Gotta start doing it ...

My first and only post was over a year ago.  Wow.  Well, my friend Robin has asked me (more than once) to start a blog.  So here goes.  I am, IY"H (please G-d), going to try and do this fairly regularly.  (You may have to push me to get me to do another post though.)

So basically in the last year my son has gotten married, my daughter had a son, and I even more concerned about our toxic environment.  Bet you would have never, ever, ever expected to see those words come out of my mouth.  It's true though.  People are doing so much, and therefore they don't have time to do the really important stuff, like caring for your family and making the world a better place.  I speak to myself when I say these things.  It's very hard to "live in the present".  There is a great saying that I love, one of my favorites : Where ever you are, there you are, all of you.  Huh?  At first glance you are sorta going huh?  Have you ever been with someone, whether on the phone or in person, and you are thinking of something else?  The other person is talking, and you are just nodding your head and putting in the right "uh huh"s in the pauses, but you are not there.  You are thinking of the laundry you need to do, or the shopping, or just something else.  Your mind is elsewhere, and therefore, you yourself are not there.  So one of the most important things I am trying to do is to be in the moment, with the moment, not somewhere else.

Now, back to the environment ... (I am very ditzy, and tend to skip around from one idea to another, because there are so many thoughts floating around in my head.  Bear with me.)  Because we are so busy with all our gazillion and one things to do, we don't have any time.  So we buy convenience items.  We buy cake mixes to make cakes (if we are going to bake).  Cold cereal, soap, shampoo, cleaning products, almost all our food from crackers to noodles to anything we need.  We go out to eat because we don't feel like cooking and we use throw away products because we don't have time (or desire) to wash dishes.  We use boatloads of paper towels.  Grab one, use it, toss.  Now stop for a minute and think ... Why? Why are we doing this? Well, because we are spending so much time working. Why are we spending all this time working?  Well, because we need more money.  And why exactly do we need more money?  Because we want things, and they are expensive.  And also the cost of living is so high. Why is it so high? BECAUSE WE ARE THROWING AWAY OUR MONEY ON CONVENIENCE ITEMS!!!  Ridiculous!  Absurd.  It goes round and round.

OK, so now we see that we are on this crazy merri-go-round.  One of the most life changing things you can discover is that most (if not all) of these convenience products are that they are toxic! They are toxic to our bodies, to the air we breathe, and to the way we live our lives.  These products have so many things in them that are literally killing us.  Genetically Modified Organisms (gmo for short).  Food Dyes.  Pesticides.  Food preservatives.  High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Antibiotics.  Transfats.  Chemicals.  Poison!  Why are these things in all these products? So that the big corporations can make tons of money.  They are getting rich and we are getting sicker. Cancer is on the rise.  (Childhood cancer is one of the cancers that is rising.  Our kids!  Our future.  Doesn't anyone care?)  Food allergies are going wild.  I personally do not remember anyone having any allergy when I was young.  I don't remember ever having to ask anyone if they had special food requirements when they were invited over for Shabbos.  I know of so many young couples who can't conceive.  Then you have all this "ADD" and ADHD.  Here we go on the merri-go-round again ... Food dyes cause hyperactivity.  So voila!  Here is a magic pill to fix it.  Do ya think that these two are connected?  A while ago it was all over the place that you shouldn't sleep with your baby because you are going to roll over and kill it G-d Forbid.  Who started this?  Well golly gee willakers, it was the manufacture of cribs. Why do you think THAT happened?  Monsanto tells us we need GMOs to feed the world, and stop the use of pesticides. Except that it isn't working.  We are using MORE pesticides. And who is making the money there? Dow.  They are all inter-connected, and they are all in bed with each other.  I love to say, "Do your own research".  Don't just listen to me.  Start with ONE thing, and look at it carefully.

I personally started with HFCS.  That led to GMOs which led to food dyes which led to basically figuring out that we are truly living in a toxic environment.  I'll post next about how to fix.  We ditched all foods that have GMOs and/or pesticides.  We ditched HFCS and transfats.  We ditched food dyes.  (That is a hard one. They are literally in every single thing. Why does your Dawn have to be blue?  Why does soap have to be different shades?  Food dyes in chocolate???  Why? Why?  Why????  I am not even going to get into the sugar substitutes.  Poison.  Pure poison.


Anyway.  I made my own laundry soap today that worked beautifully.  I haven't bought dryer sheets in I don't know how long.  I no longer need bleach or ammonia or Dawn or laundry soap or cleaning products.  My cleaning products are super cheap.  They are pretty easy to make.

Those are my citrus enzyme cleaners that are either finished or in the process of finishing.  I used that on my stainless steel pans that I had cooked meat in.  (I don't have a before picture; sorry.)  The meat cooked for too long, and both pans were coated on the bottom with brown gunk.  Normally, I would have reached for Power Dissolve Dawn.  This time I poured a tiny bit of my enzyme cleaner in the pan, and turned it around so it coated everything.  Then I added a little bit of coarse salt.  As you can see from the pan on the right, a tiny bit of elbow grease, but there are no more stuck on parts.  (I only had to use elbow grease because I was cleaning up and didn't want to have to come back later and do the pans.  If I had let them sit for longer, the gunk would have just slid off.)  The pan on the left only has the cleaner it.  I took the salt from the first pan, put it in the second pan, and they are both shiny and new looking.  

So that is what I am up to.

Have a good weekend, and I will write again soon.

~ Leah, the Jew with a HUGE, HUGE attitude (and proud of it!)