Debra Moorhead tagged me for a meme about how I reduce the use of chemicals in my life. I’m to name five ways…

*happy grins* I liked this meme! What a great topic!

•  Soapnuts are one of the latest ways I do that. Here’s a wiki on those and you get soap nuts from a natural foods grocer. They leave no scent on the clothes at all, will even clean blood out of clothing without any other detergents and after two or three loads per 3 or 4 soapnuts, you just take the shells out of the little drawstring bag and toss in some more the next time you do some loads. Its hypoallergenic too!
• I use vinegar instead of things like Windex or bleach. It works nearly as well at cleansing things and though it doesn’t kill as many germs, I am also convinced that I am healthier because of it. I do believe that we need to be exposed to germs to keep building immunity to them. I’m not saying be dirty. I am saying that a sterile environment is too clean for daily living for most people with a healthy constitution. We do not build immunity to things we are never exposed to….and so we don’t stay caught up and when we do get sick, we get really, really sick. My grandmother always used to say, that a little bit of dirt never hurt anybody. She was referring to the carrot with soil on it that she just pulled up and handed me to eat, but that’s beside the point. I think its true in some instances and so I find that vinegar is a wonderful cleaning solution and can be turned into a terrific scrubby solution with some baking soda and it can become pretty antibacterial if I add a few drops of tea tree oil.
• We don’t buy chemical nitrogen for our garden. We pee in it. That’s all the nitrogen that most gardens need….and we know what’s in it. *grins*
• We don’t buy chemical bug repellans for the garden, we make a mix in a five gallon bucket and let it ferment into a yukky mess that is mixed with water through the hose, just like any other chemical fertilizer. Now you can turn your nose up at this, but this is how many chemical fertilizers are made, only they add in chemicals too, then they put in stuff to make it smell different. Yup. This is nasty, but it is biodegradable and its no more nasty than what is in the chemical stuff. Read the ingredients and look up words if you don’t believe me. We fill a five gallon bucket with three or four gallons of water, a couple dozen eggs, grind up the shells and put those in too, scat (preferably from a dog or cat, but both is better and a big dog is even better. Animals can discern lots from scents!), human urine, and a handful of really good compost. Separately from that, we get a pot of water and boil up cayene pepper and garlic powder and when we’ve got the heat to bring out the heat of the pepper, we let it cool and put it in the bucket. That bucket gets peed in whenever someone is in the garden and needs to pee. Fresh scat is added every couple weeks and its stirred weekly or whenever you need to apply it. The mix is applied after each rain storm. We have used this recipe in years when the Japanese beetles were so bad that commercial growers were ready to declare bankruptsy and came up with record harvests. We have never been sick from it and if anyone is going to be sick it is me with the ‘get sick off every thing’ syndrome! It is applied in the ratio of 1 quart per 10 sq feet of garden on a garden hose applicator. It repels slugs…well any bug you don’t want and the ground hogs hate it, even the deer don’t like it especially if they can smell that big dog still in the vicinity….but the butterflies, the plants themselves, and the good bugs love the stuff because its a natural fertilizer too.
• We don’t use commercial pest poison. We have a cat for rats and mice. We use a sound system for squirrels that you just plug into a wall. You can get it at a grain store type place or a hardware store. We use scat to get rid of ground hogs. All you have to do is put it in the hole whenever you find one. They are seriously offended with anything crapping in their hole and they just leave. We have a garbage garage to keep the cats, raccoons and skunks out of our garbage bins and we don’t put the garbage out until morning when it will be picked up. We use borax powder (biodegradable) prinkled all around the house to keep the ants out. And we put up bat houses to keep the mosquitoes and black flies down to a minimum and we also put out frog water dishes as they also eat mosquitoes and black flies. We make up flea dip for the animals out of water, vinegar, garlic and lemon juice. We apply it with a squirt bottle on the animals outside the house. You should see the fleas jumping off! Put it on the face first or the animal will attack you to get away from the assault on their eyes and ears that the fleas put up! These are natural remedies, working with something nature already does for the most part.

Now, I have been writing here so infrequently of late, that I am not sure who to tag these days, so I’m just going to tag someone who has commented here recently and invite anyone else who happens by to post on this topic also: Delilahgirl and Sorrow.