It is a new year and you have made your New Year's resolutions. To eat healthier? Live lighter? Be greener? All of the above and more? Citizenpip is here to help! A mom-powered business, Citizenpip was inspired by the belief that making small changes in your daily habits can make a significant impact. Citizenpip offers eco-friendly, practical, and safe reusable lunch kits that make it easy to pack a waste-free lunch.

Citizenpip generously sent me one of their Soup To Nuts Kits (pictured above) for review.

The Soup To Nuts Kit includes:

All of Citizenpip's "munchgear" is "muck-free" containing no lead, no BPA, no PVC, and no phthalates. What it does contain is great little air-tight containers perfectly sized for snacking at lunch. Now your child can have their favorite sandwich at school without it getting smooshed in a brown paper bag. Not to mention, there is no bag to throw away! Maybe you want to take some leftovers to work for lunch the next day? No problem, the silicone-seal leak-proof containers can handle an ooey-gooey entree too. Each BPA-free polypropylene container comes with four flaps on the lid, that snap onto the bottom, to securely seal the contents inside. I sent my 13-year old with it on a school trip and she arrived home incident free. Since she only packed a sandwich and some dry goods that day I thought a little more rigorous testing was needed. I filled each of the containers with various levels of water, packed them into the lunch bag and carried it around in my purse (Yes, I have a big purse) for the day while running errands. I am not as rough and tumbly as an 8-year old boy, but jumping in and out of the car, running to and fro car to store - it is darn cold out there(!) - throwing my purse in shopping carts, and sloshing around while schlepping groceries into the house, I think I put it through its paces. Happy to report that I and the contents of my purse remained dry, I decided to go Mythbuster style and see just what would happen if I were an 8-year old boy.

Dropped from three feet or more and still good! While I honestly believe that glass is better than plastic, I do realize that not everyone may be at that stage and reusable is definitely better than disposable. I love that this kit comes with it all - beverage container, utensils, and napkin are all included. Not just one napkin mind you, but a whole week's worth! Who has time to do laundry every night after returning home from work? No need to worry about that with this kit. There is even an insulated container for packing soup on those cold winter days - like today.

For the complete lineup of Citizenpip products check out their website: www.citizenpip.com

To get your New Year's resolution off to a fun, convenient, eco-start Citizenpip is offering up their Square Meal Kit (pictured above) to one lucky reader in the continental US. Thanks Citizenpip! Leave one of your green resolutions in the comments below by January 13 to be entered to win. I will announce the winner the following day, January 14. Good luck!

Think it is impossible to live without plastic? Think again. Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish is well on her way. She saves and tallies all the plastic she consumes and then graciously blogs about it, offering up ways to reduce your consumption. Her plastic tally for 2009 was 3.7 pounds. For the whole year! That is amazing! Most Americans probably tossed 3.7 pounds of plastic packaging during Christmas alone. In fact, her 3.7 pounds averages out to just 4% of what the rest of us consume. I am in awe.

My family husband is a junk food junkie.  Our grocery list routinely states "Candy for Randy".  It is like a staple at the top of the list: Milk, eggs, butter, candy.  I always feel a little odd when the cashier unearths these items.   Hidden under a mass of nutrition from the other end of the spectrum: Organic, organic, milk, milk, milk, organic, produce, produce, orange slices, sour cherry balls, anise dolls, organic, organic, produce...  I try to avoid eye contact.

Then there is the immediate foraging for snacks upon entering the door after a long days work.  After a quick greeting it is straight for the chips!  He will easily consume an entire bag in one sitting, before dinner.   We, he, was going through three or four bags of potato chips a week.  Concerned this may not be the ideal choice, I switched his snacking from conventional greasy potato chips to organic tortilla chips.  Still not exactly healthy, but better I thought.  This was the routine for several months.

Now I have reached the point where I am tired of spending the nearly $3.00 per bag and sick of throwing all those bags away.  Think of all the money and waste we would save by making our own snacks!

Get the recipe in my Monday post at the Green Phone Booth.

Can you tell me what is missing from this picture?


Birthday candles? No.
Sprinkles? Well, yes, but that is not it.

The paper baking cup!

At least those are reusable, although I am leery of putting silicone in my oven. What I am getting at is, is all that really necessary? Do cupcakes really need their own individual wrapper? What are we protecting them from, ourselves? Why would you want to add a barrier between yourself and that little nugget of goodness? I can hardly wait to get them out of the pan before devouring! Or, is it that we have become so lazy that we cannot spare the finger pressure to spray the pan to keep them from sticking?

Sometimes I have to stop and wonder, "Why am I doing this?" Just because you have always done it that way or because everybody else does it that way, does not mean you must continue to do it that way. And so it goes with the cupcakes. One day I decided to stop wasting my money on little paper cups that will be used once and thrown away; decided to stop buying paper cups always packaged in plastic; decided to stop adding to the already overburdened waste stream. And you know what? No one even noticed. Makes me think they were never necessary to begin with.

