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Reusable Sponges How I Love Thee, Let Me Count the Ways …

Why Polly Danger reusable sponges are my favorite sustainable swap to date and why they’ll change your eco friendly journey forever.

If there is one green change that I’ve stuck to 100% it’s switching from disposable sponges to reusable ones. In the last decade of my sustainable journey this is the one thing I’ve never slacked off on. Why? I think it’s because disposable sponges are literally a gross waste of money. They’re ugly, they’re full of germs, and in the end they’re just garbage. Garbage that contributes to greenhouse gasses by being compressed in a landfill. In contrast, my sponges are pretty, cheerful, and infused with love. They’re washable and therefore more hygienic. And best of all, they’re biodegradable at the end of their very, very long lives.

Set of 3 Polly Danger Forever Sponges made from biodegradable cotton.  Turquoise Forever Sponge, Mustard Yellow Forever Sponge, and Pink Forever Sponge

How long exactly does a Forever Sponge live? I have half a dozen sponges in rotation and 2 of them are at least seven years old, if not more. I don’t toss sponges often, that’s for sure. And when I have, they just go right into my backyard compost heap. You can also add your cotton sponge to city compost bins, or check municipal recycling rules for more options. *pro tip: you can cut up a Forever Sponge into quarters to make it compost even faster. Returning something to the earth where it can create new life once again is incredibly satisfying. Addicting even.

Reusable Sponges aren’t just for the kitchen!

This hardworking little buddy who helps you clean everything. Use one in the kitchen, one for the counter top, one for the bathroom, and one to clean yourself! When your sponges come in happy colors it’s easy to designate each one to a different room or person. Yellow for the kitchen (yellow is always so happy in a kitchen), pink for the bathroom (I like a feminine bathroom), and blue for all the other odds and ends.

My knit eco-sponges are soft and squishy and just the right size.

Handmade cotton sponges are a nearly zero waste solution compared to factory made “eco sponges”.

Yes, you can now easily find “eco friendly” versions of the yellow and green factory made sponge in just about every store now. They’ve slapped some eco-friendly looking graphics on their plastic wrapper. They’ve changed the sponge color from hideous green and yellow to a poop-like brown. Don’t be fooled by green-washed packaging. Factory made eco sponges can still create pollution and greenhouse gasses if the end product is not biodegradable. The truth is that mass produced products are rarely transparent in their methods so you never really know how they’re made. Even “sustainable” ones.

Using biodegradable cotton sponges creates a sustainable chain reaction that will improve the way you clean.

Cotton sponges do feel different in the hand than disposables. But after using cotton, the commercial version feels wrong. Way too stiff. Fake. Yucky. I much prefer the soft scrubby action of my adorable and cheerful sponges. If you’re wondering about scrub action, simply use baking soda for things that need to be scoured. Baking soda scrubs a thousand times better than the scrubby side of a commercial sponge and it won’t scratch your dishes. Plus it’s biodegradable. Win, win, win.

Polly Danger Forever Sponges are made entirely with 100% biodegradable cotton yarn.
It’s sustainable, hard working, machine washable, and it comes in bright, beautiful colors!

If I’m truly open and honest here, a huge reason I love my eco-sponges so much is because they’re about 5,000 times cuter than the literal future-garbage you can find at the supermarket. Chores are easier when your tools are beautiful. Zero waste living is easier when your materials make you happy. Life is better when your environment is uplifting. This is why I’m committed to making earth friendly products that are beautifully designed and made to last.

What about you? Are you considering making the switch to reusable sponges? You can find my 100% cotton reusable sponges here.

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Cloth Napkin Questions Answered

I haven’t bought paper napkins in so many years that I can’t even remember a time when that was a regular grocery store purchase. Sometimes I forget that other people use them and it kind of surprises me when I find out. I’ve gotten some interesting questions and comments about cloth napkins, so I thought I’d put together a few responses here for anyone who’s thinking of making the switch to cloth.

I’ve been making my own cloth napkins and un-paper towels for so many years I can’t remember the last time I bought paper napkins.

Now to be clear, I 100% believe that paper napkins have a job in the modern world. If laundry is a major life hurdle for you because of an injury, if you have to take the bus to the laundromat, if you’re disabled, or if you’re working three jobs then cloth napkins might not be a priority. I get that.

For those of us who are able bodied and have a washing machine indoors however, there’s really not an easier green switch to make. You already wash towels, so really all you have to do now is add some napkins in with whatever load of laundry you’re doing and bam. No more napkins from the supermarket. You just went green. Here are some of the most common questions and comments I get about cloth napkins …

We’re not fancy enough for cloth napkins. I guess at some point between 1965 and 1994 or thereabouts people decided to use scratchy-as-heck holiday themed polyester napkins at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter and that shit gave cloth napkins a super duper bad name. I need everyone to say this with me: CLOTH NAPKINS ARE NOT FANCY. They are FUNCTIONAL. Don’t buy those horrible 20 inch square polyester holiday napkins- those are tacky and useless. Use soft cotton gauze or flannel and you’ll get it. My old cloth napkins are so soft that I feel phantom lip itches just thinking about using paper napkins. Blegh!

