Today is washing day.....

Thursday, May 15th

I know this is strange but I enjoy washing, no really I do! - When I was a teenager my family called me the "Washing Machine Queen." - Not sure what brought this on, but I think it's getting all my clothes
clean that makes me happy. The end result of clean smelling clothes is so comforting to me. I don't like the folding, ironing or the putting away part, just the washing and hanging out the washing.

It truly is amazing how much washing I have to do now with S around, some days I still have to change her outfits 2-3 times, especially after she decides to not eat all her meals just to wear it instead. Plus I have the on-going washing of her nappies aka diapers. I normally wash the latest pile every 3-4 days. While the washing is on, I normally get into "busy bee" mode and want to clean something else in the house. Most of the time this doesn't happen since S decides to chase me around and wants to play.

Having a routine helps alot, I divide the clothing into dark, light, whites, towels and or sheets. Then when the pile is big enough to do a large load (I hate wasting water by doing tiny loads) I put them in the machine and let it do the job. All my hand washing, items I wash in cold and place my bra's, S socks, tights in a mesh bag so we don't have only 1 sock at the end - since socks do have a natural habit of disappearing. My theory is that they like to separate from their partner for a while & have a break! I do miss not being able to put clothes out on a line to dry from the sun, our subdivision won't allow clothes lines, so I hang my clothes to dry in the basement on clothes drying racks so sometimes our basement does look like a laundromat.

Cloth diapering/nappies are fantastic, I recommend them to anyone. OK it probably is easy for me being a SAHM to maintain the current nappy supply, but still more people should give it go. I've noticed S only gets bottom rash when in disposables. I use a disposable at night, since no matter how many liners I use in her nappy she still ends up wet in the morning. Now days it is so easy with cloth nappies - you just press a couple of snaps, buttons, velcro or poppers shut and its on, no more painful nappy pins. I use Fuzzi Bunz which consists of a fleece/plastic cover which you place an insert into. After they are dirty I just throw them into a rubbish bin with a plastic liner and when wash day rolls around take the liner bag downstairs and do a cold rinse followed by a hot/ cold wash. Any solid waste is thrown into the garbage bin.

Some extra work is needed with cloth diapers, you may have to change your baby more often. Generally they can't hold as much liquid has disposables but they don't stay in the land fill for 50 years. Each to their own, but even if one person buys a couple of cloth nappies to start with that would be less disposables for them to buy and less landfill for the environment.

Well time for me to tackle my ironing monster, which is closely related to my other monster - the washing monster!

Water, water everywhere....

Tuesday, May 13th

While enjoying my morning herbal tea I heard the strangest noise - shh,shh getting louder and louder, after figuring out what it was I decided to take a pic -

The noise was my

neighbors sprinkler system watering the garden - I was so surprised because -

1 - I haven't heard this noise since last summer.

2 - Did someone forget to tell them it's Spring the wettest time of the year.

3 - It's 6:30am - What are you doing!!

Don't get me wrong I love green grass, fresh flowers and seeing a beautiful lush garden but when will people realise that it's not necessary to start watering in the beginning of Spring just so you can have the greenest grass in the street for the Summer. Well our grass is not bright green, currently covered in a blanket of thatch which needs to be removed, though our flower beds are looking very healthy.

I remember last summer, when I would go for my morning walks while heavily pregnant with S, all you could hear was sprinklers coming on one after another and then see the water running down the street into the drains from over watering.

It really is a shame to see the water waste here, coming from OZ and living in UK both countries have hose water bans and a garden sprinkler system is out the question. You would get fined for being so wasteful. I wish they would do that here, it would stop the waste.

Last summer our county water department asked for people to water every other day, so if your house number was even you watered every even day and if an odd number then every other day.This bizarre system didn't really didn't work since people decided to water the lawn twice a day on the day's they could water.

Why are people so obsessed with green lawns?

I came across some interesting articles on water usage - domestic usage in 2000 and another article with some great ideas on how to reduce your water usage.

I'm going to review the articles again in order to practice what I preach!

Note: This year our sprinklers will run only once a day, every other day for a short amount of time and not during the peak heat of the day. Hopefully this will help to provide us with a smaller water bill each month, so far I'm planning for my sprinklers to start working late May/ early June - maybe even mid June.