Tips to Reduce the Toxins in Your Home

Common household products, which most folks use every day, are positively chock-full of toxic compounds. And these products, in my experience, can lead to some troublesome, if not fairly serious health issues.

First of all, a disclaimer: I’m not a chemist, or a scientist. I have not done any scientific testing or double-blind studies, on myself or anyone else! I’m only sharing my own hard-won insights.

Although I have long liked to believe I live a “natural, organic” lifestyle, it wasn’t 100%. Not by a long shot.

For many years, I used that powerful blue dish detergent we all know all over my house. In fact, I used it for everything: washing dishes, countertop scrubbing, hand-laundering delicates, and bathroom-cleaning.

And it was my go-to for washing my hands too.

After digging in the garden soil, or caring for the chickens and their coop, I washed my hands with the Blue Stuff. Often several times a day.

Used on Fishing Boats?

Way back, I’d heard commercial fishermen and fisherwomen used it to scrub down the decks of their fishing boats—and I used to think it was funny! That if the Blue Stuff was effective for washing down fish slime, it would sure get my hands clean enough to prepare food—even after dealing with chicken manure.

Then a few months ago, I had an epiphany.

Finally, finally, I connected the dots between my daily exposure to the blue liquid and my own chronic health problems. Looking back, I have to wonder, what was I thinking?

 I immediately stopped hand washing with the Blue Wonder and saw immediate improvement. But I discovered that when I used it even wearing gloves and a mask, it still created a reaction! The Blue Stuff had to be gone from my house.

I also realized I’d been also reacting to spray cleaners, common liquid hand soaps and laundry detergents.

Problem: for those of you who have read my two Little Farm memoirs, you know I’m sort of a germophobe. Okay, not sort of, I am a germophobe. Hand sanitizer was my pal. And I loved a squeaky clean kitchen!

And if you read some of the housekeeping/lifestyle magazines, they’re stuffed with articles about the scary germs and pathogens in your kitchen.

In fact, I’ve read in more than a few places your kitchen sink can have more germs in it than your toilet!!

So how would I keep my hands, and my kitchen clean? Without delay, I went to my local co-op grocery, purchased a slew of all-natural brands of cleaners and detergents and put them to use. Sure, they didn’t make lots of bubbles, and you couldn’t get the squeaky clean result, but what a plus: I was sure the natural brands would eliminate my symptoms.

Is "All-Natural" Really Natural?

Second Problem: I still had a negative reaction to the all-natural detergent brands as much as the conventional ones!

Okay, time to go to the next step: homemade. I researched making your own cleaners, and I was on board! Back I went to the Co-op to buy the “all natural” main ingredient soap concentrate. I followed the recipe that included vinegar, salt and warm water, and this cleaner worked great!

But I still had the same reaction! I had to go completely cold turkey.

No hand sanitizer. No cleaners. No detergents.

This morning, I had my second epiphany. With just a brief Googling session, I learned both conventional and “all natural” cleaners and detergents are full of toxic chemicals:

*Endocrine disrupters that mess with your hormone systems;

*Compounds in dish detergents that can damage your gut health;

*Formaldehyde and carcinogens, even in the “safest” products, and, to top it off;

*Surfactants, which are in almost everything! Surfactants create lots of foam and lather—but were originally developed as a garage floor degreaser!

And I’m just skimming the surface of the poisons most of us utilize every day.

These last months, with eliminating just about all the common household chemicals, I’ve had to “clean” my house in a whole new way. Which actually means I’ve also had to be okay with “sort of” clean.

I still use a natural, scent-free laundry detergent and liquid dishwashing detergent. But while I pour them out, I have to wear a mask, and open the nearest window for fresh air.

The “real” all natural cleaners!

For all other cleaning, even washing dishes, I use: 

*White vinegar

*Baking soda

*Super gentle bar soap, and 

*Bon Ami, which is mostly limestone, for the bathroom.

*Or a combination of some or all of them! 

I’m happy to say that these days, being super careful, my health is nearly 100% improved. 

It’s ironic, that long before I realized what was causing my adverse health issues, I’d read something interesting about hand washing.

Giving your hands a good wash doesn’t kill the germs on your skin. The soap simply sort of captures the germs, which the water rinses away.

So I feel kinda stupid. Well, really stupid.

Here I was, scrubbing away with the Blue Miracle detergent, when I knew the experts had already determined that washing with plain soap, even the most gentle bar soap, is just as effective.

Since I went cold turkey, sticking to my natural bar soap after digging in the dirt or cleaning up after chickens, I’ve never gotten sick. So good ol’ soap and water really does take care of any harmful germs.

As usual, I always seem to learn stuff the hard way!

  

Parsnips, Pruning & Prevention

 As we move into late winter, you might be thinking you still have a few weeks to chillax—enjoying your favorite indoor activities before gardening season begins in earnest. But hold on…there’s lots you can do to make a head start on spring!