My kids would ruin them …They’re meant to be used and worn out. Even when they get “ruined” they will have lasted ages longer than paper napkins and will have paid for themselves dozens of times over. Chances are that when you think they’re ruined, they’re actually just ready to move on to a different job. Like counter wipes. Or car dash wipes. Or any other thing you use rags for.

I can’t afford the number of napkins my family would need If a family of 4 used only one single napkin per meal per day, you are using 4,380 napkins per year. My local supermarket sells 300 napkins for $8.29. At that price I’d be spending around $121 per year on napkins. On something I throw in the garbage after just one use. By comparison cloth napkins are purchased once and last YEARS. That means that if I had been using disposables for the last 9 years I would have spent over $1000 on disposable napkins. And that’s just napkins. If I’d purchased my napkins from an Etsy seller I would have spent only around $50 for the quantity we use. So if you’re buying paper napkins you can absolutely afford cloth. You’re already spending that money anyway!

How do you keep up with the laundry? Our napkins make up barely any laundry at all, and they certainly do not get their own special load. I have a cute little wire basket that we keep next to the dining table and when we finish dinner we pop our napkins in. When we run low on napkins or when the basket gets full I just add the whole thing to whatever load of laundry is going up next. I also have a paperless kitchen, so sometimes I wash all of the kitchen towels and napkins together. At most we wash about 15 napkins at a time, like a wadded up child sweater’s worth. It’s honestly hardly anything at all compared to the rest of the laundry produced by 2 adults, 2 kids, and 19 pets.

Is it gross?…. No. Pretty much never. I don’t ever end up with pizza gunk on my t-shirts or anything else gross. Anytime we have extra extra yucky napkins I just wash those with kitchen towels on the “Sanitize” setting on the washing machine. If they’re crusty I rinse the crust out first. But that is SUPER rare. I don’t have time for pre-treating or any other fancy laundering. I just don’t.

Is it hygienic?… Think about the parts of your body that get rubbed on a towel after you shower. I’m not sure about you, but in my house we dry ALL of our body parts. I wash my towels and reuse them. Feels pretty hygienic to me. Well napkins get way less intimate with our body parts, so I’m not sure why washing and reusing napkins would be any less hygienic than washing towels.

My family would use waaay too many napkins to switch to cloth . I do have a bunch of napkins in circulation, but not as many as you’d think. We are 2 adults and 2 filthy kids and we have somewhere around 15 to 20 napkins that I’ve made over the years. They get washed when we run low and then BLAM! Like magic we have more napkins. Without having to go to the store. So even though your super messy family full of 12 teenage boys may use a lot of napkins, you probably don’t need three hundred to get started. I’m guessing something more like 2 dozen for a super actively messy family would be a doable amount. And if you need more you can always buy more.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin The only way to get started is to start. Baby steps. If you’re not ready for 2 dozen napkins start with just 4, or 6. Try out using a set for dinner or with packed lunches and see how it goes. Even if you only replace your lunch napkins with cloth you’ve made a positive change to your routine. Once you find something that works, just keep going!

Did I answer your suspicious napkin questions?! If you still want to know more, drop me a line! Did I convince you to make the switch? Check out my cloth napkins in person at the Forest Grove or Hillsboro Farmers Markets or send me a line for a custom order.

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Introducing Reusable Produce Bags!

When a thing you need doesn’t exist, you just gotta make it, am I right? That’s basically what happened when I made myself a few reusable produce bags last November. I made a few and I love them and then they got lost in my epic mess of a house and then I forgot about them. But guess what. Those bags were amazing. So I made myself some more, only better. And because they’re so dang rad, I decided to share them with the world.

Vintage fabric produce bags hold the same amount, or more than the disposable plastic kind you find in the produce department of the supermarket and they double as bulk grain bags.
Reusable produce bags with ties attached means you’ll never have to send another plastic produce bag to the landfill again! By choosing vintage fabric bags you’re also saving fabric from the landfill!

Introducing the fabulous, amazing Polly Danger Produce Bags. They come with an elastic or tie closure and you’ll be able to get them in a variety of sheer or vintage fabrics. Regular size bags measure about 10″ x 14″- about the same size as the average plastic supermarket produce bag, and the minis are 7″ x 9″, which is still big enough to hold a couple of cups of popcorn or any other small amount of produce you want.

Mini bags may be smaller than the standard supermarket produce bag, but they still hold plenty of bulk grain. Shown here is about 2 cups of bulk popcorn. Mini bags weigh around 0.3 oz and measure 7″ x 10″. Choose an elastic or tie closure.
Bags come in two sizes and 2 closure options. Elastic ties as well as cotton ties are both great options for closing up your reusable produce bags. Elastic is convenient and the cotton webbing will last as long as your bag does!

Reusable Produce Bags are fantastic not just for produce, but for all of the odds and ends in your life. Snack bag, swim bag, shoe bag, project bag. Choose from vintage fabric, sheer fabric, or organic cotton. Almost all elements of these bags are biodegradable. The elastic, if you choose elastic ties, and the thread are the only bits that won’t return to the soil at the end of their life, reducing produce-related plastic use by incredible amounts over their life!

