When my kids were really little, I used Biz as a stain-remover. I’d fill a bucket with Biz and water, mix, and then soak the clothes. It did a pretty good job of getting out food and diaper-overload stains. Eventually, I graduated to Zout stain remover, after a friend raved about how it worked. Well, Zout was no Shout, and neither did a great job getting out things like mud stains. (Where we live our soil is red clay, and let me tell you, once red clay gets on your clothes, there’s no getting it out.) My fall-back stain remover–or should I say stain brightener–has always been bleach. But given its caustic nature, bleach is only good on tough articles of clothing and ones that are white. Plus, now that I’m trying to live a greener life, I try to avoid using bleach all together.
Recently I wrote a story about greening your household chores, and one of the tips I included was using borax as a stain remover. Before that piece I wasn’t really familiar with borax, except from the Fab jingle I remember as a kid: “Fab, I’m glad, there’s lemon-freshened borax in you.” But once I was researching my story, I figured I’d give borax a go, and wow, am I glad that I did.
For nearly any stain my kids can create these days, all I need to do to get them out is wet the article of clothing, sprinkle some borax on it, rub a little and toss in the laundry. There’s no having to let it sit overnight or soak in a bucket. Just sprinkle, rub, wash and voila, stain is gone. (The borax people are not paying me to say this.) Blood, dirt and chocolate don’t stand a chance now that I’m armed with borax. And what’s best is it’s a green laundry cleaner and cheap, too–I can get a 76-ounce box of 20 Mule Team Borax at my local ShopRite for only $2.99.
* When You Can’t Recycle, Burn, Baby Burn
I’ve mentioned many times in the past how my current trash hauler does not take paperboard of any kind with my recycling. Now that it’s winter time, I’m not stressing out too much about this anymore. That’s because I’ve discovered that paperboard and cardboard make excellent fire starters or fire enhancers. Along with used newspaper and some kindling I’ve picked up around the yard, I can get a really good roaring fire going by tossing in empty boxes of crackers, pasta and cereal. Perhaps it’s blasphemous even to be encouraging use of a fireplace, but I think it’s a whole hell of a lot better to burn up this excess cardboard than to toss it in a landfill.
Stay tuned in the future for more random green thoughts.
READ LEAH ON HOME GOES STRONG
Corrugated cardboard makes a great firestarter. Stuff a little dryer lint in it, and wow!
But the Borax? I like it, too, and we’ve used it as a weed killer. The danger is that it can be toxic to animals, so we don’t use it much anymore. We have wild bunnies that love our yard, and they’re sweet little animals that don’t even eat our flowers.
My mom makes firestarters out of cardboard egg containers (she seeks those kinds out at the supermarket in fact) mixed with woodshavings and covered in the ends of candles that she melts down and pours over the whole mix. They work beautifully.
As a homeowner myself, I think a lot about what I burn in my fireplace. Essentially, you are setting fire to something in the middle of your home. After some research, paper, cardboard and most anything else other than fireplace specific materials should not be used. Most of these materials burn too hot and too fast. Imagine the chimney running through your attic, inches from insulation and dry, wooden rafters. Something burning fast and hot, especially if your chimney has not been cleaned, is a good way to burn down a dream home. Starting fires is fine, but hopefully people won’t think of using these materials as a source of heat.
Cardboard and paperboard are good composting materials for your flower and non-edible gardens. Just tear them up and throw them in (if you can’t recycle them).
Daisy and Jen, I’ve been known to put dryer lint in the fire, and boy does it go up in flames fast. If that isn’t a reason to keep your lint pipe clean to avoid a fire, I don’t know what would be.
Brett, you make a good point about how these fast, hot-burning items could cause a house fire in a chimney that hasn’t been cleaned. This is why we had our cleaned out when we moved in last May and plan to make cleaning the chimney an annual priority.
Caron, I’d heard about composting paper and cardboard. Try tossing it in your shredder first so it’s easier to spread and, because it’s in small pieces, will decompose faster.
I’m sitting here munching on a Green & Black’s almond chocolate bar at this moment. I never tried the almond until this past Christmastime. Until that point my favorites for the past few years were the plain milk chocolate and the caramel. Unfortunately the almond is a little too good – I’ll polish off the entire 3.5oz. bar in one sitting.
Do you think that the borax would work to generally whiten whites? I have some white bath mats that need to be whitened? Also, have you ever looked into using hydrogen peroxide as a bleach substitute? Thanks!
I haven’t tried Borax in lieu of bleach but it does seem to “bleach out” stains when I rub it directly on them and without bleaching out the fabric. I’ve heard about hydrogen peroxide but never tried it.
Anyone else have tips to share on these two laundry products?
Leah