Quick Thrifty and Green Cleaning Tip For Cleaning the Microwave

  So I'm taking most of the day off from blogging to try to do a deep clean on the house.  Well as deep as I can with three little ones running around.  I wanted to share a great tip on microwave cleaning.  I hate scrubbing the inside of the microwave but the idea of using chemical cleaners on it and then heating up those chemicals scares me. 

   So in the past I have just used a lot of elbow grease.  Well no more.  Happy days are here to stay in the world of microwave cleaning.  All you have to do it add about a 1/2 cup of water to a microwaveable bowl (no lid) and microwave it on high for about 2.5 minutes.  You will get will get enough steam to be able to just wipe off the grime with ease. 

Saving on Baby Food. Home Made Sweet Potato Puree Recipe and Cost.

 

  If you are just tuning into my series on making your own baby food you may want to read the first of the series.  For this baby recipe I decided to compare the cost of buying prepackaged sweet potatoes with homemade baby sweet potatoes as well as show you how easy it is to make it at home. 

  Sweet potatoes are my daughters favorite.  What can I say she has good taste.  Lets start with the recipe and then look at the cost breakdown shall we?  All you will need for this is a sweet potato, small sheet of tin foil, a blender, food processor or baby food maker, a quarter cup of water and your oven.  If you've got all that you are ready to roll.

1.  Start by heating your oven to 350
2.  While that is heating wash your sweet potato
3.  Next you want to poke a few holes in the potato with a fork and cover it in tin foil
4.  The potato will bake for about 2 hours ( You want is good and mushy)
5.  After letting it cool for a few minutes you should be able to just pull the skin right off
6.  Into the blender it goes along with a quarter cup of water
7.  Blend it for about 30 seconds, shake or mix it up and then blend again for 30 seconds
8.  Voila sweet potato baby food.  As my six year old would say "easy peasy mom"

  For my experiment I used an 11 oz sweet potato.  The average cost of sweet potatoes in my store is .99 per lb.  So that sweet potato cost me .68.  When it was all made up the potato yielded almost 8 oz of puree.  That gives me a cost of 8.5 cents per ounce. In the stores around me the typical sale price for stage two baby food is 14.3 cents per ounce.

  While I would not say that making my own sweet potato baby food will make huge strides in my plans for an early retirement I can tell you this:  If she were to only eat sweet potatoes and she were to eat about 15 ounces a day of them ( typical for her at 6 months) I would save $26.10 in one month versus store bought. Not to shabby....

The Cost of Cloth . How to Save on Cloth Diapers

  When people find out we cloth diaper after they get past the shock they generally have at least one of these four questions.  Where do you get those now days?  Aren't those a fortune?  That must take a ton of time and my favorite, isn't it gross?  I'm going to attempt to answer all those questions along with some diaper reviews in the next several cloth diaper video posts.  For this post and video we will be looking at the cost of cloth and how you can save even more.

   The upfront cost of cloth diapering is certainly greater than that of disposable diapering.  Depending on the type of cloth diaper you use there is a wide range of pricing just like their is a wide range of disposable diaper pricing.  Cloth diapers range from a few dollars for the basic prefold with a plastic cover and snappis or pins all the way to over $20 for the all in one one size super convenient cloth diapers.  My point is their is no way to do a direct comparison of cloth diapaering costs to disposable diapering cost their are just two many variables.  It's the overall cost that is what we will focus on.

  The average person who cloth diapers generally recommends you have at least 12- 18 diapers.  You can have more or less depending on weather you exclusively cloth diaper (we don't), how many changes you need to do a day and how often you wash the diapers.  Most people wash the diapers every two days.  This allows you to get a fuller load in so giving you the most for your dollar and saving some time.

  Lets say for arguments sake that you purchase the most popular cloth diaper I know of the BumGenius All in One 4.0 bumGenius One-Size Cloth Diaper 4.0 - Noodle - Snap.  This diaper retails for $17.95 on Amazon.  If you were to purchase 18 of these diapers you would be looking at a cost of $323.10.  That seems like a lot right?  There are other costs to include as well like a wet bag for your diaper bag will run around $10, a diaper pail liner $14.95 and then some folks choose to get flushable liners ($8.95 for 100) or a sprayer for removing "solids" ($40-60).  For this post I'm going to avoid the nitty gritty of the cost of detergent, water and electricity.  So lets say for this comparison that you just get the pail liner and skip all the rest for your beginning foray into the world of cloth diapering.  You are looking at investing $333.10 for diapers that should get you through at least two years if you purchase the ones that are one size / adjustable.

  That probably seems like a ton of money right?  Well lets look at the average cost to use disposable diapers for two years.  Here again their will be variables depending on brand, amount of changes and size of the baby.  You get less diapers in each pack as you go up in size. The average cost of a disposable diaper is .25 ( for those thrifty mommas like myself that's more than we would consider paying but still it's the average).  The average child goes through 60 changes a week in disposables.  More in the newborn stage.  Less as they get older.  So that comes to $15 per week or $1600 for two years.  That is not including the diaper pail refills.  The $333.10 is looking better right?

How To Keep A Six Year Old Bib Going Strong

  So there are very few things I have kept from my first child who is six for use with my third baby who is 5 months.  I donated / gave away / consigned or Ebayed most of it because I had no idea God had a third baby in store for me.  One of the few things I did keep were bibs though.  I kept the feeding kind because the older kids sometimes used them for art projects. 

 

Now that they are back on duty as feeding bibs they needed a little spiffing up so to speak.  After years of use the velcro was no so sticky anymore.  Being that I have ZERO sewing skills I had to resort to another  method.  I had purchased a bunch of self stick velcro tabs off Ebay to use on my high chair cover (slipped all over the palce as it was) and decided to try them on the plastic bibs.  The result is wonderful.  So far after many washes they have not fallen off and the bibs no longer fall off the baby.  Bibs are expensive so any way you can use what you already have is a savings and it's better for the environment to reduce our consumption of plastic any how. 

  For those of you who are more skilled at the sewing machine than I sewing the tabs on to the bib would most likely be even better.  I think next time I'm at the Dollar Store or perhaps if I can pick up some dish towels on deep clearance after Easter I am going to make some inexpensive cloth bibs using the velcro strips.  I figure it's worth a try.