The vintage fabrics are perfect for use as grain bags, and the sheer bags are perfect for using at supermarkets that won’t tare your bags. What the heck does it mean to “tare”? It means that your empty container gets weighed before you put anything in it, so when you pay for your bulk items or produce the weight of the container isn’t added to the cost of the product itself. Sadly my nearest markets won’t do it, but I don’t mind. My reusable bags weigh between 0.3 oz and 0.9 oz. Unless I’m buying something incredibly expensive per ounce, like vanilla beans, the amount added to the cost of my produce is miniscule.

If your supermarket doesn’t tare, or pre-weigh your bulk containers, then sheer fabrics are a really practical option. Happily there will be plenty of stylish and sheer options available!

So when and where can you get these lovely bags??? I’ll be taking these cuties to my local Farmer’s Market and putting them up in the shop in early June 2019! Pre-ordering begins in late May!

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Sunday Fun Day- Which in my world means FOOD PREPPING!


Okay, let me first say that I’ve heard moms say stuff like “I never would have been this excited about food prepping before kids”.  Well I’m the F-ing freakshow who has always loved crap like this.  In my wildest college fantasies I was wearing a fancy robe and waking up at dawn to a clean house and hot coffee before settling in to a day of uninterrupted tv watching and crochet.  But I digress.  

Over the last few months I’ve been really working hard at lowering our grocery spending and prepping food, and I’m pretty impressed with myself.  I’ve cut that shit IN HALF. I can always do better at the prepping part though.  On the weeks that I don’t prep lunches ahead of time I pay for it. Over the last few weeks I’ve been slipping.  And before Christmas I was super busy and I put way too much pre-packaged food into the kid’s lunch and a lot of it didn’t even get eaten.  It was shameful.  So I’ve been wanting to get back into the habit of prepping lunches on Sundays.  And because last week I did a ton of batch cooking for the freezer, I had today to hang out with family, make my own dog and cat food (I’m wild!)  and prep lunches.  

So yeah.  I made my own cat and dog food.  It’s not the first time I’ve made dog food, but it is the first time I made cat food.  I used a vet’s recipe, so I’m excited about that.  And because this was my first time making it and there were a ton of odd and stinky ingredients, I felt kind of like my 8 year old self, mixing chocolate milk with crackers and hot dogs and calling it a recipe.  *My pet food recipe included none of those ingredients, by the way. 

I’m not telling you what was in my recipe.  Because bitches be judgy.  But if you want to do some research for your own pets you can email me and I’ll tell you where I found my info.

But back to the topic at hand.  Batch prepping lunches.  My go to lunch for G is salami, fruit, crackers, and maybe cheese.  I like to pack salami in little glassine bags wrapped up into a neat package.  Because washi tape is my life blood.  And because there’s no plastic involved.  I packed cinnamon rice crackers the same way, and I also prepped little 4 ounce tupperware with blueberries from the freezer.  I actually pre-packed mini baggies with blueberries and hid them in a (labeled) yogurt tub in the freezer so that I can make my next prepping day even quicker.  You guys last summer I picked something like 40 pounds of no spray blueberries and I’m SO glad that I did.  You can never have enough blueberries.  Store bought blueberries are garbage.  I actually hated blueberries until I moved to Oregon and went blueberry picking with one of my BFFs.  Picking blueberries changed my life.  Really.  

Who says kid lunches have to be full of single use plastic to be convenient? Washi tape and glassine bags plus a few minutes of prep time make our kid lunches as convenient as anything from the supermarket, only cuter.

So anyway, those amazing, mind blowing blueberries that I picked- they cost me $0.99 PER POUND.  You know how much those are at the store?  At the farmer’s market???  AT WHOLE FOODS????  So yeah, when Eric said “I think you have enough blueberries,” I said “LIKE HELL I DO”  and I kept picking and now I have plenty of blueberries for baking blueberry muffins and putting in the kids’ lunches and making pretty purple smoothies. So let this be a lesson to you- if you have the option to pick your own anything this summer- DO IT! Next year I’ll double my harvest.  

Side note about picking blueberries: Certified Organic berries are expensive. They just are. These berries are ‘no spray’ berries, which makes me happy, but the farm doesn’t advertise that. If you have the opportunity to do any kind of U-Pick, definitely ASK about the sprays, fertilizers, or chemicals used.

Tomorrow is Monday and I’ll get an extra smidge of sanity because I won’t be panicking, looking for food that will pass G’s pickiness test and I won’t be rushing to add money to his lunch card because I’ve got an entire week all packed up and ready to go.  So here’s to a smooth Monday morning for us all!  

Blueberries might be the reason I never leave Oregon. Truth.

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Zippy Zoom DIY Reusable Cloth Napkins, with a Tutorial

Fresh and pretty napkins made today. This represents about 20 minutes of work, total.

 

These guys have been in circulation for about a year, maybe more. They’re still doing their job, but we’ve had a few casualties and now it’s time for reinforcements.

 

I’ve discovered that if I leave the sewing machine set up all weekend I’ll actually get to sew in little bits and bursts.

