As indicated in my round up of greener menstrual products I am not a fan of the mainstream menstrual products for women. Paper and plastic pads and tampons just aren’t good options for the planet nor for a woman’s comfort. More than anything I think those mainstream options allow us to distance ourselves from the process as much as possible and not take responsibility for it. Either that or it is just pure convenience… aka why wash cloth pads or rinse out a Diva Cup in soapy water and get your hands dirty when you could just throw the problem away… literally.

I was very interested in trying Lunapanties because I see nothing wrong with convenience myself and having panties that also double as a cloth pad seemed genius to me and ooohhhhh it is genius. Even if you use paper sanitary napkins I dare you to see this as less convenient. Other than the washing, which I am assuming you won’t be doing by hand, down at the river, beating your panties against rocks, then this is such an easy solution. Follow me here for a second.. put the panties on… then take them off to wash. Easy! No unwrapping a sanitary napkin, peeling off the gazillion stickers that are affixed to them, no sticking it to the crotch of your undewear, no cursing when your monthly gift misses the napkin and stains your panties, no feeling like you are wearing an adult diaper, no wrapping the napkin up in toilet paper (or a time capsule to protect from pets) and throwing it away to sit in a landfill for all eternity… see… easy!

Lunapanties are basically just panties that come with some extra padding in the crotch area and they have a couple loops sewn into that area as well that allow for you to double up, or triple up even, on the protection by adding absorbent inserts. The panties and the inserts are made of super soft organic cotton (95%) and they are oh so comfortable. The other 5% is lycra to make the panties snug fitting. The ones given to me for this review are a pretty purple color but I see from the web site that they also come in black. I like the purple.

After using them for a week recently I can say that I REALLY love them. I plan to buy a couple more pairs and they, coupled with my Diva Cup, will be what I reach for every month. I also like the fact that I can still use many of my other cloth pads with them too. On heavy flow days I do need to use inserts just for my own peace of mind, and for a couple days I just used the underwear and the Diva Cup with no issues. On the last day or so I just wore the panties with no insert. I didn’t even feel like I was on my period and that ladies is lovely, as I am sure you know!

There have several different sizes (S-3XL) and have several different styles from briefs to thongs. I would recommend getting one pair and trying them to see how you like the fit and style and then ordering more. I requested large size granny panties (briefs would be the name they use) and the large seemed… well… kinda large. They seemed to me that they are sized a little to big.

The price for the panties is $29.99. If you usually buy panties at Wal-Mart for $2.00 a pop then this might seem expensive. If you buy panties at Victoria’s Secret then these will seem like a good deal. I think they are a great value, especially given that they are high quality and organic. 3 panties, my inserts and pads, and my Diva Cup will do me just fine and I will still save in the long run because I don’t have to buy sanitary napkins or tampons every month.

The washing is also very easy. I just threw them in the wash on cold and let them soak for an hour and then rinsed and spun. Then I washed them with a load of towels. They did not stain but I wouldn’t have cared much if they did…. that’s just not a big deal to me. The Luna company recommends Nellie’s A-Natural Laundry Soda Soap Detergent, which I have used and like and they suggest BunchaFarmers Biodegradable Stain Remover Stick for stains. Never heard of it but I may have to try that now!

All in all I find this to be one of those great products that really makes life more comfortable and convenient and yet has the benefit of being the greener option to. A++

Friday mornings are often crafty times for us because it is the only day when my two youngest are both home all day. This morning my daughter colored her Kidzsack Backpack an my son colored with his Eco Stars (more on those later). We set up the perfect place to do all this busy work… on the back porch, soaking in the fresh air and sunshine. This area will double as our dining room until Fall.

Anyway, the Kidzsack is a durable kids backpack made from eco friendly fibers. They come with an uncolored picture on the base of the pack and the kids get to color them in and make the backpack their unique creation. As a future fashion designer (her words not mine) my daughter really appreciates this product. It comes with 8 washable markers so that you can wash and then "create" all over again.

There are numerous different designs from which to choose from, for boys and girls. The bag my daughter has is called Sea Life but you can also get Sports, Castles, Jungle, etc. My daughter is anxiously awaiting Monday so she can take her new pack to school and show it off.

What I like about this product is that it gives kids control over the creative design. I like the fact that this "craft" is actually useful too. I know we will get much use out of it at school and during trips this summer. I love bags you can wash too!! The bag gets bonus points for being partially made out of recycled plastic bottles… they gotta go somewhere.

I am not so crazy about markers in general because of the new plastic, but what can you do? Usually we donate the markers that come with craft projects but these will be kept for future colorization of the bag. We give this product a A+ for fun and a B+ on eco indicators.

