Posts Tagged ‘frugal’

Since becom­ing more fru­gal and more green, very proud of myself last night and only put out one small bag of bin men rub­bish most of it was cat lit­ter (eco cat lit­ter though, smells like pine) and three bags of recy­cling, I could do more but I need to inves­ti­gate com­post bins and see if my gar­den is big enough for them.

Been some great posts on Frugal/Green blogs out there, here are my favourites:

• Fru­gal and Healthy Tip of the Day– Mason Jars
• 5 rules for sav­ing money at the store
• DIY –Turn Old (or New) Pho­tos into Stationery
• Going Green Tips… Save Money and Our Future
• 3 Ways to Make School Sup­plies Green

Green Par­ent­ing

Since we have started try­ing for our own lit­tle bun­dle of joy makes me think what can I do to be a green par­ent, I had never heard this term until I started research­ing and it makes a lot of sense, most of it I had already heard about as it relates very closely to attached parenting.

Cloth wipes and nap­pies seem to be the way to go, I know some peo­ple seem to think this will be a chore to them and will be a big pain in the bum, but I think if you think about it log­i­cally okay you will have to do more wash­ing and you will have to touch what has been deposited but babies of cloth nap­pies do not seem to have nappy rash and it saves you so much, in the first year you can save £500 on nap­pies alone and £200 on reusable wipes, that is £700 which would be going in the bin!

I approached my hus­band about this before but before I could go into my nor­mal rant about how we should save the planet and money, he said that he had reusable nap­pies as a child and wanted to do it for his own and he knows it will be a lit­tle bit extra hard work but we only have one chance to get this right, or three chances (we would like three children).

I also believe that you do not need to buy loads and loads of expen­sive cloth­ing, my friend buys her child designer cloth­ing and I say to her she will grow out that in a month, what a waste of money you could be sav­ing for her future, I’ll be the one in char­ity shops and jum­ble sales, and if peo­ple want to buy us all this designer stuff I will sug­gest that they put the money towards our child’s future and we will put it in a uni­ver­sity sav­ings account.

I nearly for­got the most impor­tant one and that is breast­feed­ing, breast­feed for as long as you can, my friend said it was gross that I would breast­feed past one and I was said why is it gross? It is nat­ural!  I breast­feed till I was a year and half, and my mother breast­feed my two broth­ers for just as long (well maybe not the sec­ond one as he got bored at 6 months and decided he couldn’t be arsed to suck, but at the age of 20, he is still the same) and my step-mum breast­feed my sis­ters for a year.  I really do not under­stand why it is gross but hey every­one has their own view on it and I guess you do what makes you happy and what is best for your child at the end of the day.

Prepar­ing all your own food, saves you so much money and at least you know what your chil­dren are eat­ing who knows what is in those glass jars you can buy, even though my hus­band really wants the apple one not so our kid can eat it so he can eat it.  He is a very strange man.

I’ve been enjoy­ing the Green Par­ent­ing mag­a­zine, I have to read it on-line as I live in the UK, I found some­thing really inter­est­ing in it today which was using wooden toys:

Use Wooden and Nat­ural Toys

Accord­ing to Green Par­ent­ing, plas­tic and battery-containing toys can con­tain haz­ardous mate­ri­als such as phtha­lates or plas­tic soft­en­ers. Instead, choose wooden toys and encour­age babies and chil­dren to play with their nat­ural envi­ron­ment. For exam­ple, when cook­ing, par­ents can give kids a wooden spoon. As soon as pos­si­ble, par­ents can get chil­dren involved in the cook­ing and clean­ing, even if it is messy.

At the end of the day, each to their own I would never look down on some­one rais­ing their child dif­fer­ently to me but this is just the way my hus­band and me are doing it.