Looking for the healthiest, most comfortable pillows? Check out my youtube video about buckwheat pillows.

Green cleaning has become all the rage. (Forget baking soda for colds; how about for cleaning almost anything?) Even conventional grocery stores and Big Box discount department stores carry well-known brands that have gone “green”. But there are two big problems with buying household cleaners that claim to be good for the environment. First, those brands that actually are good for the environment – completely chemical-free – are expensive. Second, conventional brands that claim to have a healthier counterpart to their better-known toxic cleaners still contain toxic chemicals.

The solution? Make your own green household cleaners, of course! You will not only save a lot of money, but will avoid those chemicals that increase your risk of developing cancer, cause eye and skin irritation, disrupt hormone production, and so on. To help you on your way, I want to give you five green cleaning recipes I personally use – and that really work!

1. Toilet bowl cleaner

This works best if you turn off the water valve to the toilet and flush it first. But honestly, I never do.

Pour one cup vinegar into the toilet bowl, followed by ¼ cup either baking or washing soda. Let sit for a couple of minutes, and then scrub clean.

2. Laundry detergent

Mix one part Borax and one part washing soda in a container. When it’s time to do laundry, put ½ to 1 tablespoon of the mixture in the washing machine, then add a squirt (about a teaspoon) of liquid castile soap. This is the cheapest laundry soap ever – and it works great!

3. All-purpose surface cleaner

This is a complicated green cleaning recipe, so get a calculator ready to figure out some complex mathematical formulas…KIDDING!

Mix one part vinegar with one part water. To boost its disinfectant properties, add a couple drops of either lemon or tea tree oil.

4. Homemade “Bon Ami”

This works great for burned-on foods in stainless steel saucepans, as well as any other hard surface. Sprinkle baking soda over the stain or rough spot. Sprinkle enough water over the soda to get it damp and pasty, but not runny. Let it sit for several minutes, then scrub.

5. Natural air freshener

We use this in the bathroom after someone has gone “number two”. It knocks the odor right out! Alos works great for getting rid of any other kind of offensive odor.

Fill a spray bottle with vinegar. Add a drop or two of lemon oil (make sure it doesn’t contain chemical fragrances). Spritz around foul-smelling air.

Put these green cleaning ideas to the test. They will not only save you money, but keep you and your family healthier. Enjoy!

In this video, I explain an easy, inexpensive homemade laundry soap recipe. Enjoy!

An ant invasion is not usually welcomed in your living space, whether inside or out. But knowing the cumulative effects of toxins in the body, you want to avoid using chemicals of any kind. Are there any natural insect repellents or pesticides that really work? Because believe me, there are some that just plain don’t, whether they are store-bought and have all kinds of claims, or whether they are a homemade remedy.

However, there are two very effective non-chemical ways to get rid of ants, inside or out.

1. Diatomaceous earth

DE is basically ground-up shells of these teeny organisms called diatoms. While the finished product you see in the bag feels like a fine flour, it is actually hard enough to scratch the tender soft bodies of insects, causing them to dry up and die. (Because of this quality, you want to avoid inhaling it, as it will scratch and dry up your lungs, as well.)

A couple of years ago Jerry discovered a fire ants nest in our attic (!). He crawled through the crawl space and sprinkled DE everywhere, and the ants disappeared from our house within a day or two.

Buy the food grade kind, like what the company Soil Mender provides, so that you don’t have to worry if your toddler or pets get into any that you might spread around.

2. Essential oils

Specifically, peppermint and oregano (undiluted). Ten drops of each in two and a half cups of water, shake together in a spray bottle, and spray the the area where they are entering your house. Direct contact will kill them; the smell will keep them from crossing over the essential oil border.

If you have an ant problem and want to avoid chemicals, either of these two ant-i-cides will work great.

Welcome back to another episode of the “Weird Is Great” podcast! Today I won’t be focusing on one particular topic. I will camp around our homestead update for a few minutes, but the bulk of this show is going to be “The Crunchy Coach Tells All.”

What will I be telling about?

• The joy of buckwheat pillows
• Craigslist for sorrow and profit
• Fair trade, organic cotton underwear (ah, the luxury!)
• And a little more.

I begin, though, with a bit about our Oklahoma land. I get transparent with the mixed emotions about this last trip, and give you some good news (at least for me!) about the earthbag house process.

Tune in!

Why green cleaning? Are conventional cleaners really that bad?

Well, let me ask you this question: Say you have a three-year-old who wants to help you clean the toilet. Would you let him or her do it with the toilet bowl cleaner you have on hand? No? Well, why not?

Chances are, you don’t have to read the ingredients list to know that there is something nasty about that little bottle of liquid. You can smell it; in fact, you may have experienced a time when you accidentally inhaled the fumes from it and ran away, choking. Maybe you even got a headache.

The ingredients in conventional cleaners are toxic, often dangerously so. And while the huge conglomerates have wisened up to this fact and taken out some of the worst of the worst chemicals, such as phosphates out of laundry detergent, they still contain ingredients that would send you to the emergency room should your little toddler swallow some.

Green cleaning versus conventional household cleaners

Conventional laundry detergents, while phosphate-free, still contain chemicals that pollute the water. So how healthy can they be against your skin? Conventional all-purpose cleaners and glass cleaners contain petroleum derivatives. These and other chemicals can cause problems that range from skin and eye irritation to liver and kidney damage and cancer.

