The past few months I’ve been exploring social media online and having a lot of fun with it, not to mention learning a lot!  And I’ve found that there are a lot of smart, funny mompreneurs out there to connect with. In fact, many of our Kai Kids suppliers are also blogging, tweeting and posting on Facebook.

One site that’s become part of my daily routine is Twitter. In fact, now it’s almost an addiction. It took me a while to understand it and get into it, but now I find it fun, useful and informative, as a parent, and an entrepreneur.

If you’d like to follow me on Twitter ( I post about interesting articles I find, bits of my daily life, special sales and new arrivals of eco family products at Kai Kids), check it out: www.twitter.com/greenmum !

Check out The Toronto Star today for an excellent, personal piece by reporter Francine Kopun on trying to get through a typical family’s week without plastic. It sounds like a real challenge. Depressing really, to think of how reliant we’ve become on the stuff, and just how impossible it is to completely avoid it!

Kopun tries to avoid plastic food packaging and find plastic-free alternatives to tupperware containers, plastic bags and water bottles. And great news for us, she found some at our online eco store, Kai Kids!

Since the article hit the web and newsstands this morning, we’ve almost sold out of one of our newest green products: organic cotton mesh produce bags. They are washable, reusable and very handy for the grocery store or farmer’s market. If you came to Kai Kids searching for them and we don’t have enough of the size you would like, please email us at info@kaikids.com. We are now taking preorders for a new shipment due midweek!

A while back I sent one of my favourite Kai Kids products off to the ladies at Babyvibe and Kindervibe in BC (great newsletters for parents featuring tips and amazing new products, even if you aren’t lucky enough to live on the Best, er, West coast).  One of the moms behind the scenes, Nancy, has been trying them out for over a month with her family and loves them (I knew she would)!

Check out their review, which hit the ether earlier today via their newsletter and their website:

 ”not a school day has passed where it hasn’t been incorporated into this Kindervibe momma’s lunch-making duties!”

These handy stainless steel lunch containers are a great size for kids (small, med and large), and the company was started by by two moms here in Toronto! Being parents in biz ourselves, at Kai Kids, we are all about supporting other mompreneurs!

Sometimes its the little things, our unconscious daily habits, that can really add up and make a difference to our environmental footprint. We can’t all afford to install solar panels on our roof, switch to tankless water heaters or drive a hybrid, but the cumulative effect of many small steps can have an impact.

Take banking. Most of us don’t consider that how we bank could have an effect on the environment, but it does. Traditionally personal banking meant lots of paper used and thrown out: personal cheques, bank statements, atm slips, deposit receipts. But today, online banking has made it a lot easier to cut out some of the paper waste.

Here are some tips to green your banking habits:

• Bank online: electronic transactions mean less paper, period. Plus, it saves you time.
• Cancel your printed statements: you can always get an up to date statement online and print it yourself if need-be. Otherwise, what do you do with all of those monthly statements? And why keep them and add to the clutter in your home, if all the information is available at a click of the mouse?
• Request automatic deposits for your pay-cheques: saves even more paper
• Set up automatic bill payments: saves you an envelope and stamp, plus, you never forget a bill payment or have to pay a late charge
• Read investment prospectuses online and ask the company not to send you the printed version. Until I did this ours always ended up in the recycling bin unopened. Who has time to read these anyway?
• Set up a direct deposit with Revenue Canada or other government agencies for any tax refunds, credits or monthly payments. It’s also more secure, as it means no cashable printed cheques can be stolen
• Do not take a paper receipt from the ATM.  Usually these end up on the ground somewhere, and most of time time they are just unnecessary litter

Another hot new eco product, another way to reduce and reuse!  I’m thrilled to have found these brand new reusable organic cotton mesh produce bags for our family’s grocery shopping needs and for our Kai Kids online store!  They really fit all of our criteria (and we are picky!):

•  eco-friendly: reusable and so you can cut down or stop using those filmy plastic produce bags at the store
• organic: Credo was previously making cotton bags but just introduced this new line made from 100% certifiled organic cotton (from Turkey), which means no nasty pesticide residues tainting your tomatoes
• ethically-manufactured: the yarn for the bags is spun in Montreal, Quebec, and the bags are also sewn there under excellent labour conditions
• Canadian:  made by a Montreal company, voila!

These produce bags come in two sizes, small (great for apples, pears, peaches, green beans, lemons, onions, garlic, peppers etc. and large (perfect for lettuce, kale, corn, broccoli, grapefruit).  They are machine washable and have a convenient drawstring enclosure so you won’t lose any of your fruit or veggies coming home from the grocery store or farmer’s market. They are also super-light so won’t add cost at the cash register when weighing your produce!

Just in time for earth day, one more way to help keep your family, and the planet, healthy!  Give them a try!