It’s been at least 8 years since the last time I bought paper napkins that were not for a birthday party.  In my house when I was growing up the two most important parts of running the house were convenience and frugality.  But mostly convenience.  My mom did sew and make things for the house, but she was also a working mom and eventually a single working mom.  Making napkins that needed to be washed was pretty low on her list of priorities.  We went through a fair amount of paper plates, disposable everything, and frozen food because it was there and it promised convenience.  I knew deep down in my soul that those disposable things were robbing me of something.  It felt obvious that disposable things were robbing me of beauty and pleasure, but I didn’t then understand the scale of their environmental impact.  Filling up landfills with stuff that doesn’t need to be there robs us all of many, many things.  Even paper napkins have the potential for creation when they get composted and turned into new soil instead of squashed into airless mountains of garbage in a landfill.  But I didn’t know what compost even was when I made my first set of reusable napkins.  I just wanted to make something pretty that would enhance my every day life.

Before I made my own napkins I bought pretty antique linen ones from the Rose Bowl Flea Market.  They were beautiful, and we used them at my wedding, but they were too fancy to use every day.  I’ve also bought vintage napkins from Goodwill and newly made napkins on Etsy. Unfortunately vintage napkins are often made with acrylic or acrylic blend fabric and they are super unabsorbent.  Anyway, I’m digressing.  The point is that now I have kids and napkins get used very intensely.  I can’t bother with shopping for just the right Goodwill napkins and I don’t like scratchy cotton napkins and I don’t want cute napkins to get ruined.  So I make my own. Did I mention that I loathe hemming?  Well I freakin’ do.  I’d rather get a post-bikini-wax tweeze from a blind woman than hem the amount of napkins we need to get from wash to wash. The following tutorial makes the easiest, softest, sweetest alternative to paper napkins.  I keep a basket for dirty napkins in the dining room and I wash them with kitchen towels.

A place to put the dirty napkins is as essential as the napkins themselves if you want to switch from paper to cloth.  I chuck napkins and kitchen towels into the washing machine every few days.  I keep the clean ones folded in half on a cake stand on the dining table.

 

If you’re looking for a very functional, very simple way to make your own reusable cloth napkins, here’s how I make mine.

Materials:

Pre-washed, ironed flannel, cut into 9″ x 9″ squares.

Tips:  *Busy prints hide funky stitches and also stains.  **Joann’s often has flannel for about $2.50/ yard in winter and spring.  Old flannel sheets would also work great and they’d be FREE.  You could even get buck wild and dye old sheets to give them new life.

Tools: 

Sewing machine, ruler, washable marker, scissors, thread.

Step 1.

Fold each 9″ square into quarters.  On the corner with all the open folds, use a cup to trace a rounded edge with a washable marker.  Cut on the line, through all layers. Unfold and lay flat.

Rounding the corners makes zig zag stitching all the way around the napkins much easier.

If you use machine washable markers any left over ink will just wash out the first time you launder your napkins.

If ever there was a case for having dedicated fabric scissors, this is it. Cutting through all layers at once will save oodles of time. Go get some Ginghers if you don’t have any yet.

Step 2.

Set your sewing machine to zig zag stitch.  We’re looking for a wide stitch (side to side), with a short distance between each stitch.  I set my machine to nearly the widest setting and slightly shorter than the standard stitch.  If you’re not familiar with stitch settings I’d suggest taking a scrap piece of fabric and playing around with the zig zag stitch options until you get something that looks like what you see in the pictures.  A really long stitch length will mean lots of frayed fabric and a really short stitch length will mean lots of wasted thread, wavy napkin edges, and possibly lots of knots along the way.  Take a close look at the placement of the needle in the following pictures.

The needle here is all the way to the right of the fabric edge. Notice where the fabric lines up in relation to the sewing foot. You might find it helpful to use a bit of washi tape to make a guide for yourself.

 

Now the needle is inserted into the fabric. The fabric remains in the same position, while the needles goes back and forth, left and right, over the edge.

Step 3.

Go ahead and sew around your fabric, taking a little extra time as you go around the corners.  To go around the corners, use your left hand to gently pivot the fabric as you stitch.  Don’t yank the fabric.  If you’re having a hard time going around corners it may help to insert the needle into the fabric, take your foot off the pedal, lift the sewing foot, and turn the fabric.  Then put the sewing foot back down and continue sewing slowly.  It’s okay to go back over spots you missed, and don’t stress out about “ugly” spots.  These are family napkins after all, not tea with the Queen napkins.  Using a fabric with a print on it helps hide not just stains, but also funky sewing.  When you’ve gone all the way around the napkin, overlap your first stitches by about 1/2″ and stop sewing.  Remove the needle and snip the loose threads.  All done!  YOU MADE A NAPKIN!

I could have made these stitches a little closer together, length wise, but this will still do a perfectly good job of keeping the fabric from fraying.

 

Simple, pretty, soft, and highly functional every day napkins.

And there you have it.  Zero waste.  DIY.  Pretty.  Functional.  Napkins.

