talking about consumers today

Sometimes I get really miffed at how the people who write commercials try to portray us. With so many commercials for say household products or cleaning products in particular, we as a people are made to look like we never clean, are lazy & want everything to be disposable. Wow … is this really what we have become? Not me. And not a lot of people I know.

I am so tired of seeing one commercial after another trying to sell us, as consumers, some new fangled disposable or otherwise wasteful product.

Not long ago I saw a commercial for a popular brand of paper plates. They touted how strong they were, even better than before. They now will hold up to even the messiest of dishes you serve. How they would save you so much time after dinner (or other meals) by being able to just throw them away. No dishes to do! You can spend more time with your family. The average family … how many of them truly spend time together after dinner these days? Or after any meal? Why not clean up together? Teach your children how to clean up after themselves. Teach them that it’s not such a weird thing to know how to do dishes, or wipe a counter, or put away leftover food. Teach them not to be wasteful.

Is it really that hard to do a few dishes after a meal? Or if you have one, to load a dishwasher? I’m not one who loves to clean or wash dishes. But I am also not one to just be a part of the use & toss society we have created. It really doesn’t take long to either load a dishwasher or wash up those few dishes from any given meal.

So then … there is the trash. One company shows how strong their kitchen garbage bags are by stuffing them full, pushing the limits of the plastic the bags are made of. Then, a young child has the duty of taking this full bag to the trash can. It’s great to know the bag can handle being dragged, rolled & otherwise mildly abused on its journey to the trash can. We are shown the trash can in the garage … it has another bag in it! So we’re throwing a bag full of kitchen garbage into another bag lining the trash can? Huh? So, come trash day we’re tossing out a big bag full of smaller bags. Lovely. Not to mention how they are all better & stronger bags too.

All of it just frustrates me sometimes. Don’t create so much garbage to begin with & you won’t have a need for such a strong bag! Hmmm… maybe try using real plates instead of paper ones?

I also laugh at the commercials for paper towels. Well, actually I laughed at the commercial for the Sham-Wow chamois even more. The guy says something stupid like “you already spend $20 a month on paper towels …” Who in their right mind throws away that many paper towels in one month?? I know he’s trying to make a point on how much money you can save, but geez. All people hear tho, is save money. At any rate, hubby & I ended up buying a set of them recently. And they work great so far. I don’t really use them in place of paper towels, but I also don’t really use many paper towels to begin with. We use rags & towels for most everything most people use paper towels for. I will wipe grease away with a paper towel tho, if I’m like wiping out a pot or pan. Why did we have to become such a disposable society?

I could get into product packaging too. And single serving everything. Oh the waste!

A new month already

So here it is February already. It amazes me how as the days are happening, they go by so slow sometimes but when we look back, the time has flown. And when this month has passed, I will be another year older. Wow. My baby will be 22. I’ll be 44. Amazing.

I’m really enjoying doing this research stuff on Vinegar & Baking Soda. I’m amazed at how much this stuff can do. Hubby & I have tried several things & been pleasantly surprised when they work!! I just love the fact I don’t have to look at the myriad of cleaning products anymore. No more clipping coupons for them. Watching to see what is on sale where to save a little money. No more “trying a new thing” to see if it will work better for whatever purpose. I really love having this newfound freedom. To think that I can replace so many products with 2 things. 2 things that are all natural. No longer will I be contributing a chemical mess down my drains that water treatment plants will have to filter out. It fels good to know I am doing my part towards a better world.

Another step has been to eliminate a few ingredients from the food we eat. This has been challenging to say the least. Some things have been easy to change or eliminate. Other things are a bit harder. The main ingredients being focused on right now are artificial sweeteners & high fructose corn syrup. I've written more about it in my blog Naturally Me if you wanna read more. (2-12-12 update ... just use the Naturally Me tag to find all entries that used to be in the separate blog.)

It amazes me how many of our food items contain the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It’s in almost everything!! I changed the mayo I use because it had HFCS. Kraft Miracle Whip was MY mayo. Well, not anymore. I’ll try a few others before deciding on one. Right now we’re using regular Kraft Mayo. I may even learn to make my own.

I’ve given up my Yoplait Whips. & I quit buying the cheap yogurt for hubby. I’m changing the spaghetti sauce I buy. When I go shopping now or even when I fix the food I have at home, I’m reading labels. It’s a bit time consuming but very eye opening.