For more info on how it works watch the video below:

I have been meaning to write up a review of this lunchbox… which I bought many moons ago when they first hit the market. But I rarely have time to pack lunches AND snap pictures in the wee hours of the morning. Some days I cannot even believe I used to have a bento lunchbox blog where I blogged daily pictures of my son's lunches. The addition of a second child to the mix is throwing me off my game. But Mondays are much more nice now that my husband is home for them (at least for now) so I actually had time to throw a quick lunch together and take some pictures! 

The lunchbox we used this morning is the Goodbyn. I grabbed it because I had personalized it with an "I love you" message that I felt my daughter needed to see. Yes, mommy was feeling major guilty this morning over her own bad behavior. So I grabbed the "I love you" box and already that is a major plus for Goodbyn. The stickers may not be eco friendly, they are probably plastic based, but the idea that you can personalize the lunchbox is a big hit in this house.

On the menu: Banana, baby carrots with hummus dip, green smoothie in a bottlle, PB&J Lara Bar, Strawberries, dried blueberries, and goji berries chilling with two fruity cubes to keep them cold, Brazil nuts, and two fair trade chocolate earth balls. Everything is raw vegan except the chocolate. The container with the Hummus is not from Goodbyn… I borrowed it from one of our Laptop Lunchboxes.

The whole concept of this lunchbox is awesome… BPA free (safe) plastics, compartments to eliminate the need for plastic baggies and single serving packaging, and it is a pretty hip looking bento. You know me.. I LOVE bento. I also like the carrying handle and the ability to use the stickers that come with it to make it completely unique to your child. There are even stickers for kids with allergies. It is dishwasher safe if you happen to have one (I don't) and you can recycle it if need be later on down the road.

The Goodbyn does have a pretty big drawback though. You have to instruct your child on the proper way to open and close the lunchbox to avoid spilling the contents everywhere and even when adults do it I am not so confident it will stay closed. I have yet to buy some rubber bands because I have a fear of them after an "incident" with my toddler but ideally I hope to get a rubberband to wrap around the box so my daughter can actually use the carrying handle to carry it. Every time she takes this lunchbox I worry that I will find out she had to eat her lunch out of the bottom of her backpack. The closure mechanism just isn't very secure… a rubber band would fix it though and I hope Goodbyn addresses this issue some day. Another drawback is that the box is heavier than her other lunchboxes, like the afore mentioned Laptop Lunchbox and her Yubo. I also find the side compartments a bit too small. This morning I wanted to add a few more greens but the side compartments are just teeny.

All in all, we like the Goodbyn and think it has some awesome features. The execution is a bit flawed but it is also workable. While it isn't my personal favorite it does make my daughter happy and that counts for a lot.

One of the first steps in moving towards any greener, more sustainable lifestyle has to be the step where you ditch chemical cleaners and start using cleaner, greener options. It is my number #1 recommended step in fact because everyone has to clean house and by using green cleaners we make our homes and our planet safer.

Its not always an easy switch though. We may get used to using harsh cleaners like Clorox or Windex and using something more mild like baking soda and vinegar seems like more work. I know when my husband quit his old job that took him out of town all but a few days a month and he was around to do some cleaning, he was kinda baffled by my cleaners. He kept asking how do I clean this up with no paper towel and no cleaners? I would point to the cleaning cabinet and you would have thought it was empty by the look on his face. What was he to do with spray bottles, peppermint Castile soap, vinegar, baking soda, and ripped up towel remnants?

For his sake, and my own, I usually try to keep a couple non homemade green cleaners on hand so he won’t have an excuse not to help with the cleaning. Other people just want to use conventional cleaners and that is okay… there are greener choices available. I get lots of requests from companies to test their green cleaners and since I know I will use them I agree to act as a tester on occasion. The cleaners below are some of my latest adventures in this area.

The ones pictured above are called wowgreen and there are 12 of them from an all purpose cleaner, to a dish soap, to a wood and dust shine. I got a big box from the company and dove right into testing them since I had some guests coming over… the kind of guests that bring TV cameras. I rather enjoy cleaning and do it thoroughly so they got a good run. Ultimately they clean pretty good but not good enough to keep me buying them. They don’t blow my homemade cleaners out the water but they do have one very cool feature. You buy the bottles once and then refill them with little packets of concentrated cleaner and water. It is a much better alternative then buying bottled cleaners over and over again at the supermarket. But with homemade cleaners I can refill my own bottles AND not have the little plastic pouch of concentrated cleaner to throw away.

Another drawback was the fact that all the cleaners have dye in them. They are all groovy colors like red, blue, yellow, and orange but that is not necessary and the dyes can’t be natural. They also stained some of my white rags which is kind of annoying. But they didn’t give me hives like many of the more conventional cleaners do so that is a good sign. All in all I I found them efficient but they didn’t “wow” me. I ended up donating what I had left (which was a lot) to someone who could use them.

