Cleaning is good for the soul…

Today we have been cleaning our house. Not just getting rid of dirt and dust but really cleaning. As in clearing away the toxins and chemical buildup. It was easy, all that wes needed was a few new products, none of which came from the cleaning isle in the supermarket either…

vinegar, tea tree oil, eucalyptus oil, bi-carb soda, lemons… and a bit of elbow grease.

And it didn’t take much longer either. The only extra time I had to spend on the bathrooms involved spraying vinegar on the tiles in the shower recess and leaving it for 15 minutes.

What’s even better is that there’s no streaky residue that the chemical cleaners leave behind. All tile, metal and glass surfaces are gleaming, my bathrooms smell divine, and my body rejoices that it has a few less chemicals in this world to contend with.

We are even painting the bathrooms with environmentally friendly paint.

The world has gone insane

Last week a man threw his daughter off the Westgate bridge. I’m not sure we know all the details. It has been suggested he is depressed and had been fighting a custody battle. Whatever the reason, it’s just craziness and too sad to even think about for too long. Now a woman in the US has just had octuplets to make it a total of 14 children. Whether or not you care that she’s on welfare and has still been able, through IVF, to have eight more children, is one thing. But how can she support them? How can the planet support them? Doesn’t she read? Does she even know about our endangered planet, about our dwindling resources? Is this controversial… you shouldn’t be allowed to have 14 children… especially if you can’t support them. Especially as the planet and its resources are finite.

Today the state of Victoria is on fire. It’s already being compared to Ash Wednesday. I saw the smoke from my deck today. It created an eery blanket of burnt clouds in the sky and the heat was so stifling it was like putting your head in a furnace and drawing in a lungful of air. Tonight, headed out to an event which was canceled due to the proximity of the fires, we ended up out on an elevated stretch of land looking at the fires in the very near distance. As we watched the sky was a boiling purple mass of billowing clouds and the horizon was dotted with spreading fires. Several times something exploded. Heat lightening lit up the darkening sky. We drove home listening to the emergency broadcasts on the radio. Someone was riding an unregistered dirt bike on the road well above the speed limit. Another car past us also speeding. There’s no one to stop them as all the emergency services are at the fires. Are they stupid? Or do they just not care? There’s already enough tragedy this week.