7 Goals for 2014

I'm not a big resolution person but here are some of my goals for this year. I share these with you lovely readers so that you can help keep me accountable! We've moved into our lovely new house and soon we will have our second little boy here with us. With all the change and transition, it just feels like a good time to start building up some new, better habits. Without further ado, here are some of my goals for 2014:

• Keep the house clean enough. I'm not shooting for Martha Stewart, picture-perfect every day here. I just want to keep the cleaning manageable and not feel like I need to apologize if someone stops by unexpectedly. I'll be posting a cleaning schedule later. I wrote it out today and will start enforcing it tonight!
• No more medical debt. With all of Alex's health issues from last year and having two babies in two years, we've got more doctor's bills than I would like. We've been paying them off as we can, but I hope to have them all paid off by the end of the year! (Alex's pediatrician was paid off this month!)
• Try new recipes. I'm in a rut. I cook the same 7-10 meals over and over again. Once new baby is here and we get a decent rhythm down, I want to try one new recipe each week. Each recipe will be a whole foods recipe and will hopefully help expand my culinary skills (I'm getting better!) as well as increase our dietary variety.
• Make fitness a priority. This will be hard with two littles and a full time job, but it's very important to me! Yes, I'd like to lose some weight (maybe a lot of weight), but I really want to focus on helping my body to function better.
• Decorate the house. I am not a big decorator. Home decor is one thing that just kinda didn't get downloaded into my programming. However, I want to decorate our little house and have it looking good. I'm giving myself a year here and it's gonna take me some time.
• Build up a garden. I'm so excited to have a yard! Not only will the boys have a place to run and play, which Alex already enjoys, but we can have a garden! I want to grow many of our own fruits and veggies and herbs. Be watching for details as our plan unfolds!
• Make our lifestyle more sustainable. While our lifestyle is already pretty "green" in some respects, I'd really like to make even more improvements. One area I really want to focus on this year is eliminating one-time-use products and extra plastics. I don't think this will be a difficult goal, but it will take some time to build up a stash of reusable items to replace our commonly used disposable stuffs.

Alrighty, that's quite a bit! Check in with me and keep me honest! I'll be posting about each of these goals through out the year and hopefully we can inspire and motivate one another along the way!

What goals do you have for this year?

Cloth Diaper "Cakes"

I have several friends expecting right now. I've really enjoyed getting creative with gifts for them. Here are a couple of cloth diaper/wipe "cakes" I've made recently.

Here's a rose I made out of six cloth wipes
from Chickapeababy.com
for a friend's gender reveal party.

One of my male co-workers' wife is expecting.
They aren't using cloth diapers (can't convince everyone)
but I made a motorcycle out of blankets and
Gerber prefolds (my fav burp cloths ever!).

Side view of the motor cycle.
This includes 10 Gerber Prefolds, 3 receiving blankets,
two pairs of socks, one bottle, and one teddy bear.

Diaper Laundry!

My diaper-folding assistant.

Diaper Review: Chickapea Baby Extended Tab Prefolds

I am an avid pocket diaper lover. They comprise most of my stash, but don't really work for us over night. Alex is just too heavy of a wetter. We've been using a couple of fitteds at night but were getting leaks. The diapers were soaked in the morning and so were his jammies. So, even though I was not particularly interested in prefolds, I jumped at the chance to try Chickapea Baby Extended Tab Perfolds.

Chickapea Baby Extended Tab Prefolds

Chickapea Baby is a mom-owned business run by Melony, mom to four here in Abilene. Current offerings include the homemade extended tab prefolds, cloth wipes, teething jewelry or "bling", and boingos. You can read my review of the boingo here.

I prepped the diaper and booster on the stovetop to make it a bit quicker and hung both pieces on the line. Putting the diaper on seemed a little daunting, but I studied Melony's instructions and practiced a few times diapering a stuffed animal first. I was able to get the diaper on and secured properly. I was pretty proud of this and may have done a little happy dance. (No judging.) I will say that when Alex is particularly squirmy, it can be a challenge. I think once I've gotten more used to it, I'll be able to do it faster.

We had no leaks that night! Or any other night we've used this diaper. Some nights, the diaper doesn't even feel soaked all the way through. I'm using a hemp diaper with a booster "insert" for added absorbency. Overall, it's a great diaper and much less daunting than it seemed! I might just be a prefold convert!

We're trying to find the cover that will work for us but have used a Flip and a Sweet Pea cover with success. After the diaper was prepped I just included it with our regular diaper laundry. It does take longer to dry then my pockets, but it's so much thicker!

I've already picked up another medium (the size Alex fits now) and have ordered two larges for when he grows out of this size, which probably won't be any time soon. You can get the diapers in hemp (what we used) or bamboo. There are a variety of prints. We have "All Crabby" (so cute!) and a striped one.

I received our All Crabby diaper at a discounted price as part of a small test group. I was not compensated for this review.

7th Step towards Sustainability: Cloth Cleaning Towels

In keeping on theme of green cleaning, let's work on reducing paper waste in the cleaning process. Often when you go about your routine cleaning, you'll use paper towels to wipe down your counters, your fixtures, your bathroom mirror... Just about everything. How many paper towels does that add up to? Well, I haven't done the math, but it's a lot! Even the most absorbent paper towels get used up and tossed out for new ones. Cloth cleaning towels solve that problem!

By switching to cloth towels for your cleaning tasks, you can stop the never ending cycle of using and throwing away paper towels, saving countless amounts of paper waste and tress! Back in the "old days" before paper towels, cloth towels were used for all cleaning tasks. That's just what you had. We invent paper towels and out go the cleaning rags.

How It Helps: Paper towels might be convenient but they require many tress to die and are really only usable once. Then, they go to that ever-so-hated place, the landfill. By using cloth towels, you reduce the needs for paper, and therefore trees, while also keeping our landfills a little bit more empty.

How To Do It: Use old washcloths or buy some cheap towels and set them aside to use for your chores. Once they've gotten all yucky toss them in the wash and do it all over again. We have a stack of towels in the linen closet reserved just for cleaning. Now, in all honesty, we do still have some paper towels in the kitchen, but  I go through a roll maybe every two months, probably closer to three or more. (I'm considering going to un-paper towels, but that's for another day...)

Cost: If you want to just use some old washcloths that you have lying around, they've already been paid for so there's no new cost! If you want/need to buy some towels for cleaning, you can get a good bundle at Wal-mart or any other store for $5 or less. Remember: you're using these towels to dust your furniture and clean your toilet, they don't need to be anything fancy.

There you have it. Another very simple and easy step to help make your life a little bit more sustainable.