Natural Living Articles & Tutorials

With a family and a business, life can get very busy, very fast. Both take a lot of time and intentionality to nurture and I’m not one to let either of these important parts of my life suffer for the other. One thing I do so that I can have time for my family (first) …

People in laundry commercials can be quite entertaining. Images of flowers, sunshine, and a background of snowy mountains promise laundry as fresh as a day in the Alps! But those man-made chemicals don’t hold a candle to real, natural freshness (that is actually good for you too). This natural linen spray recipe uses essential oils to leave fabrics smelling …

Since we largely avoid candy and other processed foods, I have to get creative and come up with other Easter basket ideas each year. As kids, my brother and I always looked forward to Easter and getting baskets with a chocolate bunny and going on Easter egg hunts. Because of these special memories I work …

If you know anything about organic gardening, you may have heard the saying “feed the soil, not the plant.” Creating healthy soil for plants to grow in is the best way to have a healthy garden that produces without synthetic fertilizers. Knowing that is one thing… knowing what to do is another! It’s tempting to …

I’ve written many times about all-natural cleaning methods without the use of chemicals. Now to check off something that’s been on my list for a while: a complete cleaning checklist for the whole house! Sometimes it’s hard to get the motivation (or time) to take on deep cleaning, but the one time of year most of …

For years, I thought I was terrible at keeping indoor plants alive. Forget a green thumb, my thumb apparently was great at killing plants and not so great at keeping them happy. I could keep my outdoor garden alive no problem but I couldn’t figure out why I struggled so much with indoor plants! Lack …

I’ve already confessed my weird hobby of taking on remodeling projects whenever my husband leaves town. Today, I’m sharing another one of my (somewhat strange) infatuations: my plant wall. Or should I say plant walls, since I’ve created several of them throughout my house. Why a Plant Wall? Well, for starters, plant walls are beautiful …

Homemade air freshener is great, but sometimes it’s my clothes that need freshening. Homemade drawer fresheners aren’t a new idea (I’m pretty sure my grandmother had some), but they are a simple and economical way to add a fresh clean scent to your dresser drawers or add a special touch to the linen closet. It’s also …

I’m a big fan of DIY projects. Heck, I make my own deodorant. That’s why when we needed a door for our office but the opening was a weird size so regular doors wouldn’t fit, I decided to build sliding barn doors instead. DIY Sliding Barn Doors Barn doors have become wildly popular lately. Along …

EMFs are a controversial topic these days! Many types of technology are new and we don’t yet fully understand how they impact the body. In a technological world, avoiding all EMFs is nearly impossible, but there are simple steps we can take to reduce WiFi and EMF exposure, including a simple and inexpensive tip that …

Between pets, kids, and everyday life, homes can smell less than fresh sometimes. Artificially scented air fresheners don’t offer much of a solution as they just mask the smell with toxins. I frequently use these 3 methods to cleanse the air in our home, but I also like using these natural air fresheners for their …

This post is a humble plea to help be part of the solution to a problem that is much bigger than any of us… the growing amount of plastic in the ocean. We’ve known for a while some of the health issues related to plastic use, and now the environmental concerns are becoming increasingly alarming. …

If your house is anything like mine, laundry stains are a daily fact of life.

Fun fact… I have a long running habit of secret things I only do when my husband leaves town. If you guessed drinking wine or watching chick flicks… you’d be wrong. Remodeling and DIY projects are my guilty pleasure, but he hates messes (and getting roped into projects) so I normally only do them when …

Thanks to a European influence on both sides of the family, my husband and I both grew up celebrating the tradition of St. Nicholas Day on December 6th. Many people just know St. Nicholas by the name Santa Claus. While the modern figure of Santa derives from St. Nick, you’d hardly find this patron saint …

I constantly strive to make the holidays less stressful and more enjoyable. In an effort to pare down on the holiday craziness, we vowed to give experiences instead of stuff whenever possible and give only a couple high-quality gifts instead of lots of cheap ones that break the next day. We wanted to lessen the focus on …

Halloween and I have a complicated relationship, at least since I became a mom. Take trick-or-treating, for instance. It’s a fun tradition, but there certainly aren’t too many healthy Halloween treats (or even close to it). Easter and a few other holidays require some similar soul-searching. So what’s a health-conscious mom to do? As I …

Oven cleaning stinks! It is time-consuming and the chemicals that are used in most conventional oven cleaners are toxic. When I started switching all of my household cleaners to more natural methods, finding a way to clean the oven using a natural oven cleaner was at the top of my list. I do not have a self-cleaning oven …

My heart breaks for all of those affected by the pandemics, tornados, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and all the other natural disasters that have caused so many issues. I grew up in a hurricane zone, so I am no stranger to natural disasters. In the past, some of my family members have lost everything in Houston, Texas, …

Imagine for a second a scenario in which you were simultaneously: caring for a newborn that needed constant care building a house with your own hands having to fight off people trying to break into your home still responsible for normal cooking and cleaning Stressful… right? Yet this is what a honey bee colony does every …

As a mom of 6 I’ve had a lot of experience removing stains over the years, but red wine stain removal is especially tough (and is one stain I can only blame on myself). I even lost a few good tablecloths to red wine stains since my DIY stain remover didn’t successfully remove it. I’m not about …

There’s a lot of confusion about safe, natural cookware, in part because it can be hard to tell the difference between a safe piece of cookware and a “green-washed” one. When I wanted to switch out my non-stick cookware for something better I delved into the research to find the best cookware options. Ceramic cookware …