Welcome

My name is Amanda. I am married with 3 gorgeous kids, living in Auckland, New Zealand.

Since becoming a mum I have reflected on the beautiful New Zealand that I was so blessed to grow up in. I look around and see how our country is changing over the years and realize that my children and my children’s children will not enjoy that same blessing if we collectively continue to treat the planet the way we do. That saddens me and I am committed to making environmentally-friendly changes in my life and to raise my kids to be mindful of the environment in their lifestyle choices. Hopefully I can be a good example.

The task of saving our earth seemed a little overwhelming to me. So instead of putting it in the ‘too hard’ basket and doing nothing, I decided to break the task down into more achievable ‘bits’. I’m committing to make small, achievable changes regularly (at least 4 per year), in a bid to ‘do my bit’.

This website is a diary of my journey. I hope it inspires you to consider how you can be more environmentally-friendly. There are others out there who are far more committed and inspiring than I, whom I greatly admire. I am just a regular consumer trying to make one small, positive change at a time - because I believe that if we all do a little, collectively it adds up to a lot.

I have called this site EcoMum because my children are my motivation to care for this earth our God has given us to be stewards over. The reality is that we probably won’t feel the effects of our mistreatment of this Earth, it is the future generations that will. Let’s ‘do our bit’ to ensure a bright future for them.

Amanda

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Flea eradication

OK so we've had a bit of a flea problem of late. It's a bit perplexing since we don't have any animals, our carpet is only about a year old and the house is cleaned regularly. My bub was almost eaten alive the other night in bed, getting about 50 bites, no exaggeration! I felt so sorry for her, she couldn't sleep for all the itching. Anyhow, I've been researching online natural ways to eradicate them for I fear some of the treatments available, e.g. flea powders, may be harmful to us due to the chemicals they contain.

Some of the suggestions I found include:
  • Vacuuming at least twice a week to suck fleas and their larvae up before they hatch. You may need to seal your vacuum bag shut afterwards so that the fleas don't crawl out again, and place a few moth balls inside it to kill them.
  • Apparently fleas don't like eucalyptus oil among many things, so I plan to distribute drops of it on our mattresses to repel them.
  • Placing a bowl of soapy water on the floor overnight with a desk lamp shining over it and turning all other lights off. In the morning there are supposed to be a multitude of fleas in the water - worth a try! Does anyone have a desk lamp I could borrow?
For those of you with pets, brewer's yeast or a clove of garlic a day added to their food is meant to be a fantastic way to make your pet less attractive to fleas.

If you've any other natural ideas I can try, do let me know.
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