It is tiny choices like this, when added to all the other little things you do to be green, multiplied by all the people in the world trying to live sustainably that equals big change. Do not think for a minute that the minutest thing you do does not make a difference. It does! Solar panels and geothermal heat are wonderful, but the little things count too.

Back in October, I made the leap from disposable razors to shaving with a safety razor and have never looked back. I absolutely love it! I am in my fourth month and have only changed the blade once. My original estimate was one blade per month, with a savings of $236 - $336 and not having to buy blades again for eight years! At this rate I can double that!

So far I have only nicked myself a total of maybe three times. I would have done so with a regular razor also. Ankles and knees sometimes get the best of me when shaving half asleep. It takes no more time than it did when shaving with a disposable. I have nothing but praise for the safety razor. I like it so much that I gave one to the chitlin girl for Christmas.

She left the next day to spend the rest of Christmas break with her mother. I had not thought about it since. The other day I remembered that I never showed her how to use it.

So I asked, "Did you figure out how to use the safety razor?"

She replied, "Yes, it took me a little while to figure out how to open it, but I got it."

"So how is it going?" I pressed on.

She looked at me quizzically, "What do you mean?"

"Well, have you cut yourself yet?" Bracing myself for the answer.

"Why would I cut myself?"

So, there you have it folks. The safety razor: So easy a 12 year old can do it!

Hubby learns what it is like to see the world through green-colored glasses in my Monday post over at the Green Phone Booth.

Household paper goods are so ubiquitous we do not even think about them anymore, but there was a time when towels and napkins were made of soft, reusable cloth. Nowadays the equivalent of about 270,000 trees are used and discarded each day worldwide. the average North American churns through 50 pounds of paper products a year, including napkins, paper towels, tissues, and toilet paper. While some of these goods are made from sustainable tree farms, native forests are still a primary source. This leads to erosion and loss of animal habitats. Plus, papermaking is a toxic process that is hard on the environment. Many paper products are whitened with chlorine-based chemicals - which are not as harmful as chlorine bleach, but still release carcinogens and toxins into the water. Others are scented, dyed, or treated with "lotion" made of petroleum, silicone, and chemical surfactants.

Use cloth napkins and wash them when they are soiled; they are more absorbent than some of the "eco" paper brands. Substitute sponges, dishcloths, or kitchen towels for paper towels. A good way to start is to throw a dish towel over your paper-towel rack, as a reminder to dry your clean hands, countertops, and dishes with a reusable cloth towel instead of a disposable paper one.

How many paper towels does it take to dry your hands? One, two? One never seems like quite enough, but one cloth towel is all it takes to get the job done. Our hand drying towels consist mostly of the flour sack variety. They are thin and therefore dry fast. I like to throw one over my shoulder while working in the kitchen for quick access. Otherwise, one is always hanging on the oven door pull - which acts as a dryer while baking.

I prefer cloth versus paper when cleaning up spills - no matter how messy and disgusting they are. With cloth one is enough to clean my entire kitchen, it holds up to scrubbing, rinsing is not a problem, it is far more economical, does not come packaged in plastic, and I never run out. These "bar towels" are just the right size for wiping down counters, scrubbing the stove top, cleaning the refrigerator, and catching spills.

By investing just a few bucks I have drastically reduced our waste, my trips to the store, dioxins in our air and water, trees being cut for virgin wood fibers, and plastic packaging; all while getting a far better return on my investment than the one time use and disposal of paper towels.

As I walk into the grocery store I cannot help but notice all the carts coming out overflowing with paper and plastic bags. My mind recalls the day when I opened the closet door and was engulfed in an avalanche of plastic shopping bags. I drop my reusable bags in a cart and quickly breeze by the aroma-less bread in its plastic prison. My mind drifts to the heavenly scent wafting from my kitchen as a fresh baked loaf is pulled from the oven. I arrive a my first stop, organic produce. Ugh, more plastic. Why must vegetables be suffocated by plastic? I want to smell them. My mind makes short work of compiling a seed list and adds food preservation to my 2009 to do list. While I load up my string bag, the lady next to me rips off one of those flimsy plastic produce bags and puts in an onion. One onion. Rips off another bag and puts in a red pepper. One pepper. When she reaches for the third bag I bite my tongue and make a graceful exit. My mind adds plastic produce bags to my pet peeve list and files it away in future blog posts.

I enter the meat department and search for some grass fed beef. My mind instantly conjures up an image I saw recently of a herd of cows all pooping. Pooping at the same time. Nothing but butts, pooping. It was like a methane fountain of poo. Gross! I look at my list, thankfully I do not need much since we are having meatless meals twice this week. I pick up a pound wrapped in plastic on a styrofoam tray. My mind thinks back to Beth's post about when presenting her butcher with a reusable container, a journalist asked, "Do you ever get embarrassed?". At that moment I realize I am embarrassed for buying the plastic wrapped beef on a sytrofoam tray and decide to start bringing my own container to buy from the meat counter.

