Going Chewie: Homemade Linoleum Floor Cleaner

Today I cleaned my kitchen floor.  This may not sound like a big deal to most, but today I did it with a cleaner that I made myself, which always makes it better. It’s the ultimate win win, clean kitchen floor, accomplished mommy. Plus making my own cleaners makes me feel like a scientist.. MY CREATION!

Okay so it’s not entirely my creation. I look around the interwebs and usually end up combining ideas from other random people to make something spectacular. So without further ado, here is how I cleaned my kitchen floor! (I don’t have pictures, because I’m planning on bombarding your eye balls with lots of pictures coming soon. Imagination should work for now.)

I used a microfiber cloth that I picked up from the super market. I literally was on my way to get something else and saw it, figured I would give it a go. I will say that if cheapy store brand microfiber works that good, I cannot wait to get my hands on some good quality microfiber clothes. I think I’m hooked. Thank god, because I’m really sick of buying paper towels.

I have a 5 gallon pickle bucket that I use for a cleaning bucket. Why spend money on a bucket when I can get one that is just going to be recycled? Ask your local deli department or even bakery, since they get giant frosting buckets. It depends on your grocery store, but most will let you purchase a bucket or two for pretty cheap.

Ingredients:

~one gallon of hot water

~1 1/2 cup of vinegar

~3 drops dish soap

~3 drops baby oil

~15 drops each of lavender essential oil and tea tree essential oil

I don’t know why but lavender and tea tree is my favorite scent right now.

I mixed them all in the bucket dunked my microfiber cloth, and begin to wash! The baby oil adds some sheen, I used Dawn blue dish soap for grease cutting factor, and increased the vinegar a little based on a lot of recipes I read because well, my floor needed it.

Vinegar is a great cleaner because of the non toxic and also acidic properties. I just buy a big gallon of regular white distilled vinegar. There is a Heinz Cleaning Vinegar that has 6% acidity instead of the normal 5%, I haven’t tried this out yet to see if there is that much of a difference. If you have, let me know!

/cheer

Going Chewie: Our accidental journey into Attachment/Scientific Parenting Part 1

Our journey as parents started as many others, peeing on a stick. Once you pee on that stick, you can’t unpee… The Twelve must have decided it was time for us to undergo our greatest adventure yet… Parenthood. Our entire world changed. Things that seemed important were no longer so. Things that seemed fun and made sense, were now time sinks and illogical. Except for my sudden habit of leaving empty bowls in freezers.. at work and at home.. That was just ridiculous….

Once you find out your pregnant, everybody and their mother is suddenly a parenting expert. Everybody knows the “right”way to parenting happiness. The one thing that they tell you that is true across the board… You have no idea what it’s like until it happens.. and even then, it will all change again, and again, and again. Someone can explain pregnancy to you in such a detailed and amazing way that you will think you understand exactly what it entails. Your pregnancy will be the complete opposite. They will tell you their birth story. Yours will be absolutely nothing like it. (except for the case of my best friend and I, for some reason, I channeled her when B was being born and our birth stories are near identical…..) When we were pregnant, we knew, as many new parents do at that stage, exactly how we were going to parent. I was not going to breastfeed, he would sleep in a crib in our room, etc. 

During my pregnant journey, my decisions and my reasons changed many times. I am so thankful for this amazing invention known as the internet. It has helped us in our parenting journey in so many ways, it’s another one of those, what did we do before? I can see how parenting styles and thoughts on parenting are very “this is the right way”. Before this vast amount of information could be attained by anybody, all you had to rely on was word of mouth. Now you are free to make your own parenting decisions as you see fit and find the people to support you in whatever you choose!^^

I’m not sure if we can be labeled as “Attachment Parents” or any kind for that matter. Once we had little B out in the real world, we felt this whole new wave of what we could only describe as instinct. Our first night home was horrible. We were told not to bring B into bed with us. We were told to keep him someplace “safe”. We didn’t sleep at all that night. Or the next night. Or the next. When B was about a month old, we realized that he slept the most when I would fall asleep nursing him, when he was sleeping with me. 

That is when we first consulted the internet on our journey as a tool to guide us. What we found was other parents, like us, that had come to the same conclusion, and the reassurance that putting him in bed with us was not an automatic ticket to SIDS. In fact, what we learned was our instinct was correct. (Thank you Dr. Sears.) The first night, we were more nervous than anything else. What if we do squish him? What is he rolls off? What if? What if? 

What if we actually got more sleep than we have had since becoming parents?

What if our instincts are more informative than what you’re “supposed” to do as a parent?

The more research we’ve done, the more we’ve found that to be true. People have been parenting long since the dawn of time. Before doctors, before cribs, before strollers, before technology. Looking around us, I would say that the human race has successfully been able to flourish. How is it that with time, the basic human biology of reproducing has become so hard? Why do we put these unnecessary demands on new parents? I’m not saying that our way is the “right” way. Everybody has a slightly different parenting style, or instincts based on their own upbringing and whatnot.

Follow your instincts, and if you question them, do some research. You will probably find that your way is what is best for you and your family!^^

 

If you would like some information on co-sleeping, and the like, please do not hesitate to ask! I love sharing information with parents new and old, and talking about our experiences! I will not, however, try and convince you that my way is the right way, and I ask that you do the same. I will share information that i have if it is asked for. Every parent loves their child the best way they know how, regardless of their parenting ways.  (We are just beginning our journey and are in no way “experts” on anything)