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What “Zero Waste” Grocery Shopping Really Looks Like- For Me

Prelude:

Yesterday morning started out like this- I sit in my driver’s seat, all alone in my car, listening to my music at full volume, on my way to Ikea.  I have the day to myself and I might even get to hang out with Jenn and do some fabric shopping.  This is kind of a set up for a reeeeaaally enjoyable day, right?  Overall it was pretty nice, but I cheated myself.  I called my mom on the way to Ikea and asked if she wanted to meet up.  It has taken about 24 hours for the full effect of that dumb decision to take effect.  We had a pleasant enough breakfast and shopping excursion.  Except for the barely there criticisms and innocent jabs at life choices and ability to parent.  Essentially she did her job planting the seeds that would root out my emotional weaknesses and bury themselves there …

Cut to this morning.

Immediately following the very sweet moment where the kids and I planted seeds and put the little pots in the new seed growing area all shit hit the fan. I feel like I kind of set myself up for this when I posted my seed organization to Instagram, saying I had already accomplished a ton.  Anyway, this morning was the fucking worst. Everyone needed everything from me RIGHT NOW.  The morning was a roller coaster of whining, getting hurt, toy grabbing, demanding, and just plain fuckery.  Hours of it.  And the whole time, with my head throbbing and wanting to just cry from the sheer chaos of the planets aligning to make a 2.5 year old and a 5 year old OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MINDS, I couldn’t get my mom’s criticisms out of my mind.  Because her parenting was just so incredibly faultless and I am apparently a crumpled up shit tissue of a human being and am failing at all things because no one can do things better than Gracie.

So yeah.  I realized we were out of milk and that getting said milk would make everything better. Amid the nonsense that is getting two small children into the car (yes, of course this included a poop diaper discovered *as* we were walking out the door) I actually remembered to bring my grocery bags with me.  The more I do this, the better I get at remembering.  I brought the stiff bags and also my crocheted net bags for produce.

On a normal grocery day I drive 30 minutes  to the stores I like and I hit up 2 or 3 stores, getting the best, cheapest stuff that I like from each of them.  In case anyone in the Hillsboro/Porltnad area is curious, my regular grocery trips go like this: I get Tillamook dairy things and some bulk items from Winco, I get meat and other bulk items from New Seasons, and I get produce, snacks, and convenience foods  from Trader Joes. Today was not that day.  Today was the day I go to the closest place I could get most of what I needed- Fred Meyer.

Given the fact that I had very intense morning, I still managed to shop according to what has become more and more second nature- healthy and eco positive.  However I want to point something out.  There is a fine line between making good choices that work for your life and making yourself feel like shit because you aren’t doing what that one girl from that one blog did.  Don’t do that to yourself!  I did this trip with some emotional baggage and two children who were negotiating hardcore the entire time to be allowed to take toys for a trip around the store, or at least look at toys, or at least buy a few stuffed animals… notice a theme?  I don’t live in a major city, nor am I a short bicycle ride from a co-op that carries all the things I need.  No, folks, I have something closer to what a lot of other moms have. I have a couple of local chain supermarkets a shit ton on my plate at all times.  That’s what this whole post is about.  I want to show you where my best choices led me.  And I want to show you that I still produced a fair amount of garbage- even as I was doing my best to make purchases that make sense for my family and create as little waste as possible.  Here we go.

It’s laid out for you to see.  Garbage.  Not just plastic stickers, but actual plastic.  Plastic markers, plastic pens with plastic packaging, plastic netting over some of my produce, cellophane bags … This is definitely not ZERO waste.  I could beat myself up over this.  I have at times, actually.  But come on.  I think I’ve demonstrated that I have enough shit piling up that what I should really be seeing in this grocery trip are some of these things …

I chose the bigger packs of the markers and pens instead of the smaller ones because they use up a smidge less packaging.  I bought supplies to make my own laundry detergent, but because I may not get around to that in the next week (don’t underestimate the energy it takes to grate soap while kids throw things at each other and ask for a snack every two minutes), I figured I’d play it safe and also get ready-to-go detergent.  I use the eco stuff in recycled packaging and I got it concentrated to use up even less packaging than a typical bottle of commercial detergent.  I also use my own grocery bags, I cook from scratch and rarely buy frozen food or premade meals, I’m working on growing more and more of my own food, and I have a place for usable recycled materials.  I save yogurt tubs, coffee drums, jars, non-food stained boxes, bread bags, and yogurt foils.  I’m doing okay.  Guys.   I’M NOT DOING A BAD JOB AT THIS BEING A GOOD MOM AND COOL HUMAN BEING THING, RIGHT???  I would like to point something out to anyone reading this who puts clothes on their kids and feeds them when they’re hungry and also manages to do another thing in addition to that. -YOU ARE DOING A FUCKING GOOD JOB.  And for those of you who aren’t doing that kid thing- If you’re alive and you’re making it through your own hard ass day and you’re surviving all of the bullshit life throws at you and you are also managing to try to make life a little bit better for yourself and the world, YOU ARE  DOING A FUCKING GOOD JOB.   We don’t have to let those critical mom seeds grow.  We can choose to count them as weeds and pluck them out as wee see fit.

MWAH.

 

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Shit Just Got Real

 

Water color tattoos.

 

Water colors everywhere.

 

Playing with color mixing just can’t be tidy. That’s no fair to anyone.