A company called Earth Care Market sent me some of their cleaners and I like their stuff much better although I had tried most of it before. The soap nuts they sent are already a hit here. The Wipe-Its are coin sized pellets that turn into a paper towel-like cloth wipe and I have tried them before to. I like them a lot but not so much for every day cleaning. I keep some on hand for vacations, camping, and hiking though.

Their Clean-It Mop might have been a nice change of pace from my usual routine… which is to use my feet and two rags to clean my hard floors. BUT I didn’t have a mop stick on which to attach the mop head and wasn’t about to buy one (plastic) just to test out a mop head that would only last a few weeks. So I donated it as well and is was liked well enough but I am told it fell apart rather quickly.

The last thing that I tested was the big winner IMO. It is Vaska laundry detergent. Soap nuts are good and all but the shipping aspect is a pain in the butt. I would like to try making my own but as yet have not ventured there. When we ran out a few months back I just got a bulk tub from Costco with powdered detergent. Well, in addition to the stuff smelling noxious and giving me a headache if the lid falls off, the powder does not want to dissolve in my washer. I am not sure if that is a detergent problem or a washer problem but little pebbles of detergent all over our clothes did not go over well with me. Getting the Vaska liquid herbatergent was a life saver.

I love the smell, it is really mild, and it gets the clothes cleaner than the powder did with no visible residue. It uses herbs and potent botanical cleaning agents for high performance stain removal and extreme freshness. INGREDIENTS: Plant based surfactants, vegetable conditioner, water-soluble degreasing agent, lavender extract (leaves no scent) and filtered water. My recycling center recycles the bottles too so I would definitely buy again.

Vaska is also getting pretty cool press too. One of the oldest Chinese laundry services in California recently switched to Vaska AND it won a Wash Off with Tide at the Fashion Institute of Technology. There is no reason to use harsh chemical cleaners when the greener, natural stuff works just as well ya know?

Thanks much to the companies for sending me products to test. I am kind of “harsh” when it comes to green cleaners, so sorry bout that. Some products I just have no use for. All that I tried were decent but Vaska is the only one that made me sit up and take notice.

On the heels of my post on ethical toys and I wanted to post about cardboard toys. They are certainly not new… I remember I had a full size cardboard house that I used to play in when I was a little girl. It was very big, and it was black and white so that you could paint or color it yourself to personalize it. After many months of use, when it was starting to tear and generally look raggedy, we tossed it. Every year at Christmas time we would get another one from Sees Candy.

Cardboard toys are low cost and eco friendly. You can recycle them in your own backyard compost pile. They are also wonderfully creative toys for kids. Kids can assemble them and they can personalize them making the toy their own unique creation.

For the past couple weeks my kids have been playing with cardboard toys from the Creative Toyshop. They have TONS of awesome Calafant cardboard toys that go way beyond the simple house I used to play with. They have castles, tree houses, pirate fortresses, dollhouses, and so much more. They provide hours of open ended play and when your kids are done they can be folded away for storage or recycled if they are getting a little too well used.

My oldest son has the Calafant tree house. He was pretty much able to put it together on his own from looking at the pictures. The written instructions were kind of useless IMO but the pictures rocked. After putting it together he got busy coloring it. In true creative form he opted not to let the color photo on the box guide his color choices. I knew he would like cardboard toys because for years he has made his own creations out of leftover cardboard boxes. Creating a tree house of cardboard.. heck what could be better?

My daughter has the Calafant Rosegarden Palace. I put it together for her in about ten minutes and she colored it. She referenced the color picture on the box but more often than not chose her own colors… which surprised me since she is all about pink and purple. On a side note she complained that the markers that came with it stunk really bad, LOL. They just had a really strong marker smell which she didn’t care for (she’s a soy crayon girl)… we ended up donating them after she used them.

They both loved building and decorating these toys. My son now lets his sit in his room on display and my daughter plays with hers… putting her wooden fairy dolls in it. She plans on embellishing it with glitter and rhinestones… I just keep forgetting to check out the craft section of the thrift store.

I love that these toys are rather small since we don’t have a ton of room in our tiny 1000 square foot house. The child size cardboard house I used to have wouldn’t be practical but these are perfect. All pieces are pre-cut and pre-punched. They can be put together without glue and scissors thanks to the Calafant slot-system. They are creative, they provide hours of open ended play, they are eco friendly, and they are fun.

We probably all have memories of playing in cardboard boxes as kids. We too save any big boxes for the kids to play in before they get recycled. Cardboard toys take that concept and run with it. Calafant (German) makes small, medium, and large toys for all ages and interests. There are some larger ones that kids can play in too, just like I did. Fun!