Parsnips

Picked in late Jan., these parsnips are sweet!

If you grow this super tasty and nutritious root crop, you already know they do fine in the ground well into winter. 

Around mid-February, though, those overwintering ‘snips will start pushing new growth from the tops—it’s the start of the developing seed head. As more green leaves appear, the root gets tougher.

Last March, when I noticed new, healthy green growth emerging from my unharvested parsnips, I got busy and picked them. I roasted a couple, and they’d completely lost their sweetness and flavor. I ended up having to toss all 15 of them.

And it was some job to hack those tough roots into chunks for the compost pile! So if you haven’t harvested all your parsnips—and your bed isn’t frozen solid—now is a great time to dig them out.

Pruning

In the Pacific Northwest, February is a great time for fruit tree care! The trees haven’t yet started their spring growth spurt, so your pruning job is much easier than working with a leafed-out tree.

If you’re not sure about pruning fruit trees, I recommend doing some research. At our place, I take on most of the apple trees pruning. I used to be a bit nervous about it…always wondering, was I pruning wrong? Would I damage the trees?

What I learned is, apple trees grow like crazy—at least around here. And any wrong or boneheaded pruning I may have done hasn’t hurt our trees in the slightest!

With apple trees, I cut out the interior growth close to the trunk and shorten the leggy horizontals. I also try to eliminate the vertical growth, since the verticals generally have few, if any, fruit spurs on them.

Trying to pick apples in a bushy, overbearing tree is no fun at all—been there, done that. So as you prune, you can also be shaping the tree for easier harvesting this summer and fall. Keep in mind that a well-pruned tree has better air circulation for the ripening fruit too!

Prevention

While you’re communing with your trees and pruning loppers, you can also do some pest prevention. If you find one of these on your fruit trees—Beware!

Caterpillar egg sac

They’re tent caterpillar egg sacs—and the caterpillars that hatch from them LOVE fruit trees. Waste no time in cutting them out, since hundreds of caterpillars can hatch from one teeny sac. I talk more about tent caterpillars in my current newsletter--and will share more on these nasty critters this spring.

Also, lots of creepy-crawlie orchard pests overwinter on the ground. The pupa stage of the apple maggot comes to mind, the scourge of our own orchard! The spring grass and weeds will soon obscure last season’s dropped fruit, so it’s a good idea check the ground under your apple tree for any fruit from the summer or fall.

By the way, I recommend the book, Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre. It has lots of helpful advice about orchard fruit, and it's also an excellent all-around food gardening manual. 

May you enjoy your winter garden chores!

Little Farm in the Garden Now in Print!

Nearly three years ago, I released my mini-gardening guide, Little Farm in the Garden: A Practical Mini-Guide to Raising Selected Fruits and Vegetables Homestead-Style. Once I’d created the ebook, I planned to put the book into paperback as soon as I could.

Dedicated to DIY, I tried all kinds of online tools and templates to produce my little guide for print. Some were better than others, but even after multiple attempts, I just couldn’t make any headway.

So I finally broke down and got the appropriate hardware and software to do a really good job, with a minimal learning curve. 

And now, just in time for spring garden planning, I’m delighted to announce that Little Farm in the Garden is available in paperback! For more about my mini-guide, visit Www.susancolleenbrowne.com

You can find it at Barnes & Noble and Amazon--and many other online booksellers. You can order the book at your neighborhood bookstore too. 

Best of all—since I’m a library fan—you can request Little Farm in the Garden at your local library!

But it’s still available for free in ebook at your favorite online ebook retailer, or you can read the free PDF at my Website. 

By the way, my February newsletter is just out today: “Mouse Court Makeover and That Strange Little Brown Thingy on Your Apple Tree.” You don’t need to be a subscriber to read it, so I hope you’ll take a look! 

Mouse Invasion...the rest of the story

So last week's story...I'd seen a mouse in our pantry! And in my rush to save the groceries we'd just bought, I stuffed everything back into their paper grocery bags and left them in the middle of the kitchen floor. Surely no rodent would be bold enough to cross the floor right under our feet! 

But I was to learn exactly what those gutsy little critters were capable of...

John started heating some dinner, just as we both heard it.

A very loud rustling. We stuck out heads back in the pantry and listened, then I pointed to the top shelf. “It’s right there.”

John, far more heroic and far less mouse-revolted than I, reached for the shelf and moved a can of pumpkin out of the way.

The mouse was there, all right. It streaked behind a roasting pan full of picnic supplies, and emerged on the other side, next to a liter of olive oil. There it paused—I swear it seemed to be looking right at John, as if taking his measure. Then it flashed out of sight again.

“Honey, can’t you just…smack it with something?” I asked desperately.

“What do you want me to do?” replied John. “Go after it, with all this stuff in the way?”