 

Experimenting with drawing things from a book. This one is Round is a Tortilla by Roseanne Greenfield Thong and John Parra.

 

We did some spontaneous shadow tracing when the sun came out for 12 seconds yesterday.

 

Sometimes it just be’s like that.

 

We made a good start on this prehistoric puzzle, but I have no expectations that we’ll finish it now or ever. That’s okay with me.

 

Sometimes forts are adorable because they’re Pinterest pictures or an ad and they’re not actually being used. Sometimes forts are adorable because your kids have been playing in them all morning and are making maps to help them climb to the top of Mt. St. Helens.

So I try and maintain a level of tidiness in the house that allows me to find things I’m looking for.  This goes for the kids too.  When they’re clearly done with something we clean it up.  I let them leave things out that they seem like they might be just taking a break from, but in general by the time we go to bed the majority of toys are put in their places.  But sometimes.  Sometimes it gets CRAY.  This is what homeschooling looks like for us this week.  Hold on, can I talk about school for a second?  We had an incident this week in art class and I need to share it with someone and work it out.

We homeschool.  Kind of.  Why it matters so much to people what grade Gaspar is in or whether or not he can say ABC’s is really beyond me.  Who fucking cares?  He’s a kid and he’s amazing, the rest isn’t anyone’s concern.  We’ve been through many different attempts at a good flow, and right now I take the kids to a homeschool learning center once a week for an art class and a nature/science class.  It’s great for lots of reasons, especially for socializing (them and me).  The rest of the week I loosely plan activities in a planner, but mostly we just free form.

So this week we were in art class and G accidentally splashed a tiny bit of paint onto another mom.  She snapped at him, gently.  It was something I might have said, in a tone that I might have said it TO MY OWN KIDS.  She said maybe four words- “Gaspar, you’re splashing paint everywhere”.  It was truly not anything horrible, but also  it was not okay for her to say that to MY kid.  He lost it.  He crumpled.  He’s a sensitive kid, and his experience at a traditional pre-school has probably scarred him for life (which is why we now homeschool).  He turned to me, crying, looking for comfort and safety and I freaked out because he now had paint all over his arm and I didn’t want him to get paint all over me.  I held him at arm’s length and tried to comfort him.  We washed his hands and his arm, him sobbing the whole time, and we went outside and I talked to him about what happened.  I told him it was okay that he splashed paint and that in an art class we get paint on us, and I told him that the other mom was talking to him like she might talk to her kids, and she shouldn’t have spoken to him that way.  I hugged him a lot and gave him a billion kisses.  I think I made it better and we went back in.  But I still feel like an asshole because I should have just hugged him and not cared about the paint.  I’m working on that.  This week has been kind of about me letting go and letting things be messier for a while longer.

It helps that I caught a cold.  I just literally don’t have the energy to get them to clean things up right away.  So I’m running with it.  Yes my house is chaos right now.  But also they’re really engaged in what they’re doing.  We’re not doing worksheets.  We’re doing THINGS.  We’re not writing in our writing log, we’re drawing maps and making movies and mixing paint colors and building forts.  About a thousand percent more learning is happening right now than we could ever get from a workbook, and I need to remember that next time I’m in the learning center nursery talking to the other moms who all use workbooks.  I need to remember that learning happens all the time, whether or not we’re trying to force it down our kids’ throats.

I started rereading Learning All the Time by John Holt and it helps so much to remind myself to let go and get out of the way of Gaspar’s learning.  If you’re looking for guidance with your early learner or are freaked out about what it seems like your kid isn’t learning or if you’re starting out on a homeschool journey I HIGHLY recommend reading that book asap.  It’s sensible and reassuring.

Also you know what?  I fucking love my little unicorn children and all the crazy things they come up with.  They’re tough.  They push me to my limits.  But damn they’re awesome.

Next time you think your house is messy or you think you should be doing more Kumon with your kids- paint tattoos on yourself instead.  I promise it will be fun.

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Zero Waste Food Storage without Judgement

Mexican Tupperware.  That’s what we call recycled food storage in my family.  I feel like an asshole for making fun of my grandma all those years ago for keeping half cut onions in a mug and putting leftovers in yogurt containers.  She was a champion of zero waste living.  I was a damn fool. I scrunched my face at the way she used soda bottles to water plants or cut in half to use as planters for her billions of plants.  I laughed when she used an old toilet as a plant holder.  The random hubcap in the backyard?  You guessed it, a plant holder.

Don’t even get me started on the Grandma Style permaculture system.  Grandma had fruiting trees growing that she didn’t even know she had!  On a 50 foot x 100 foot plot, where most of the land was taken up by the house, the garage, and cement driveway and patio she managed to grow pomegranates, two kinds of figs, grapes, papayas, white nectarines, oranges, kumquats, guayabas, mint, and ginger, plus hundreds of non-edibles.  You know what’s amazing about that?  None of the things she did were because she wanted to keep up with her peers.  She did not do it so that she could post pictures of it on Instagram.  She didn’t do any of those things because people would think less of her for *not* doing them.  She just did them because they made sense to her and they made her happy.

