A penny saved...

In A penny-ante cure for our fast food addiction, author Robert Wieder offers a great way to think of fast food if you're concerned AT ALL about the calorie count of your favorite fast-food items: think of them in economic terms. He suggests a federal law requiring restaurant menu items to be priced at a minimum of one cent per calorie. The examples he gives are incredible; the Meat Lover's pizza at $3.40 per slice, the Whopper with cheese at $7.60, and more!

Go read it. You will never think of fast food the same way again.

As I recall...

If the sheer number of recent recalls has surprised you, it's probably because you're not reading this site. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission lists current recalls and safety standards, and also has a huge number of safety-related publications that will scare you half to death if you read them all in one sitting, but are otherwise quite useful.

My favorite feature, however, is the RSS feeds. Get your recall information delivered straight to your RSS reader every day, so you'll always be aware of the latest recalls. For what it's worth, I've subscribed to the RSS feed for a couple of years now and I've only seen one product that I actually own be recalled. But you just never know.

Things I'm learning from selling the house

We're in the process of selling our house, since we're going to make a cross-country move in—eek!—less than a month now. The thing is, now that it's cleaned up and polished to show, I really don't want to leave it. It looks so beautiful, and feels so tranquil (as one potential buyer put it). But leave it we must, and so I'm at least trying to take something away from this: ways that work for me to keep the house clean on a more or less constant basis, despite having a toddler and two cats in the house. Here's what I've learned so far:

1. Just as Mom always said, picking up after yourself really works. If you get something out, put it away.


2. If you have any predatory pets, it's a good idea to go around your property before showings to make sure there aren't any nasty things like, say, bits of small furry creatures lying around the yard. As a purely hypothetical example, of course.


3. The best way to get rid of diaper pail stink is to not use a diaper pail. Just take the diapers out to the trash a couple of times a day (during the baby's nap and after he goes to sleep are good times, since you're in his room anyway). I don't know quite how you'd do this with cloth diapers, though.


4. Sweep every day.


5. At least wipe down the bathroom sink every day. To make it look really good (even 80-year-old porcelain, like mine) buff it with a flannel cloth after you clean it. It takes about a minute and looks sooooo good. Nice and soft on the fixtures, too.


6. Get the house completely clean BEFORE sitting down at the computer. This one is really, really hard for me, so I have to make it into a game: the One More Thing game. At the end of each task, I tell myself I can quit when I do One More Thing. At a certain point it becomes ridiculous not to just keep going until I'm done, and then I can sit down with a clear conscience and play Traveler IQ on Facebook till I'm blue in the face.

These are all things I hope I will keep in mind even after the house is sold and we've moved into our small rent house, and whatever house we end up in after that. They're really not too hard to remember; maybe I should make charts like Gretchen's to keep them close at hand. Hmm.

[NOTE: When I say "you" I'm talking to myself. You—and by that I mean anybody who might be reading this—knew that, right?]

Happy Birthday, Baby Toolkit!

Baby Toolkit turns one, and to celebrate, they're giving away one of their fabulous Diaper Valets.

Baby Toolkit doesn't publish a lot of posts—certainly not as many as I, personally, would like—but somehow I end up bookmarking nearly every single one. Great ideas, product reviews you know aren't paid for, and sparkling writing with true geek sensibility: who could ask for more from a baby gear blog?

Sour to suh-weet!

In the hot, humid, dog days of summer it's easy to put off things you don't want to do. You know: walk the dog... vacuum the floors... take the laundry out of the washer. As a consequence, the dog gets cranky, the carpet gets linty, and the laundry gets smelly. The first two can really only be remedied by going ahead and doing the thing you know you need to do, but for the last, you've got an option that will allow you to put off taking your wet, clingy laundry out of the washer for maybe another day, which might be enough time for the heat to subside.

If your laundry sours because you've left it in the washer too long, run the load again, and put about a cup of white vinegar in the little compartment that's meant for liquid bleach (or wherever you usually put liquid fabric softener). The vinegar will run in the final rinse, and voila! No more smelly laundry. But really, at that point your should take it out and hang it up to dry or run it through the dryer. I mean, come on.

Welcome!

Welcome to The Progressive Homemaker. I am a 40-year-old homemaker and mother who does not particularly care for the term "stay-at-home mom." My blog will cover all sorts of things, from cooking and cleaning to gardening and parenting, and occasionally some politics—especially, I'm sure, as the 2008 election draws nearer.

So come on in and have a cup of coffee, hang out for a while and give me an excuse not to mop the floor. Please.