Green cleaning products cause no kind of irritation whatsoever, nor do they contain any substances that can damage organs or increase cancer risk.

A note of caution here: some conventional grocery stores—and conventional cleaning manufacturers—have recently come out with their own versions of “green” products. Although they have fewer chemicals than the non-green versions, they still contain some toxins. Either buy the Seventh Generation brand (a natural brand which is now sold almost everywhere), or stick with other cleaners you can find at the health food store.

Better yet – and much more economical – make your own household cleaners. Here are a few ideas:

• Clean the toilet with 1 cup vinegar and 1/4 cup either baking soda or washing soda. Or, clean it with a squirt of liquid castile soap.
• Mix a little vegetable oil with water in a spray bottle. Shake well before each squirt, and use for dusting. Or, simply dampen a rag.
• Wash your floors with a 50-50 solution of vinegar and water.
• Do your laundry with a Borax and washing soda mixture. While some people object to both of these ingredients for various reasons, they are not harmful to the environment in small quantities and it is the only green laundry solution I have discovered that cleans as well as the conventional detergents. And it’s much cheaper.
• Use 50-50 liquid castile soap and water as a liquid hand soap. Or, boil 14 soap nuts in three cups of water for thirty minutes. This mixture can be used not only for hand soap, but also as an all-purpose cleaner, shampoo, and more.

Is there an eco-friendly laundry solution that really gets things clean? Tune in to hear my journey, as well as my opinion on the subject. This episode includes a surprising admission and confession from The Crunchy Coach.

Do you live in a green house? Wish that you did?

Me, too! And Jerry, Benjamin and I will eventually. So to find out what truly constitutes “green”, I’ve done a lot of digging in the area of alternative building during the past year or so. This Weird Is Great episode is a culmination of my findings and conclusions.

The most startling conclusion of all: a large percentage of so-called “green” houses aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Tune in to this week’s podcast episode as we discuss:

• the eco-green house that not only takes forever to build, but stinks;
• the startling truth about the cost of earth-bermed houses;
• the myth of straw bales;
• a highly insulated alternative that is anything but green;
• why cobb houses’ best features are their craftiness;
• the dirty truth about earthbag houses; and
• perhaps the greenest house of all…that most Americans would refuse to live in.

Okay, so I don’t exactly reveal every single personal detail of my life in this episode. But I do begin a new segment for the Weird Is Great podcast entitled, “The Crunchy Coach Tells All.” And in the main section I explain why I live the lifestyle that I do.

So, why do I live the way I do? I’ve been accused of being extreme, strange, and – yes – weird because I am strict about what passes into my mouth and am religious about exercising and avoiding toxins wherever possible.

But the fact is, research into the lives of the people who live well past the age of 100 and die free of disease prove that if you want optimum health and a longer life, you have to make choices completely different than what you see in mainstream culture.

Tune in to this week’s episode and you will hear:

• why I am suddenly able to provide you with a longer show (and I hope that’s a good thing! );
• the direction I am headed with my online business;
• the surprising reason why the Crunchy Coach is so particular about her healthy living lifestyle;
• why people who consume processed foods are the “extreme” ones;
• the lie of the 30 minutes/3 days per week exercise routine;
• the shocking truth about how the Crunchy Coach is feeling about gardening in October 2011;
• and more!

Healthy living is essential to living a full, happy life. But what exactly does it mean? Many people think of it in terms of right diet and enough exercise.

But even that is vague and a source of great controversy. Is eating meat essential to health, or is it a sure path to cancer and heart disease, as proponents of an animal-free diet claim? And what is “enough” exercise? A power walk fifteen minutes a day? Thirty minutes of aerobic exercise in a gym four times a week? Weight lifting several times a week?

Other facets of healthy living

And once you begin sorting through the cloud of confusion regarding diet and exercise, you discover that living healthy has to do with much more. Your stress level, exposure to toxicity, and mental health all affect how healthy you are and how long you will live. Even things such as how you manage money, what you believe about God and how fulfilled you are by your career, all play a part in your level of health.

The search for vibrant health will make you weird

Once you decide to start making changes for the better, people will call you “weird.” “Strange.” “Different.” And if you have enough money, “eccentric.”

This is a good thing.

You see, one healthy change leads to another. Before you know it, you are turning down desserts at potluck dinners, starting a vegetable garden, exercising daily, turning off the television in favor of an uplifting book and getting out of debt.

You are, in effect, living a counter-cultural lifestyle. And people who do that are seen by the rest of the culture as, well, weird.

In other words, if you are doing what “everybody else” is doing, you are polluting your mind, your body and the planet. If you are serious about healthy living, you will look at what everybody else is doing and – in most cases – do the opposite.

Steps toward a healthier life

In order to become as healthy as possible, you need to do four main things:

• Eat the food your body was designed to process.
• Keep active.
• Avoid as much toxicity as possible.
• Reduce stress.

Enter the Weird Is Great podcast, where you can learn how to keep your body as healthy as can be, from the inside out. You should download the podcast from iTunes, or subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed so that you don’t miss a single episode.

Get ready, get set…

GET WEIRD.

Because you are worth it.