Don’t forget that tomorrow (Sat. April 4) is our big Kai Kids Spring Sale in Toronto!  We hope you can make it to check out our new earth-friendly products for families and take advantage of some special one-day only sales:

• BornFree baby bottles: 20% off
• Klean Kanteen water bottles: $2 off each bottle
• Babysoy: 20% off
• Jessica Scott eco maternity wear: 30% off
• Jolie Maman soy nursing tops: 30% off
• Little Green Star slogan T’s and onesies: 30% off
• Pip Essentials organic cotton blankets and sleepers: 25% off
• Fleurville diaper bags: 30% off
• Echoes in the Attic purses and totes: 15% off

1390 Danforth Ave, north side (near Greenwood Ave), 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.Hope to see you there!

For a year now we’ve wanted to add a gift registry to our online store, Kai Kids, so that our green-minded parents/customers could register for some of our amazing natural and organic products for new baby showers, birthdays, Christmas etc.

It’s been a long time in the works but I’m happy to announce it’s finally here!  The Kai Kids Gift Registry is now up and running and ready for action!  Just click on the Registry link at the top right of any page on our site, or  on the green Add to Registry button on any product page. You can create your own registry, or search to see whether any of your friends or family are also registered.

We And please let us know how you find using it.  We always enjoy hearing from our customers, and your feedback is important to us.

If you know of any expecting couples who might be interested in eco alternatives to regular baby gear available on most registries please pass the info along. We really depend on, and appreciate word of mouth from our customers to grow our business!

Is your family surrounded by a sea of plastic gadgets, toys, bottles, bags, and containers? Looking for ways to cut back to help ;protect the planet and reduce your family’s toxic load?

I just wrote an article for the fabulous parenting site BabyontheWay.ca, all about trying to pare our family’s life of plastics and suggesting lots of alternatives.

Hope you’ll have a read. And if you are looking to purge some plastic from your household, our Kai Kids online store has lots of options for food and drink storage, utensils etc.  Have a look at these:

• Stainless Seal nestable food containers
• Greentainer lunch containers
  
• Klean Kanteen
• The Safe Sippy
• Bambu bowls and utensils
• Mimi the Sardine bibs, aprons and lunch bags

Modern families have become reliant on liquid shower gels and plastic-pump dispense liquid hand soaps. But really, is all that plastic packaging necessary? And think of how often the average family goes through these products, only to have to buy yet another container. Much of that plastic gets thrown out and ends up in a landfill, depending on your municipality’s recycling program.

A better option for the environment, and cheaper for your wallet, is a return to good old-fashioned bar soap. It is usually wrapped in paper or recycled paper, or you can cut the packaging altogether by  buying it  loose in natural food stores.

It’s a little messier, and can be slippery for little fingers, but it’s much better for the planet. And bodywash and liquid handsoaps usually cost about four times as much as bar soap!

I don’t have the stats for Canada, but if every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of shower gel with a bar of soap, roughly 2.5  million pounds of plastic bottles would be diverted from the waste stream! That is staggering.

In our household, we went back to the bar a few years ago with no regrets. We still use liquid handsoap at our bathroom sink for quick cleanups, but we refill our plastic container with a natural handsoap we purchase in bulk from our neighbourhood natural food store.  We just take our container in, have it weighed, and refill when necessary.

Our online eco store, Kai Kids, also carries some excellent bar soaps:

• Organic Baby Soap, by Bare Organics, which we use for the whole family
• Avocado Cleansing Bar, by Dimpleskins (very gentle and great for babies)
• French-Milled Vegetable Soap, by South of France (lasts for months, and comes in two lovely scents: Honey and Lemon Verbena)

Happy washing!

I just received a new shipment for our Kai Kids eco boutique today that I’m very excited about!  I finally found some reusable colourful, funky organic cotton training pants that kids will actually want to wear.

If you and your toddler are tackling potty training, then have a look at our new Little Beetle Learners.  They are made of two layers of 100%  organic velour cotton, with a third layer tucked into the wet zone and hidden by some very sporty stitching! Happily, these training pants are also Fair Trade, so no little children overseas sweated to ensure your little one could wear them.

I must confess, even after cloth diapering,  I went through my share of disposable pullups with our Big Boy a few years ago, but felt guilty about all of that paper and gel heading for the landfill.

Our second son, Baby Boy is now two, and I’m hoping he’ll soon start showing signs he’s ready to start potty training (especially before Baby #3 arrives this summer! ) And when he does, I’m going to try these oh-so-soft,  organic training pants.

Pull them on, snap them off, and you and your little one will enjoy the soft velour material on his bottom, plus he’ll feel the wetness from accidents and hopefully be motivated to stay dry!

After an inevitable accident, just rinse out or shake any feces into the toilet, then wash in hot water (to kill any bacteria) and dry at a low temperature, or better yet, line dry.