our latest eco-effort has been the near-effortless laundry line. husband came home and i finally had the gumption to install it. now our laundry has been a breeze.
pun. laundry pun.
this has been a pretty simple step. i’d say about a third of the wash still goes through the dryer b/c line-dried towels and sheets don’t feel so good. but knowing that at least 2/3 of our wash is being dried by the natural elements makes me feel just a little better.
little by little, right?
i’m just going to go ahead and wrap up this weeks log because we’re setting out for a weekend of camping, music and maybe a little magic. Madame RuJu will be resting from her week’s endeavors.
5/14 – 1.2 mi
5/15 – 10.4 mi
5/16 – 7 mi
5/17 – 3.3 mi
week total – 21.9
grand total – 65.2
2 gallons of gas down.
i will say husband has been a great support and riding partner. with his help, maybe we’ll get these miles knocked out before next winter after all…
5/7 – 1.2 mi
5/8 4.8 mi
5/10 – 5 mi
5/11 – 5 mi
5/12 – 1 mi
week total: 17
grand total: 43.3 mi
true or false: whenever i see this sign i read it in my head in the voice of sean astin as samwise gamgee “sharrrrreee thhhheee rrrroooaaddd”. TRUE. whenever LotR is in question the answer is always true.
darla practicing her biker sneer
project iron thighz has been in full effect this week with some pretty good success. the first being that we rode it some every single day, even if it was just down to the gym and back. the second being i found our bike path to downtown, along the olentangy and to the scioto mile. i also found how to get to whetsone. as soon as i’m conditioned to make it that far we’re going to ride just about everywhere on two wheels. the third being i haven’t picked up groceries in the car since we got RuJu. our time in the car has greatly decreased. and lastly, a couple women who work at our gym asked me to email them pics and info about our bike set-up so they could get something similar for themselves.
excuse me, elaine. do you brag much?
errr sorry.
look, i don’t mean to brag it’s just that this week really knocked me back on my heels and i need to celebrate any small victory i had so please, forgive me this one brag sesh.
4/30 – 2.3 miles
5/1 – 1 mi
5/2 – 2.3 miles
5/3 – 1 mi
5/4 – 2 mi
5/5 – 7 mi
5/6 – 2.4 mi
week total – 18
grand total – 26.3 mi
woo woo! we just rode away 1 gallon of gas.
here’s darla enjoying a ring pop that lasted her a 7 mi ride.
and our view from the olentangy trailway
happy biking
on tuesday morning i got out my note pad which had been partnered up at the bar with my gal pal and and i to re-read some of the snippets of the previous night’s convos. if some of you are not narcissistic enough to have done this yet, i highly suggest it.
my eyes settled on this one: “the only thing you should buy in bulk is peanut butter.” hmmm when taken out of context it actually sounds like good advice. i can assure you that during the actual conversation, it was not.
nevertheless, i put that on my to-do list for the week and little lady and i stopped into Krema today for an out-of-this-world peanut butter and strawberry jam sammich and our bulk butter.
in case you missed that it says 5 LBS! 5 lbs of natural peanut butter goodness and it’s all mine….i mean ours. i guess i could spare a pound.
i’m pretty happy about the idea of getting this little guy in bulk and not dealing with at least 7 little jars it would take to equal it. can i count this as a zero-wasting-the-home effort?
welcome to the good life where the peanut butter flows like mead. now i wish we had 5 lbs of mead.
oh and by the way, peanut butter paired with grape jelly is total bullshit. peanut butter paired with strawberry jam is, well, the JAM. never. looking. back.
weekly tally:
4/25 – 1 mile
4/26 – 1 mile
4/28 – 1 mile
4/29 – 5.3 miles
grand total = 8.3 miles
not bad for the first week. hopefully the weather will cooperate more this next se’night. our ride home from the gym yesterday was in the rain. no biggie fries, though. it’s only a .5 mi from our homestead.
i did the math and figured out it will take me 3,200 miles to ride back the bike if i average gas to be $3.75 a gallon. bahahaha. how many years will that take? at least 8.3 is a start.