The pictures of jars of trash, or mason jar filled refrigerators we’re starting to see all over social media are definitely inspiring, but they also feel like pressure.  Some eco conscious stuff is lovely and some of it  makes me angry because it feels super judgey.  Not everyone can take time to research every single thing they purchase and make sure it’s humane/local/sustainable/non-gmo/compostable/organic, etc.  Most of us are just trying to survive.  I don’t think that I always understood that, but I definitely do now.

I aim to be less wasteful.  I aim to eat well and feed my kids wholesome food.  I cook from scratch as much as I can, and am working at finding ways to grow more of my own food.  I don’t buy junk meat, because it matters to me how an animal lived before it died to feed me.  But that’s my business, not yours, and not the dude at the library, not the lady at school, not really even my friends.  I like my ladies to just get me and not give a crap what gets recycled in my house and what doesn’t.   I like to be inspired by other people but I’m not competing with anyone, and you shouldn’t either.

So in that spirit, I want to share some of my “zero waste” practices, Mexican style.  Ghetto style.  Pretty style.

Last year my friend, Ashley, and I made beeswax wraps to use instead of plastic wrap.  They are the very best.  They’re a beautiful and functional addition to my food storage drawer.  I wash them with soap and cool water and hang dry them.  I think a tutorial is probably in the future because they were really easy to make.  Go order some beeswax pellets and buy some parchment paper at the market in the meantime.

 

This set up here gets used almost daily.  It’s a plastic cup (my kids break glass, yo)  a beeswax cup topper with a hole, and a stainless steel straw.  We drink smoothies a lot and Lola spills cups like it’s an Olympic sport.  The girl would win a gold medal for that.    So far this works better than a sippy cup.  No major spills to report, but I do usually add a rubber band to keep the beeswax wrap in place.

I just discovered compostable “plastic” bags (thanks, Jenn!), which I LOVE for the things that just need plastic bags.  We use wax bags, and Jenn also gave me some of those stinking adorable wax bags with the apples on them.  Also shown here are my small DIY beeswax wraps.

 

 

Ghetto and genius food saving items: 1. Yogurt tubs.  2.  Masking tape or painters tape and sharpies.  3.  Wet erase markers- write directly on mason jars and it washes off easily.  4. Packaged food foil.  The stuff that covers yogurt cups and stuff like that?  Yup, I totally reuse those because they are the perfect size for little things.  And 5.  Rubber bands for beeswax covers or wax paper covers.

So there you have a peek into my food storage.  I hope it inspired you and also didn’t make you want to empty your cabinets and replace everything in them before your next houseguest comes to visit.  Not that I’ve ever felt that way.  Okay, yes I definitely have. Do you have any no pressure ghetto zero waste ideas and hacks?  Share them please!  

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Not Brown Enough

My dad was a brown beret.  He was a militant.  He fought alongside other Chicanos for affirmative action at Cal. State Northridge.  He believed that underrepresented Mexican Americans and other minorities deserved the opportunity to educate themselves alongside privileged Americans.  He believed that we have a right to take classes that include our unique history.  A history that has been both twisted and ignored by public education, until we don’t even know where we come from.  We, Americans have only the shallowest, if that, understanding of the relationship between Spain, Mexico, and the United States.  We largely ignore completely the fact that almost half of the United States belonged to Mexico.   We have only the shallowest understanding that there is a very big difference between being Mexican and being Xicanx.  Our public education system ignores completely and entirely that  Mexicans have been invited into the country to work as cheap labor many times before being tossed back out, and it also ignores that Mexicans actually are the byproduct of the colonization, slaughter, and rape of indigenous people by Spaniards.  My dad believed that these things are significant and should be taught in schools.

As a teenager and a young adult I didn’t understand what my dad fought for.  It was already a normal part of life when I was growing up.  I took for granted that you could take Chicano studies classes in college.  I did understand that my dad’s Chicano friends were jerks.  They were egomaniacs who treated their women like shit and who drank too much.  I understood they mostly had chips on their shoulders.  I did understand that I was not a Chicana.  Because I grew up in a mostly white neighborhood and because I don’t have the telltale Chicana inflection when I speak, I am basically white.  Because I don’t speak seamless, fluid Spanish or even Spanglish, I am automatically excluded from the club.  I have always been an outsider in my own culture.

And yet.  I’m not white.  I do speak Spanish, even if it’s not beautiful.  I danced in the ballet folklorico, I went to mass in Spanish and had pan dulce with my Wita after church. My neighbors had their Aztec dance troupe practice in the driveway on the weekends.  Everyone in my inner circle knew the siren’s call of the paleta man.  I was surrounded by Mexican and Mexican American and Chicano culture from birth.  I AM Xicana, whether or not they let me into the club.  I AM the same blend of Spanish and Aztec and American that everyone else like me is.  It’s a part of my heart and soul.  I wear chonis and get cocos and give besos and say “Ay ay ay” when I get hurt.

The further I’ve gone from my home town, the further I’ve grown from my culture.  Because there’s the part of me that fits in pretty well anywhere I can find a craft store or an adorable cafe.  And when you’ve always been excluded from Xicana culture there’s not much reason to seek it out.  But I’m in a different place now.  I give zero fucks that I don’t have a place in mainstream anything, including mainstream Xicanx culture.  No one actually fits perfectly into any mainstream thing, we just categorize people because it’s a way to navigate the unknown.

