He’s Darn Lucky I’m Not the #1 EcoMom, Top 25 Is Sufficiently Annoying!

April 5th, 2011

One of the peculiarities of the Mom blogger world is the near-constant parade of  Top Mom Blogger Lists. Immediately great debate ensues among the bloggers about who’s in, who’s out, if the award is bogus – a mere SEO ploy – or actually, a great honor.

So late this afternoon, as I relented to my kids’ whining for a snack while at CVS, I checked my phone for emails, and burst out laughing.

Here’s what I read: “Your blog OrganicMania has been nominated to the  Top 25 Eco-Friendly Moms list on Circle of Moms! This is a great opportunity to gain new readers through our audience of over 6 million active users.”

I sure didn’t feel like a Top 25 Eco-Friendly Mom as I gazed over my phone at this image:

 

Can you see what he’s eating? That processed, assuredly non-organic and fully bovine hormone laden bright orange cheese stuff packaged with three crackers, all enshrined in a plastic tomb.  (Probably from the same lot manufactured back in the ’70s, the last time I ate this particular snack).

Why couldn’t I have received the email while I was at the CSA? At least I wouldn’t have felt like I was caught cheating in the act of attaining EcoSuperMomDom.

“Why are you laughing?” my son asked.

After I explained about the email, he got to the heart of the matter: “So are you number one?”

“No,” I responded, noting that (at that time) the honor was reserved for my pal Tiffany of Nature Moms, one of the real-deal original pioneers of Green Mom blogging.   “And you’re lucky I’m not number one.”

“Why?,” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“Because the Number 1 EcoMom would never let her son eat that processed stuff!”

At that time, I was somewhere in the top 25, but as word is spreading, the field of nominees is growing rapidly. (That’s how these ranking contests or honorary lists or whatever you want to call them work).

But if you’d like to help me stay in the top 25 (which I do confess I think would be kind of cool), you’d make me smile again if you went right here and voted.   Thanks! And on a serious note, do check out some of the blogs you may not be already be familiar with…there are a lot of women out there doing some amazing things to green up their lives.

 


— Lynn

The Fifth R….Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle…and When All Else Fails…

April 3rd, 2011

With Earth Day approaching, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the 4Rs (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle).

When you look at this brush, what do you see?

Baby Bottle Brush

An old baby bottle brush that should have been thrown out when baby stopped bottles?  Thrown out?!

Didn’t I mean recycled? Well, that would be nice, but unfortunately baby bottle brushes aren’t typically recycled by municipalities…they’re incinerator bound.

So how do you reuse a baby bottle brush when there are no more baby bottles?

Pass it along to someone else in the new baby stage? Sell it at a consignment shop?  Hmm…I don’t know what things are like in your neck of the woods, but here in Bethesda, the odds of a new Mom buying a used baby bottle brush are just about…nil. Although it’s easy to sanitize a baby bottle brush, used baby bottle brushes just don’t pass the ick test…

So here’s where the 5th R comes in to play….Repurposing….

The Fifth R...Repurposing

After all, when the babies are grown, there’s much more time to kick back and enjoy a glass of wine!

What have you repurposed lately?

Leave a comment and share!

— Lynn

 

 

It’s True: I’m Off to the Royal Wedding

April 1st, 2011

It may be April Fool’s Day, but this is no joke — I’m keeping a promise I made to myself when I watched Lady Diana Spencer walk down the aisle. “Someday,” I told myself, “she’ll have a son. And when he gets married, I’m going to be there.”


My fascination with Princess Diana was in what my husband calls the “full disclosure statements” when we married. He knew that the moment Prince William’s engagement was announced, I’d be on the phone booking tickets to London.

What I didn’t expect was that I’d be leaving my husband and two kids behind to make the trip solo. Back in November, I couldn’t find anyone willing or able to make the journey.

That was then.

This is now.

Recently, scores of old friends have turned up, asking, “Are you going? Do you have a room in London?” I’m now sharing that room with my friend Alison, who’s from Britain by way of Rehoboth’s GoFish! I  suspect that there may even be a few couch surfers joining us, if they can find a way to London.

Today, this package arrived from my BFF. I glanced at the organic Clif bars and the reusable travel containers, and thought he was showing me how his law firm was “going green” with corporate gifts.

Royal Wedding Travel Package

Then I opened a small package containing this beautiful necklace and card, and realized that he had sent me a Royal Wedding Care Package.

The fact that this #ecomonday twitterer will soon be a #royalwedding twitterer is causing some among my “green tribe” to shake their heads in amazement.

But back in the 1980s, when I fell in love with Lady Di, we didn’t know carbon miles from kilometers. I admit the thought of making a trip to London just for this wedding fills me with green guilt. I surfed over to Party Pieces, Kate Middleton’s family’s online party store, hoping to find it a bastion of ecofabulous party items. But alas, it seems that Cheap Plastic Crap is just as popular in the UK as it is here in the US. Perhaps the influence of Prince Charles, with his deep affinity for all things organic and sustainable, will over time have some effect on the lines carried by Party Pieces.

[UPDATE 5/1, Just back from the royal wedding, I checked the Party Pieces website and noticed that just two weeks after this post, on 4/15, they announced, “We’re Going Green…How to Have an EcoFriendly Party.” Wonderful news…they are in a position now to influence millions to make more sustainable choices when party planning.]

For years, I’ve closely tracked the latest news on the royal family, collected old porcelain teacups commemorating various investitures and weddings, and visited sites as varied as the ancestral Spencer home in London and the infamous tunnel in Paris. 

As technology advanced, my royal tracking did too. I went from hanging outside the Brazilian embassy to catch a glimpse of Princess Di (true story, I was even interviewed by CBS Radio) and travelling to Christie’s New York to see the exhibit of Diana’s dresses to setting a Google alert for “Prince William engagement.” I even “liked” the Queen on FaceBook – and later was outed for it by my friend Julie from MomsToWork. A fiercely independent Australian, she thinks my royal obsession a bit odd. Never mind that my own lineage is Bermudian: the oldest and most loyal of colonies.

Come to think of it, maybe I should pack a Bermudian flag and bring it along!

Bermuda Flag

— Lynn