also, darla has now requested that her bike be called Ruby Juice too. I can’t decide on RuJu Too, RuJu Two, or RuJuTooTwo. i kinda like the last one. what do you think?
lastly, a pic of darla waiting for RuJu to be delivered in our bike trailer with my old not-creepy-at-all hug-a-bunch doll.
happy riding.
hello everyone, meet Ruby Juice. she’s our newest and shiniest member of the family. why Ruby Juice? well, because i tried to name her Ruby Mae and Darla said “NO! Ruby Juice” but she said it with a really drawn out middle i.e. juuuuuuiiiiiiiiice. so Ruby Juice she is and just now while typing it i’ve decided to make it a compound word such as Beetlejuice. RubyJuice.
so, since i splurged on RuJu i’ve decided it’s necessary to ride her as much as possible. i’ll be keeping a weekly log of how many miles we ride to see how long it takes us to ride back the cost of her. i’m hoping to save lots of gallons of gas this summer + fall. yay environment! Let project Iron Thighz commence!
yeah, that’s what i’m calling this – Project Iron Thighz.
here’s a collection of some cloth diapering references for any of you who are considering making the switch for The Great Cloth Diaper Change:
a friend’s post on cloth diapering in their house, lots of links included.
a pretty good collection of cloth diapers and covers and accessories.
a thorough FAQ from diaperpin.
here are some of my favorite covers we used:
my favorite was Imse Vimse
the book i read that spurned our cloth endeavor, as well as other organic home practices:
i just thought i would share this nifty little flyer from Bundle of Joy about cloth diapering.
sign up for their service before april 21st for the great cloth diaper change using your MomJeanz promotion discount: sign up for a month of service, and they will waive the two start up fees (which is $35.00 for the start up kit, which includes the pail, liner, Snappi and deo disks and then another $35.00 for the first month of diaper cover rental). mention MomJeanz blog and they will give you 10% off of your monthly service fee for the first six months as well!
so here’s the poop scoop from when the wrucker family used cloth diapers.
the long and short of it is that i was supremely happy with using cloth diapers and would probably start hypothetical baby #2 in them earlier. the majority of our positive experience could be attributed to our cloth diaper service, bundle of joy, which i am now promoting to all you columbus readers.
we started darla on cloth diapers around 10 months. she completed potty training shortly after her two year mark, probably 26 months or so. i do think the cloth diapers helped greatly in having her potty trained early.
our service supplied everything. all that was required of us was to dump poop into the toilet and discard soiled diapers into diaper pail. our used diapers were picked up once a week and fresh ones delivered. easy peesy mac and cheesy.
disposable diapers are the second biggest component in american landfills, falling just behind disposable restaurant containers. thanks starbucks. and you know how big a diaper swells when it hasn’t been changed in a while, well it expands about 5x that in our landfills thanks to the super absorbent gel contained in most brands. just think of the reduction in waste that could be achieved by parents going back to cloth diapers? this certainly was a motivation for me. also, the average age of a cloth diapered falls between 18-24 mos depending on research sources. the average age of a disposable diapered child is 36 months. that’s a whole year of diapers i didn’t have to change! a whole year of diapers i didn’t have to buy and throw away!
i think the only part of cloth diapers i didn’t like was dumping the poo into the toilet. but once i learned that people really SHOULD dump solid waste into the toilet instead of into landfills then i started trying to do it with darla’s disposables, too. (she wasn’t exclusively cloth diapered, we had some disposable training pants around that we could take with us if we were going to be out and about all day.) so dumping the poop just became something i got used to.
well, there’s that. if you are interested in joining Bundle of Joy Cloth Diaper service be sure to mention MomJeanz as your source for this offer: sign up for at least a month of service, and we will waive the two start up fees (which is $35.00 for the start up kit, which includes the pail, liner, Snappi and deo disks and then another $35.00 for the first month of diaper cover rental). If they sign up from reading your MomJeanz, we will give them 10% off of their monthly service fee for the first six months as well!
you can find all their information on their website links above.
happy diapering to all you parents out there.
momjeanz 