Making my way around the perimeter of the store I move on to the dairy section. Pathetically excited to skip the five dollar pound of organic butter, I reach for the glass bottle of cream and look forward to making butter with my daughter. I start to drool as my mind relives the fresh buttermilk pancakes we enjoyed for breakfast. Also on my list is yogurt and sour cream. Sighing, I add them to the cart. My mind adds them to the tally of the non-recyclable tower in my basement awaiting some future use. Learning to make my own also goes on my 2009 to do list. A man reaches over me for a styrofoam carton of conventional eggs. My mind replays the scene from The Meatrix where chickens are being de-beaked so they don't peck each other to death living in such close quarters. I pop open a carton to ensure the beautiful brown, free range, organic miracle nuggets inside are all intact before placing them in my cart. My mind goes back to the tower in my basement. Next to it is a stack of cardboard egg cartons happily awaiting Spring, when they will be filled with seedlings to be transplanted into my square foot garden. Milk is the last dairy item on my list. I grab three gallons of rBGH free milk and make room for them in my cart. Thankful my state still allows rBGH free labeling, my mind wonders what I will do if the labeling becomes outlawed? rBGH free milk already costs more, but organic milk costs twice as much. I cannot afford organic. My mind goes back to a time I believed this. Yet, a family of four living on one income we eat nearly all organic. My mind thinks of the all the receipts I have kept for the past three years with the intent of developing a budget. I decide to add up all those receipts to see just what we were spending eating conventional compared to organic. Perhaps I can afford organic.

In the bulk goods section I have a lengthy list: flour, sugar, salt, pepper, oats, baking powder, cornstarch, dill, rosemary, peanut butter, honey, rice, my favorite chocolate covered raisins (damn no grazing sign!), and Dr. Bronner's. One by one I fill my containers from home and check an item off my list. Reused spaghetti sauce jars, a yogurt container from the tower in my basement, a drawstring bag made from an old camisole, whatever; all with their tare weight recorded in permanent marker on the bottom. I fill the container, insert the appropriate PLU twist tie from a previous shopping trip, and place the item in my cart. Happy to be making use of the stockpile I could not bear to send to the landfill; someone next to me grabs a plastic bag off the shelf, fills it pasta, grabs a twist tie, records the PLU on it and goes about their way. My mind wonders why bother shopping in bulk to avoid the packaging if you are just going to create unnecessary packaging by taking it home in a plastic bag? #3 on my pet peeve list, bulk goods plastic bags.

My last stop on this grocery trip is the checkout. I file in line like cattle being herded for slaughter. Waiting my turn I read the tabloid headlines, fight the urge to buy that magazine with all the wonderful recipes in it, compare contents of shopping carts, blush when someone oddly examines mine, and pretend to look at my list whilst avoiding the judgmental gazes. My mind delivers a pang of guilt as I recall I used to be on the sending end of those judgmental gazes. "Hippy." "Freak." All to quick to stereotype. How wrong I was.

The cashier greets me with the ubiquitous, "Did you find everything you were looking for?". Hmm... I will not go there. She rings everything through and gives me my total, nearly the same as always, no matter what I buy. I hand over my reusable bags and the bagger obligingly fills them. While fishing for my keys I do not notice he slips my grass fed beef into a plastic bag before placing it into my cloth bag. Oh bother. Pet peeve #4. My mind asks, "Why do I even try?".



This is my submission for the January APLS Carnival on "mind games". Read all submissions January 22 at VWXYNot?

Living on the Edge.

Back in August, Burbanmom threw out the idea of more eco-friendly hair removal. I have been thinking about it heavily since then. I am a long time consumer of disposable razors. Well, disposable razor heads anyway. I have been using the Venus Divine for several years now. The replacement blades cost anywhere from $2.50 to $3.50 a piece! At that price I try to go as long as possible before changing blades. Shaving daily, I will go a month or more before switching, usually resulting in a nick or two and afflictive razor burn. One of Burbanmom's alternatives resonated with me. The safety razor. After reading many, many reader's comments, discussions with my husband, Q&A with my Father-in-law, thorough internet research and running out of Venus refills it was time.

I purchased the Weishi Double Edge Safety Razor Starter Kit from RetroRazor off Amazon. I selected this particular razor because it specifically stated it was for beginners. I have been shaving for years, so I am not really a beginner, but was extremely nervous about using the safety razor and wanted to play it safe. The kit cost $25.99 included the razor, three 5 pack blade samplers, a cleaning brush and info sheet packaged in a muslin bag.