I have kids now.  We live in a largely homogenous (white) part of the country.  I want for my kids to feel a part of their own people, their own history.  I want them to see and know many cultures and people who come from many places.  I want them to understand that there are in betweens and I want them to have role models who are in between.  Role models who are Xicanx, role models who are not.  I realize now that I have to give zero fucks in order to move forward.  In order to give my kids an authentic and open channel to their own history and their own culture I have to put aside my personal feelings of being an outsider.  I have to open the door to history and open the door to a multicultural world so that they can see that they do fit.  That they are a part of something bigger than what they see around them.  So we work at it.  I have to be more purposeful.  Intentional.

My kids are like me in that they’re in between.  They will always be in between.  It’s my job to give them a way to embrace that and be proud of their Mexican heritage despite the fact that we live in a this or that kind of world.  Happily we are not alone in our in between-ness.  A lot of people are in between.

Today is a library day.  We drive thirty minutes to the library, even though there’s a library five minutes away.  We do it because we see people from all over the world there.  We hear more languages in one visit than I can count on my hands.  We check out books in Spanish and we check out books about people all over the world.  It matters.  It makes a difference.  It’s my baby step in a long list of baby steps for my kids so that they always feel brown enough.

….

Need a glossary?

Chicana/o– Refers to Mexican American culture which is neither fully Mexican nor fully American, but its own distinct entity in between the two. I use the spelling Chicano/a when referring to the Chicano Movement that sprung up during the Civil Rights Movement, and when referring to people who identified as Chicano/a at that time.

Xicana/o/x– I use this spelling to refer to the contemporary Mexican American culture, movement, and people.  In my mind these are distinct and separate.  I never felt like a Chicana, but will proudly call myself Xicana.   The X itself pays homage to our indigenous roots and the Nahuatl language.

A person can be Mexican American and not be Xicanx, but a Xicanx person is by definition Mexican American.  Both X and Ch spellings refer to a culture which has a purposeful and intentional connection with indigenous heritage.  The indigenous connection has historically trivialized by dominant Mexican (Spanish) culture.  In Mexico, as in the United Stages, dark skin = bad, light skin = good.  Indigenous (dark skin)= bad, Spanish (light skin)= good.

Brown Beret– A movement that emerged during the Civil Rights Movement and dealt directly with issues affecting Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants, specifically farm workers’ rights and educational reform.

 

Have questions?  Want to come over for posole? Live in Portland metro and want to have a brown kid or an ethnic kid play date?  Drop me a line!

 

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Play dough. Ethnicity. Hair Cuts.

 

Holy crap.  It’s not until I collected pictures from the last week to put into a post that I see just how much stuff I juggle and how many things I am all at once.

I’m realizing that I live in kind of like a swirl of me’s.  Me, suburban mom, who does stuff like make play dough and bake bread and drive to homeschool school.  Me, the brown half of my cafe con leche marriage.  Me, the crafter, who makes just stupid cute stuff whenever given five minutes of silence.    I’m going to unpack this real quick, because these things can’t be separated.  I’m all of them.

Being Mexican American, being ethnic in a very white part of the country, I’m beginning to realize just how important it is to be a lot more outspoken about all of who I am.  When I lived in California we took this stuff for granted, that there would be people of all ethnicities mingling together.  Role models of many different cultures were all around.  But in Oregon it’s different.  Farming culture and Crunchy Millennial Hipsterism are the dominant cultures here.  It’s easy to leave out the ethnic parts of myself because people around me might not get it.  I can’t do that anymore.  I really miss diversity.  I can’t exactly see us moving back to San Fernando, so I just need to seek out culture where we are.

Anyway.  Stuff I did this week.  I laid out homemade play dough and led about 5 free form art projects,  I knitted a french press cozy.  I tricked my 5 year old into getting a haircut by setting up the Kitty Cat hair salon in the family room.  We read books in Spanish.  I try to do this every day.  We read books about the Civil Rights movement (they’re never too young for this.  Really.).  I took the kids to homeschool school and made a couple of new friends.    I made earrings, I made hair bows, I played with my hair (It never got as big as I wanted).  I painted on freezer tape.  I ate about two boxes of cookies with tea.  I cut back all the blackberry canes in the backyard.  I mapped out the front yard for future garden planning.  I gave yogurt to the chickens, coaxed Sweet Pea down off the fence about 3 times, and collected 6 eggs- thank you, Honey.  I got invited for lunch at my favorite crafty ladies’ house, I sorted through fabric that Jenn gave me, I made ridiculous stuff with it, and I took pictures of my kids doing cute stuff.  I also kissed about 80 boo boos and swept the house 387 times.  I snuggled up on my man like 4 times, which is impressive for life with two kids who monopolize daddy snuggles. I gave him lovey eyes at least three times and only yelled at him like a wild woman once, and he deserved that (it seriously is not that hard to put dirty dishes IN the sink).  I kind of feel like I’m a badass mom after reading all that.

I wonder what I’ll do next week.