I could see his point—imagining the two of us madly flinging groceries aside, John trying to hit the mouse with the bottle of olive oil, as it led us on a merry chase.

“I’ll get some traps,” said John, and headed into the cold to fetch a couple from the shop. He’d learned over the years that peanut butter was a terrific mouse bait, and kept a jar of the cheap stuff dedicated to mouse-bait. More recently, he’d found out that peanut butter topped with a dab of bacon grease was even better!

“The peanut butter is frozen solid,” he said when he came inside. “So it’ll just be bacon grease.”

“I’m sure that’ll work.” It would be easy to catch this guy. If he was fearless enough to find his way into the house, he’d come back for more chow!

Kitchen traps that the mouse completely ignored!

John set two traps and placed them on the pantry floor. I was too grossed out to eat dinner yet, so I yarded out all the vulnerable food items, in either plastic or cardboard, and filled more paper bags. Now we had a small island of overflowing grocery bags sitting on the floor.

The whole time, I listened for a Snap! And though I heard nothing, every other minute I peered into the panty to see if our mousetrap had gotten a customer.

“I wonder if it’s the cold that tempted them into the house,” John remarked, getting a fire going in the woodstove. (In addition to being more heroic, he is far more philosophical than I am about things like rodents.)

“I was thinking that myself,” I said. The forecast for the next few days showed a severe northeaster on the way, and temperatures would drop near zero. Pretty much unheard of in our area. Any sensible mouse would be seeking a warmer place to hang out.

Obviously, I had plenty of other, more critical things to worry about, like frozen pipes and power outages. But the thought of that mouse haunted me. Way past midnight, I was still checking the pantry every few minutes, knowing I would hardly sleep a wink with that rodent in my kitchen.

But the critter had completely disappeared.

The next day, I arose without my usual enthusiasm. Here it was, just days before Christmas when, after being away, I was eager to start my annual holiday baking binge, and listen to Christmas carols. Instead, I had no choice but to houseclean the pantry from stem to stern.

The next day, spent decluttering and wiping down pantry shelves, I saw no sign of a mouse. Nor heard the welcome snap of a mousetrap. Apparently this mouse wasn’t as gutsy as I thought, staying on the down-low while I was in his way.

Still, it was kind of ridiculous that such a small critter could have such a mighty effect—it had gotten me to tackle this pantry makeover, which would have never happened otherwise.

By evening, after hours of cleaning, I had discovered the mouse had not limited himself to the two shelves where we’d seen him: there were droppings on every single shelf. He’d chewed on a sack of popcorn and a one of sunflower nuts, and had created a little pile of them inside my roasting pan.

Clearly, he was setting up his digs for the winter.

Not in my pantry! I vowed. As I shook the nuts into the trash, John came in from the back part of the house. “You won’t believe this,” he said grimly, “but I saw a mouse in the bathroom.”

“All the way to the back bathroom?” Oh, dear Lord, we had a mouse subway in the house! “So that’s where he got to!”

“I’ll move the traps,” said John, and I followed him back. He carefully placed one near the toilet, where he’d seen the mouse, and one in the bathroom closet where it disappeared.

I checked the closet, where we’d been keeping more of our winter food stores: jars of nut butter, maple syrup in thick plastic jugs, tomato sauce in lined, aseptic boxes, and a plastic bottle of olive oil, and found more mouse droppings behind the groceries. Despite the sturdy packaging, the mouse had smelled the food!

Doubly grossed out that the mouse could be all over our house, I worked on finishing my pantry project. A couple of hours later, I went to use the bathroom. And what do you know.

On the floor were two dead mice.

One had been caught in the trap in the closet. The other was a bit of a mystery. It was lying dead, about a foot away from the other mousetrap. I suppose it had sprung the trap and been injured, but had somehow extricated itself. Instead of making a clean getaway, it kicked the bucket.

Well, thank God it hadn’t died under the house, where we couldn’t find it.

I took photos for posterity, thinking it was a little grisly to post them here. But squeamish person that I am, seeing this pic reminds me to stay vigilant!

Mouse mystery—two feet from the trap?

In any event, John took care of the corpses, as he is our “doer of the dirty work,” while I cleaned the floor. He rebaited the traps and set them in the same spots.

We left the traps in the bathroom all week. And nothing happened. I finally took one trap back to the shop, then a few days later, the other one.

Two weeks later, the inside of our house still seems to be mouse-free. John has rededicated himself to keeping the traps in the crawlspace and the shop freshly baited, with solid success.

I have dedicated myself to keeping the pantry in shipshape order, taking impeccable care that anything that might attract vermin is stored in mouse-proof storage containers. And checking for little black bits every time I go in there.

Even if this invasion was an isolated incident, though, I’m sure of two things: I can never unsee that live mouse in my pantry, or the dead ones in the bathroom. Never again will I be blithe about mice in my house!