Thrifty Week - Green Credentials

Whether by accident or design, being thrifty usually manages to end up being good for the environment too. Elizabethd and her husband are busy reducing tap-water consumption in northern France. Mrs Yappy Dog is reusing empty lemonade bottles. Jenevieve is making cloth nappies while waiting for a new arrival (and yes, cloth nappies nowadays really work brilliantly - you can forget those old Terries!). So thrift means reduce and reuse (recycle is the poor third relation in the Green Threesome - you don't need to recycle much if you reduce and reuse enough...) So here are a few of my thrifty ways which are also good for the environment - two old favourites and one real newbie! Firstly, cloth napkins are cheaper and more environmentally friendly than paper napkins or kitchen roll. And boy, do they look good for those who love vintage style! This is a snapshot of what's on our table at the moment - a rare example of all four of us having the same design. The boys usually complain when we all have the same napkins - they like the eclectic collections I build up and sort by colour. In my drawers I have a red set, a green set, a yellow/beige set and a blue set. Sorting by colours is enough to bring the disparate odds and ends I pick up in charity shops together. Washing and ironing them is no big deal - shirts are hard to iron, but squares of fabric are a doddle. I think we meet the criteria for style, convenience, thrift and creation-care with these napkins. I hope you agree!

The second old-favourite is using kitchen cloths instead of kitchen roll. I do keep a roll of paper for really nasty disasters (vomit-related, normally) but in the kitchen is a 'set' of blue cloths (some microfibre, some cut-up T-shirts) and in the utility room is 'the rest' - mankier cloths of all colours that can be used on the floor and for dusting. We help ourselves to them just as we would with kitchen roll, and then throw the cloths into a washing bin in the kitchen. I don't like them lying around damp waiting for re-use - they do breed bacteria. So I uses them once and wash them regularly. It works.

This baby is the new thrifty/green addition to our life - I bought it with some Christmas money. It's a steam mop - no more shopping for floor cleaning products! The hot steam disinfects as it removes the dirt, and the floor dries pretty quickly as it the water is so hot. If you need to really disinfect an area (this is the patch under the stairs where the dog eats and sleeps, so as you can see it gets truly grubby), you just leave the mop in one place for nine seconds and the steam kills all known germs - dead, or whatever those cleaning products promise. As Mrs Yappy Dog mentioned the other day, it's a bit odd to have really clean floors without a really clean smell - you KNOW your floor is clean if it stinks of pine - but that's something I'm getting used to. I bought mine, in true British fashion, at Lakeland Ltd.

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Do visit Mrs Yappy Dog to pick up more tips and links for Thrifty Week. And have a look at my prayer for our children, below - there's a story attached to today's post - synchronicity is happening!