And so it begins again in a new year

So the hum-drum of daily life is back. Hubby went back to work. Daughter spent most of the day sleeping since she works nights now. I spent most of my day … in front of this thing. I wrote out the final checks for everyone from the mall. I also wrote out nice little thank you notes to go with them. They’ll all get mailed Tuesday. Exciting huh?

We got dumped on big time with snow last night. Probably the biggest one time snowfall so far. No idea how much we technically got. It was about as deep as my hand if not a bit more. With all the snow, I figured the roads & people would be a mess. So, I stayed home. I should have gone to the store & post office. Guess they’ll both wait till morning.

I began going thru some of my digital picture files today too. I know there are tons I can just delete because they are almost identical. So I started. Felt good to clean out more of my life. Really good. Clearing out the various areas of my life of clutter & unneeded things is going slow, but well. I love the feeling of being able to let go of more & more material things. It’s one small step in the bigger quest to simplify my life.

One of my things has been to remove chemicals from my life. Chemicals are bad. Yet we put them into & onto our body’s everyday in so many forms. My big step? I went thru most of my toiletries. Lotions. Makeup. Facial cleansers. They are full of stuff that seeps into our pores, into our skin & blood stream. Well, not so much into mine anymore. I gathered up quite the pile of stuff & posted it on Freecycle last week. Even tho it was money, it felt so good to know I was taking a step towards something that means a lot to me. I didn’t let go of everything, but about 80% or more. I’ll have to find suitable replacements for things like body wash/shower gel. And shampoo. I kept the pencil eyeliners, but let go of the lipsticks. I let go of all the lotions except for 2. I want to make changes in my feminine stuff, but that’s expensive so it’ll have to be in baby steps as things get used.

Can you tell I’m trying to go more natural? Not just in food, but all areas of my life. And as long as you read, you’ll be along for the journey.

For the first time in months I popped back into the natural living community on LJ. Found a post about facial cleansing & using oil to clean your face. Sounds odd, but I’ll be looking into it. I will be enjoying getting into all the fun stuff of going organic & natural. Besides, it’ll give me something to blog about besides boring everyday life.

I think the summer temps have finally found us up here

So Monday we celebrated my honey’s 33^rd birthday. I made a nice pork loin in the slow cooker for dinner. It was super yummy. Connie & I got over to Joe’s to pick up the toolbox that morning. He already had it out of the shed & even cleaned up a bit. Cool. When Tim got home & saw it he pretty much called us sneaky brats.

Tuesday Connie & I spent some time in the garage cleaning it out. What a chore. But it was getting so bad, we barely had room to walk from the front to the back & into the house. It looks much better now. Not like a well organized garage could look, but better than it was before. Besides, we wont be here much longer anyways ….

I’m not sure what else I wanna ramble on about. I think I’ll make the house stuff it’s own entry.

Oh, we got the signed contract back from the mall today. That’s cool. Now we can get excited about that. We peeked in there today & the display stuff we get to use looks nice. Having something like that already in there will help make whatever we put on shelves & walls, look much better. Display & presentation is half the battle right? I’ll get back in there prolly around the first of September to take some before pix and reference shots so we can figure out whose stuff will go where.

After 2 weeks away from it, I’m not super excited about the market this week. I’m going, just not with bells on so to speak. I still feel like the outsider, so we’ll see. There is a part of me who’d be fine with not going back. But, I’d like to do the Taste of the Harvest in September. To do that, we are supposed to be “regulars” in the market. After that, I may not do much more, but we’ll see how life goes.

The hubby is enjoying his new found internet freedom & email stuff. It’s just funny to watch him. The man who used to come home & just relax watching TV, now goes to the laptop & checks his email. Then he wanders aimlessly for a bit till dinner is ready.

I’m slacking on my Thoughts on Whole Living stuff. Figures. Life distractions will do that I guess.

After getting Tim set up with a Yahoo ID & matching Gmail account, I started thinking about my own. I wanted something that matched too. I was tired of my Yahoo name. Having many emails is getting old too. I like using Gmail more than the emails that came with my domain too. I don’t have to worry about storage or anything either. So, after a week of thinking & trying to find a name that worked in both … I came up with HerbsnChocolate. That’s me. I’m into herbs allot … & does the chocolate part even need explaining? So now I am slowly working on changing things online. I was even thinking of changing my LJ to match. But you gotta pay for that huh? Not sure I wanna do that then. We’ll see. I kind of like having a Blogger blog. I don’t like the whole lack of community thing there tho, so I’ll keep LJ for that aspect alone. I’d miss my friends.