Things don’t stay dirty in our house for long…

Clothes are washed a few times weekly.  I have daily/weekly household chores and my daughter has some chores also. She’s nine years old, she definitely old enough to have some tasks. Sure I stay busy with everything going on in my life, but I manage to squeeze in general household maintenance also. Items have their place and it’s not on the floor.

For the past few years I’ve casually looked at steam mops for hard floors. I’ve always been fascinated with steam for disinfecting purpose but didn’t get the urge to purchase one until about a week ago.

This morning I ordered the Hoover TwinTank Disinfecting Steam Mop. I ordered it from Amazon, so it should be here quickly. I must say that this will  be a step up from how I normally clean floors; using water as hot as I could stand and a mop to clean my hardwood floors. I like the fact that chemicals aren’t needed to ensure that the floors are sterilized.

If I do use a floor cleaner it’ll be a natural solution that I make myself. I will admit that mopping is one of my least favorite activities but it’s a must since some of the hardwood floors in our house receive a lot of activity. If I can make the mopping experience more enjoyable… well that’s a good thing. Based on the numerous reviews I’ve read about this particular floor steamer I don’t think I’ll be disappointed. Once It gets a full workout from me, I’ll post a review about it on Celebrate Life.

Most of the time I use stainless steel pitchers for the smoothies and juices I make…

But sometimes I find that (depending on what I toss into my juices/smoothies) that some of the ingredients can react with the metal. While I much prefer my stainless steel pitchers (I love the way stainless steel looks!) If I’m concerned about metal reaction I usually reach for one of my glass pitcher. The thing is, unlike my stainless steel pitchers none of my glass pitchers have tops. If I need a pitcher with a top,  I’ll pull out my lonely  plastic pitcher.

Yesterday is an excellent example… You remember that Mango green smoothie that I made? That was put into my plastic pitcher because it had a top, but I wasn’t thrilled about doing that. However since  I don’t like leaving my juices or smoothies ‘topless’ in the refrigerator into the plastic pitcher it went!

I’ve never been fond of plastic storage containers. I like the heaviness of metal/glass. Which is why you’ll find that all my food storage containers are made of glass. Initially I was concerned about breakage, but I’ve had my containers for over nine years and they haven’t broken yet.

Well guess what? I finally found a heavy duty glass pitchers (with tops) that I like! I should be receiving them sometime next week!

I’ll recycle my plastic pitcher by cutting a bit off the top and turning it into a storage container for some of my daughter’s crafts.

Yesterday evening I made a pitcher of a Mango green smoothie. My daughter liked it and consumed two cups of the smoothie over the next hour or so.

Although the smoothie was loaded with vegetables you couldn’t taste them because of the sweetness of the mangoes and other sweet fruits. My daughter and I both like vegetables so I make our own version of V8 juice (minus the high sodium and other additives that the body doesn’t really need.)

Mango Green Smoothie

1 medium sized mango

1 cup of ripe strawberries

2 celery stalks

1 cup of dark leafy greens (I used kale and spinach)

1 cup of ginger root tea

1 ripe banana

Unsweetened apple juice (to desired consistency)

I’m not sure the exact measurements. If you’ve read this site, Celebrate Life, or my much older site VM  for any length of time you might already know I don’t follow recipes. I create my own and rarely do I measure what I’m making.

Drinking instead of eating…

The past few days I’ve been only drinking liquids. I do this a few times yearly. I’m consuming about the same amount of calories as I would if I were eating solid foods, the only difference is that I’m blending or juicing. Even though I have a lot of energy (enough to blast through my intense workouts with no problems) I find that I have even more energy when I swap to liquids. There is a logical reasoning behind that and I’ll be sure to go into it in a later post, but now it’s time set the table for my daughter’s breakfast!