Going Crunchy

(first, sidenote-Daniel has finally blogged!!)

If ya'll remember in these posts.....we started to 'go green,' about a little over a year ago when we were still living in the States. We got rid of almost all chemicals in our house by making our own cleaning products. I did make our laundry detergent, but over time wasn't the biggest fan of the recipe I used. I've found several that I want to try, but I can't get Borax or Fels Naptha (still NO clue what that is.)

I loved using Dr. Bronner's in our house and was a huge fan of the peppermint. However, we've lived here in the EA for close to 8 months (i know shocking right?!) and buying regular house cleaning products was way easy. But it's been bothering me for a few months now. Everytime I used the bathroom cleaner I had a coughing fit and felt like I had just shaved a few months off my life.

So I've been googling/pinteresting all types of homemade recipes for things from Febreze to Shout, to dishsoap, etc...and I kept coming across the term "crunchy." Maybe a lot has happened in the last 8 months but I had never heard this term before. After reading a few blogs (and checking urbandictionary), I realized I totally want to be Crunchy.

No, I'm not turning vegan, or even vegetarian (yet haha), but I do want to make as many household products as I can and in my perfect world we would figure out how to solar panel our apartment and reuse rain water. But until then, I'll just take baby steps.

We recently bought this:

It's a natural water filter that filters tap or rain water. We take the lid off, add tap water into the ceramic pot, and the ceramic filters the water removing impurities.

We were using this before.

We were going through about 2 of these bottles a week which cost about $20 a month. Ridiculous. We paid about $40 for our new filter system, and all we need to get clean water is TAP WATER! Not only is this a great way to save money and be financially responsible, but it's a great way to eliminate using plastic bottles and wasting water.

I have also been recently introduced to a HUGE website that everyone here uses, called Taobao. You can buy tons of stuff on this site. Yesterday, I found Dr. Bronner's and it will be delivered to our house this week. The plan is to eliminate storebought cleaners and use natural homemade products in the kitchen and bathroom. I did find Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent to buy online, but it is about $20 and I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

And yes, when we have children I plan to use cloth diapers and make homemade diaper cream and baby wipes.

Just call me crunchy.

love

laura