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olive oilOlive oil has long been used in cooking and creates a great addition to the flavor of many dishes, particularly Italian style dishes and the health benefits of olive oil have been the subject of numerous studies and have become rather well known; however, olive oil also has a number of great uses for easy cleaning and household chores. Here are a few tips and tricks for great ways that you can use olive oil around the house:

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If you’re having guests over for Christmas this Friday, you have just enough time to get your house clean—that is, if you’ve already got your shopping done, your groceries bought, and the rest of your list checked off. If not, you may be out of luck! Really, if you zip through the major areas indicated below, you may even still have enough time to get those cookies baked for the office party. (Those pictures with Santa, now, may be a higher order to fill…)

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Between shot records to x-ray copies, prescription information to hospital stays and surgery records, the average person is sure to have a file of medical information an inch thick—if not more. When you have additional family members to keep track of, the job becomes that much more complicated.

Keeping medical records straight may not seem like such a big deal; after all, what’s done is done. But when you’re keeping track of your own medical history, linking events and risks with possible current health issues, and checking insurance payouts and medical bills for accuracy, they can come in pretty handy. You can also use them during tax season. And what about medical emergencies? Doctors always want a medical history when you bring someone in, but in times of emergency, it’s not like he or she (or you!) will remember everything.

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Recently an Alternet article about the inequalities of housework between family members—mainly, between wives and their husbands—sparked a lot of controversy on the web. None of the data there surprised me; I had read an article a while back about how, after she gets married, the average woman acquires an entire extra two weeks of work every year—unpaid work, that is, and an entire two weeks, not two “work weeks”—just from cleaning up after her husband. This doesn’t include any children that they may have.

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The Magical Household: Empower Your Home with Love, Protection, Health and Happiness is possibly my favorite pagan book in my entire collection. In it, Scott Cunningham and David Harrington share a plethora of folklore, recipes, spells, and simple actions to make your home more magical and meaningful. There is really something that anyone on any budget can do in this book.

The Magical Household explains that you don’t need money to live in a magical home. You don’t even need to live in a cottage in the woods with herbs, pentagrams and witchy-looking stuff everywhere (though you have to admit that would be fun). Simply using your fingertip to draw sacred symbols for protection on your windows and doors, for example, can help safeguard your home and give it a more magical vibe without spending anything.

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Admit it: your home has smelled like a soiled diaper (or two), the wrong end of a dog, or the poop deck of the Black Pearl at some point or another in your life. When this happens—especially if company is coming—we all want to immediately reach for a can of Febreeze and douse the house in a cloud of smelly-good residue.

But the fact remains that, like most aerosol sprays, that really isn’t that good for us to be inhaling. It’s not like it really gets rid of the smell’s source or anything; it just covers it up. It’s like throwing your toddler’s blankie over dog poop instead of cleaning it up—or doing what Adam Sandler did in Big Daddy: using newspaper to lay over vomit and pee, and simply let it sit there.

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You know you’ve been domesticated when an opportunity to declutter your home with little work brings tears to your eyes.

From junk mail to spam mail to phone solicitors, keeping the junk out of our homes is sometimes out of our hands.  Sure, you can recycle it on your way into the house—but who sorts their mail while walking? Besides, winter’s coming up soon, and that sidewalk’s gonna be slippery. No walking-sorting hybrid multitasking for you.

So then what are you left with? Piles of junk that require more sorting, recycling, pitching, or diabolical plotting (ever sent those reply-cards with free postage back empty, or with a “surprise” in them? I usually include a leaflet about saying no to fur or something. Fun!).

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Slate has an awesome video clip investigating whether it's better for the environment to use paper towels or an electric hand dryer when you wash your hands in a public restroom.  I am absolutely in love with this video because they actually did the math.  Doing the math is a rare thing in green discussions. Think about how long the "paper or plastic" debate raged, before "reusable canvas tote" finally solved the argument.  


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Embrace it!Are grandmothers ever wrong? Never. Mine used to tell me that nothing was better for washing windows than white vinegar and newspaper. And that rinsing my hair with a half a cup of vinegar and a cup of cold water after a shower would make my hair glow like the sun. Did I listen? No. Was she right? Yes, naturally.

Sometimes it is hard to believe that the simplest and most inexpensive items on the shelf are in fact, the most efficient. We buy in to the marketing of companies selling expensive cleaners, conditioners, cosmetics, and medicine; when the one product that we have had all along, does not only a comprable job, it does a better job.

Vinegar is one such product.

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